Can we speak of genocide in Gaza?

By Ziad Majed

The use of the term “genocide” remains very limited in France, often put in quotation marks by the press, presented as excessive. However, returning to international law, the relevance of the term to describe the massacre underway since October 7 in Gaza is clear. The international office of the International Federation for Human Rights has also adopted a resolution recognizing Israel's actions against the Palestinian people as “an ongoing genocide”.

Since the start of the most brutal Israeli war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which followed the Hamas attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians on October 7, 20231, many media and governments have made international law and humanitarian law a point of view, or an opinion expressed on set by non-specialists.

Thus, terms and concepts each having a very precise meaning, such as "war crime", "crime against humanity", "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" are used in an undifferentiated manner to qualify certain situations or, more often, to deny on the contrary the relevance of these uses. We endeavor here to recall the definitions of the crimes in question, in order to examine the applicability of these terms to the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip.

MOBILIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

International law and humanitarian law define war crimes in great detail. They divide them into three categories, listing all possible violations of the Geneva Conventions signed in 1949 that can occur during military operations, whether conflicts of an international or national nature.

It can thus be said that any intentional killing and targeting of civilians as such, or any intentional destruction of their property and their hospital, educational and religious establishments, or the fact of exposing them to violence are considered war crimes. famine and refusing them humanitarian aid; any large-scale attack on towns or villages for which there is no military justification, or any mistreatment or torture of prisoners, detainees, non-combatants, or even combatants if they lay down their arms ; any systematic and forced transfer or displacement of populations, or any unjustified attack against centers and representatives of international organizations, peacekeeping organizations, humanitarian organizations; and any use of internationally prohibited weapons.

Therefore, and taking into account Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)2, human rights organizations and international humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Doctors Without Borders, Doctors of the World, or UN agencies such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have thus directly or indirectly denounced possible war crimes, including against their personnel.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for its part expressed its concern regarding Israeli military actions and measures prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the two additional protocols3. A rare public position on the part of the ICRC, which could be explained by the scale of the violations.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, INCLUDING APARTHEID

As for crimes against humanity, they can occur during military operations or outside them, that is to say outside the context of war. They include, according to Article 7 of the Rome Statute:

a) murder;

b) extermination;

(c) enslavement;

d) deportation or forced transfer of population;

(e) imprisonment or other form of serious deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental provisions of international law;

f) torture;

g) rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable severity;

(h) persecution of any identifiable group or community on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or sexist grounds within the meaning of paragraph 3, or on the basis of other criteria universally recognized as inadmissible under international law , in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime falling within the jurisdiction of the Court;

i) enforced disappearances of people;

j) crime of apartheid;

k) other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious harm to physical integrity or physical or mental health.

Here again, it can be said that there is evidence confirming the legitimacy of the allegations that Israel is committing and has committed crimes against humanity, whether in the current war on Gaza - especially in the attack “widespread or systematic attack launched against the civilian population and with knowledge of this attack” and inhumane acts “of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious harm to the physical integrity or physical or mental health of [civilians] ", or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, under clauses that refer to apartheid.

POLITICIDE, URBICIDE AND DOMICIDE

Between war crimes, crimes against humanity on the one hand and the crime of genocide on the other, political science for its part has developed terms constructed from the suffix of Latin origin “cide”4 which refers to murder, to designate a criminal system practiced by a State or a powerful actor against its enemies in order to “execute” them politically or “erase” their public and private spheres.

Thus, the term "politicide" appeared in the 1970s to refer to the destruction of groups of people sharing a common political identity (and not necessarily an ethnic or "racial" identity). It then evolved to describe actions aimed at destroying the material elements that allow a political entity to exist. The term was used, for example, to describe Israeli policy towards the Palestinians on the eve of and during the Second Intifada in 2000, when Israel's clear goal was to destroy the conditions for the very existence of Palestinians. a Palestinian state. This policy of course continues today.

Years ago, the term "urbicide" was widely used to refer to the targeting of urban spaces with the aim of destroying them or rendering them uninhabitable for long periods of time. It has been suggested to describe Russian attacks in Grozny in 2001, during the Second Chechen War, Israeli attacks on one of the southern suburbs of Beirut in 2006 during the war with Hezbollah, and attacks of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad then of Russia in Homs and east of Aleppo in Syria between 2012 and 2017. Of course, this term is today mentioned again in the Israeli war against Gaza.

More recently, some scholars have adopted the term "domicide" to refer to an even harsher Israeli policy towards Palestinians, which targets their intimate places of residence (homes), in order to prevent them from having a stable existence in a space defined by its geographical and emotional characteristics and its public and private symbols, and to make the temporary (by constantly moving them) an integral part of their lives.

All this, of course, gradually leads us to talk about the most controversial question among politicians and avoided - for fear of reprisals - among some jurists and academics, namely: does the definition of the crime of genocide, with all its meanings loaded with history and memories, currently applies to the situation in the Gaza Strip?

PROVE INTENTION

Genocide is defined in the first international convention against genocide, adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations and entered into force in 1951, then in several UN texts and in the Rome Statute (article 6) as such. :

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as:

a) killing of members of the group;

b) serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group;

(c) intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence calculated to bring about its total or partial physical destruction;

d) measures aimed at preventing births within the group;

e) forced transfer of children from the group to another group.

