An article in Time magazine pointed out that the International Court of Justice concluded last January that it was “plausible” that crimes linked to genocide may have occurred in Israel’s war on Gaza, and it actually warned Israel, even if it found that the Israeli campaign did not It was genocidal in nature.

Its author, David J. Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, noted that the court issued six “interim measures,” including two urging Israel and its forces to ensure that genocide does not occur during the response to the events of last October 7.

While one of these measures forces it not to incite genocide, two others relate to preserving evidence and submitting reports to the court, and the sixth also urges it to “address the negative living conditions faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Is the humanitarian crisis evidence of genocide?

The writer pointed out that the essence of the Genocide Convention is that it is not just “mass killing,” even of civilians, but rather it is a term that refers to an attempt to destroy a people, and therefore it includes 4 means other than killing, such as “causing serious physical or psychological harm,” and “ “Inflicting damage to the conditions of life to bring about the physical devastation of the group,” “imposing measures to prevent births,” and finally “forcibly transferring children from one group to another.”

Although the number of casualties in battles decreased - according to the author - in the weeks following the International Court of Justice’s order, the humanitarian crisis, over which the International Crisis Group expressed explicit concern, has deepened.

United Nations reports indicate that 75% of the population of Gaza were displaced from their homes before the end of this March, and it is likely that the potential attack on Rafah will significantly worsen the situation, and an analysis conducted by the “Integrated Interim Classification of Food Security,” which monitors crises, predicted that Half of the Gaza Strip's population of 1.11 million people faces catastrophic conditions by mid-summer, reaching the fifth stage, i.e. "famine", which is the worst stage of its classification.

Simon wondered whether the humanitarian crisis constituted genocide given the court’s concerns, stressing that considering the situation an act (or policy) of genocide depends, from a legal standpoint, on knowing whether the circumstances were “deliberate” and whether they were planned to “destroy” the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Ordinarily, the issue is less complex, because the forced movement of many Gazans from the north of the Strip to shelters and tent cities in the south, which was accompanied by a policy of restricting aid to the entire Gaza Strip, made famine practically inevitable, especially since the network of warning systems Early Famine issued these forecasts late last year, and raised precisely these concerns.

Conviction, not acquittal

Moreover - the writer says - the dangerous, slow and insufficient measures - to an unfortunate extent - to alleviate the severity of the famine, such as airdrops and temporary docks, demonstrate awareness of the need for relief, but Israel cites them as evidence of its good faith, even though other countries who did, in fact, constitutes a conviction, not an acquittal.

The writer concluded that what Gaza needs now is a massive, well-coordinated relief effort, and a cessation of hostilities is a prerequisite for that, and therefore the fanaticism of Israel or Hamas regarding reaching a ceasefire cannot be separated from responsibility for the humanitarian crisis.

In the absence of trust between the two parties, they must commit to allowing a third party, whoever it is, to supervise relief and monitor its distribution, knowing that political discussions about the status of sovereignty, security guarantees, and accountability for international crimes, which constitute an essential part of the medium-term solution in Gaza, cannot be resolved. It begins only after the humanitarian crisis is addressed.

The writer concluded that the reason behind such a move should not be that the International Court of Justice demands it, or that failure to do so increases the possibility of it ruling genocide, although it may do so, but rather the reason should be the moral responsibility to avoid a possible humanitarian catastrophe. Prevent it.

Source: Time