Prominent Israeli human rights organisations have accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
B’Tselem – which monitors the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians – and Physicians for Human Rights also said Israel’s western allies could be complicit if they fail to halt the war.
Monday’s separate reports – the first to be issued by Israeli rights groups – claimed Israel had declared an intention to enact, and had enacted, a pattern of violating the rights of Palestinians due to their identity.
Such activities contribute to genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
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Introducing its 88-page report, titled Our Genocide, B’Tselem stated: “For nearly two years, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza, acting in a systematic, deliberate way to destroy Palestinian society there through mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm and creating catastrophic conditions that prevent its continued existence in Gaza.”
B’Tselem said Israel is “openly promoting ethnic cleansing” and destroying existential infrastructure, starving displaced people who have been “left by the world to die”.
In its 65-page position paper, Destruction of Conditions of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) said that October 13th, 2023, “marked the start of an unprecedented assault on Gaza’s health system. Over the past 22 months, Israel has systematically targeted medical infrastructure across the Gaza Strip, attacking 33 of 36 of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics, depriving them of fuel and water. More than 1,800 of Gaza’s medical staff have been killed or detained.” It said this “co-ordinated assault” has “decimated Gaza’s medical capacity and rendered recovery nearly impossible”.
PHRI director Guy Shalev told Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz: “The pervasive damage to the healthcare infrastructure led to a worsening economic collapse: displacement led to overcrowding, overcrowding accelerated disease and disease spread unchecked amid collapsing sanitation.”
He said 92 per cent of children aged between six months and two years “do not receive the nutrition they need. At least 87 have died of starvation since the war began.”
Israel has consistently said its actions are justified as self-defence, and Hamas is to blame for harm to civilians, for refusing to release hostages and surrender, and for operating in civilian areas, which the militant group denies.
David Mercer, a spokesman for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office, said the PHRI paper “blasphemes Israel”. He argued that genocide allegations are “an attempt to delegitimise Israel’s right to self-defence against Hamas”.
“There is no intent, [which is] key for the charge of genocide ... it simply doesn’t make sense for a country to send in 1.9 million tons of aid, most of that being food, if there is an intent of genocide.”
Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border on October 7th, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza. Israel has often described that attack, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, as genocidal.
Since then, Israel’s offensive has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials, reduced much of the enclave to ruins, and displaced nearly the entire population of more than two million.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously accused Israel of genocide. South Africa has submitted a genocide case to the International Court of Justice, while the International Criminal Court has issued warrants on war crimes charges for Mr Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. – Additional reporting by Reuters
