Amnesty International investigation concludes that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

Amnesty International (AI) presented a report in The Hague on Wednesday in which it claims to have found sufficient evidence to conclude that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza after 7 October, 2023. On that day, Hamas-led militias attacked Israeli territory, killing 1,200 people and taking a further 250 hostage. For the NGO, the greatest of the crimes of the conflict that broke out following the attacks are still being perpetrated in the Strip, and it is therefore calling on the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include genocide among the crimes they are investigating. This is the first time that Amnesty has pointed this out in the context of an armed conflict, and is also calling for collective action so that political leaders know “that it must be stopped.”

Over the past 14 months, AI consultants have collected testimonies and medical reports, taken photos on the ground and studied satellite images, in order to produce a legal analysis of the situation. They have done so in the context of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the jurisprudence of courts such as those of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The NGO thus concludes that Israel has committed three acts prohibited by the Convention: killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing serious bodily or mental harm to them, and intentionally subjecting the population to conditions of existence that would lead to their physical destruction, in whole or in part. “Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard, AI Secretary General, during the presentation of the report.

“We have eyes in Gaza that have worked under our standards of rigor and objectivity, and we do not give an opinion,” explained Erika Guevara Rosas, AI’s global director of research, advocacy and campaigns, in an interview with this newspaper prior to the publication of the report. “It is a legal analysis of the acts committed by Israel in light of the Convention.” Genocidal intent — which is very difficult to prove — is essential for the prosecution of this crime and Israel has at times relaxed the pressure on the Palestinian people. It did so, for example, to allow vaccination against polio.

“It is clear that Israel could have done things differently, but it did not,” said the human rights lawyer. While it is difficult to determine the existence of genocide in an armed conflict with military objectives considered legitimate, “it is essential to insist that war can never justify it.” Hence, she describes AI’s analysis as “a legal blow to the State of Israel, which has used the historical suffering of its people to justify the commission of crimes.”

Thousands dead and displaced

AI experts have investigated, among other things, 15 Israeli airstrikes carried out in a nine-month period between 2023 and 2024, which they consider to have been directed against civilians or indiscriminate. “Of the 40,717 deaths recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health as of 7 October 2024, just under 69% were children, women and the elderly,” the report said. The remaining 30% were men under 60, “of whom no independent source has been able to determine how many were [Hamas] fighters and how many were civilians.”

The NGO also says in its 300-page report that “90% of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.” In addition, provisional estimates by the World Bank, the European Union, and the UN indicate that by January 2024, 84% of health facilities and 57% of water supply infrastructure in Gaza had already been damaged or destroyed. Palestinians have been forced to concentrate in ever smaller areas without resources, in camps, schools, or health centers. Guevara Rosas stresses that “this shows how the intention of genocide is an act of intentionally subjecting the population to conditions of existence that can lead to its total or partial destruction.”

And to illustrate the “dehumanization of the Palestinian population” in the war in Gaza, experts have examined the use of “dehumanizing, racist and derogatory rhetoric against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities” during the military offensive.

After October 7, “Israel’s unlawful acts were frequently announced, promoted and encouraged by members of the war and security cabinets.” In 22 specific cases, Amnesty writes, “the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza” was called for. Among those of this opinion were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC has requested arrest warrants for both for their alleged responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Illegal occupation

The document denounces that the genocide is taking place in a historical context of illegal occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel, “as declared by the ICJ in July and with the UN General Assembly giving Israel a 12-month deadline to end it,” the jurist continues. She says that the occupation has reached a level of apartheid “where Palestinians are treated as a subgroup, and their human rights are not valued as those of Israeli citizens.” And she warns of the danger that “this genocide could lead to Israel annexing these territories illegally and contrary to all international agreements” that seek to “generate conditions for [the creation of] the two states.”

Speaking in The Hague, Callamard said that Israel had convinced its allies that it was legitimate to seek out members of the fundamentalist militia among civilians: “The military objective of destroying Hamas cannot justify or allow the genocide in Gaza.” AI also denounced “Hamas’ atrocities and documented its presence among civilians.” It also called for the release of Israeli hostages, describing the October 7 attack as “the deadliest ever perpetrated in Israel’s history in a single day.”

The NGO is currently finalizing an investigation into these crimes, which it hopes to publish in the coming weeks. Guevara Rosas says: “For AI there is no hierarchy of crimes, but we have given priority to genocide because it is being committed and we must do everything possible to put an end to it.” “What we are seeking,” she asserts, is “to contribute to accountability and justice.”

During its investigations, AI has sought to compare the evidence collected with the Israeli authorities. There has been no response. “We raise our voice against the use of anti-Semitism to try to evade criticism of the actions of the State [of Israel],” warns Guevara Rosas. In the West Bank, which she visited last February, “the level of violence was very high, with territorial dispossession and more than 3,500 arrests since October 7, the vast majority in situations of arbitrariness.”

Both the jurist and the AI Secretary General stressed the symbolism of presenting the report in The Hague, home of both the UN International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Both recalled the role that the international community must play in putting an end to “this genocide, which not only violates the life and dignity of the Palestinian people, but that of all peoples,” in the words of Guevara Rosas.

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