Furthermore, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified by 153 States) specifies that “genocide can be committed against only part of a group, provided that it is identifiable (including to 'inside a geographically limited area)'5.

Based on what has been documented and reported, and looking back at the scale of the destructive bombings filmed and the direct targeting of Palestinians in a specific area through killings, besieges and collective physical, psychological and torture mental, the annihilation of living conditions due to the total or partial cutoff of water, electricity, fuel and communications; by the siege and the total or partial prevention of the entry of humanitarian aid — food and medical — and by the attacks on hospitals and ambulances and the deaths of patients and children due to the impossibility to treat them, it is possible to evoke several elements concluding with the implementation by Israel of a genocide in Gaza.

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the toll of Israeli attacks as of December 11, 2023 shows 18,205 dead, including more than 7,000 children and 5,000 women, more than 7,000 missing under the rubble or isolated or displaced without means of contact, and more than 49,000 injured. According to estimates by the Gazan government, 60% of the strip's homes are destroyed or damaged, 262 mosques and 3 churches have been targeted. Finally, 27 hospitals and 55 healthcare facilities, as well as 55 ambulances, were bombed and often put out of service. UN organizations and humanitarian organizations have lost more than 100 employees, doctors and civil servants, killed by Israeli bombs. Eighty-six journalists were also killed, sometimes directly targeted by Israeli fire.

However, for genocide to be recognized as such, the intention to commit it must be proven. It is often this element which is the most difficult to establish, because it will be necessary to demonstrate that the perpetrators of the acts in question intended to physically destroy a group or part of the group (national, ethnic, racial or religious). Case law therefore associates this intention with the existence of a plan or policy desired by a State or entity.

Some jurists consider that official Israeli statements and explicit calls for revenge and murder against Palestinians — as Palestinians — are clear decisions to strengthen the siege of Gaza by listing materials banned from entry, as said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9, 2023, knowing that no life is possible without these materials (water, electricity, fuel, etc.), as well as the implementation of all this by the Israeli army, prove the desire for annihilation and to move from declaration to execution. We can add to this the presence of a repetitive “genocidal tendency” in the official speeches of the government of Benyamin Netanyahu and certain deputies of his majority – all speeches filmed and transcribed in the press. For example: invoking a "war against the forces of evil and barbarism", dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them animals, claiming that there are no civilians in the strip, or declaring that there are no a that "Hamas terrorists" and "Hamas sympathizers", call to use nuclear weapons against Gazans if necessary and deport survivors to Egypt (and other countries), destroy Gaza and turn it into " large football field”, etc.

Recalling the clear presence of this intention to commit genocide on the Israeli side and "the passage to action", the Israeli historian Raz Segev, specialist in the Holocaust, was the first to emphasize that we were facing "a textbook case of genocide”6.

The director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, the lawyer Craig Mokhiber, resigned from his position to protest against the silence regarding "a typical case of genocide in Gaza.” In the same vein, nine UN experts have warned that Israeli military violence and the intentions of certain officials in Tel Aviv constitute “a genocidal threat towards the Palestinian population”7.

For his part, former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo confirmed that the crimes committed by Israel could constitute a case of genocide8.

Dozens of Palestinian and Arab, African, Asian, American and European academics have also published op-eds and press releases in recent weeks evoking similar positions. In addition to the requests that some of them have addressed to the ICC prosecutor to investigate these crimes, five States (South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti) have officially seized the Court to “ demand an investigation into possible Israeli crimes in Gaza and the Palestinian territories”9.

It should be added that most States and political leaders prefer to avoid the use of the term "genocide", so as not to have to act, in accordance with the Convention they have signed, to "prevent" it or to "put an end to it". end immediately.” Which, of course, is not on the agenda for them.

Finally, it is possible to say that no previous documented conflict has concentrated so many crimes, violations and atrocities in such a restricted geographical area, of approximately 360 km², and over such a short period. This further reveals the “genocidal nature” of this war, and in itself merits further reflection. This can be seen as a sign of increasing possibilities for escalation of brutality, and large-scale violations of international humanitarian law in future wars. A risk which seems to contradict what one might have expected due to the evolution of legislation, but also the “abundance” of live reporting and visual documentation of the facts.

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1. This war is the fifth since Israel imposed the siege on the Gaza Strip in 2007. The wars of 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021 caused the deaths of more than 4,500 Palestinians.

2. See the definition of war crimes in the Rome Statute

3. See the ICRC press release on the situation in Gaza of November 12, 2023

4. Editor’s note. From the Latin caedere: to kill, to massacre.

5. The text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

6. Raz Segal, “A textbook case of Genocide,” The Jewish Currents, October 13, 2023. See also his interview on Democracy Now, October 16, 2023.

7. “Gaza: UN experts decry bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity, call for prevention of genocide”, press release from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 19, 2023.

8. “El jurista Luis Moreno Ocampo: “Israel no puede convert Gaza en un campo de exterminio”, El País, October 23, 2023. Ocampo considers that the Hamas attacks of October 7 are also genocidal in nature.

9. “Statement by ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan from Cairo on the situation in the State of Palestine and Israel,” ICC, October 30, 2023.