Amnesty International said that Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The organization added in a report issued today, Thursday, that its research found sufficient evidence proving that Israel has committed, and continues to commit, the crime of genocide against the Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.

In its report entitled “You Feel Like You’re Not Human,” the organization documented the genocide committed by Israel against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel has opened the gates of hell and destruction on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, blatantly and continuously, with complete impunity, during its military attack on the Strip.

“The report clearly establishes that Israel committed acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard. “These acts include killing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, causing them serious bodily or psychological harm, and deliberately inflicting on them living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction. For months, Israel has treated Palestinians as subhuman, undeserving of human rights and dignity, and has demonstrated that its intent is their physical destruction.”

“Our damning findings should serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide, and it must stop now,” Callamard added.

“States that continue to supply arms to Israel at this time must realize that they are failing in their obligation to prevent genocide and risk becoming complicit in genocide,” she continued. “All states with influence over Israel, especially the most important states that supply Israel with arms such as the United States, Germany, and other EU member states, must act immediately to end the atrocities that Israel is committing against the Palestinians.”

Over the past two months, the crisis has been particularly acute in North Gaza Governorate, where besieged residents are suffering starvation, forced displacement and genocide amid relentless bombardment and stifling restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.

“Our research has shown that for months, Israel has been committing acts of genocide, fully aware of the irreparable harm it is causing to Palestinians in Gaza, and has gone so far as to disregard countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and legally binding decisions of the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza,” Callamard said.

"Israel has repeatedly claimed that its actions are legitimate and can be justified by its military objective of eliminating Hamas, but genocidal intent can exist alongside military objectives and need not be Israel's sole intent," Callamard added.

Amnesty International examined Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip closely and in their entirety, taking into account their frequency and simultaneity, both their immediate effects and their cumulative, mutually reinforcing consequences.

The organization took into account the scale and severity of human losses and destruction over time, and analyzed public statements by officials, and found that prohibited acts were often announced or called for primarily by high-level officials responsible for the war effort.

“Given the pre-existing context in which these acts were committed – dispossession, apartheid, illegal military occupation – one logical and inescapable conclusion is that Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, whether in parallel with or as a means to achieving its military objective of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.

International law jurisprudence recognizes that the commission of the crime of genocide does not depend on the perpetrator succeeding in his attempt to destroy the protected group, whether in whole or in part; rather, it is sufficient to commit the prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group as such.

Amnesty International’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in the Gaza Strip over the nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024. The organization interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, individuals from Gaza, and health workers, and conducted field research and analysis of a wide range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. The organization also analyzed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies; it shared its findings with the Israeli authorities on numerous occasions, but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.

Unprecedented scope and scale

Israel’s actions since October 7, 2023 have brought the population of the Gaza Strip to the brink of collapse. As of October 7, 2024, its brutal military assault has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including more than 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000, many in direct or deliberate indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multi-generational families. The onslaught has caused unprecedented devastation.

Experts say it occurred on a scale and speed unmatched by any other conflict in the 21st century, leveling entire cities, destroying vital infrastructure, agricultural land, and cultural and religious sites, and razing Gaza to the ground, rendering vast areas uninhabitable.

Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March 2024 and was displaced again in May 2024, described the struggles they faced to survive in horrific conditions:

“It’s like the Day of Judgment here in Deir al-Balah. There’s no room to pitch your tent, so you have to pitch it on the beach. You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, no clean water, no toilets, and all this while the bombing doesn’t stop. You feel like you’re not even human.”

Israel imposed living conditions in the Strip that created a combination of malnutrition, hunger, and disease, and led Palestinians to a slow and deliberate death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from the Strip to incommunicado detention, torture, and other ill-treatment.

Some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International, when taken in isolation, would constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But when viewed as a whole, and as the cumulative effects of Israel’s policies and actions, genocidal intent is the only logical conclusion.

Intent to destroy

To establish whether Israel’s specific intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians as such, Amnesty International analysed the general pattern of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip, the dehumanising statements made by Israeli government and military officials, particularly the most senior, calling for their genocide, and took into account the context of Israel’s apartheid regime, the inhumane blockade of the Strip and the 57-year illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory.

In its analysis, the organization also considered alternative arguments such as that Israel was acting recklessly or simply did not care whether it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, showing a callous disregard for their lives, rather than an intent to genocide them.

But regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of the Palestinians as a means to destroy Hamas or an acceptable outcome to achieve that goal, the mere fact of viewing the Palestinians as disposable or unworthy of any consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.

Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by statements by officials urging their implementation. Amnesty International has reviewed 102 statements made by Israeli government and military officials, among others, between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 that dehumanised Palestinians or incited or justified genocide or other crimes against them.

The organization identified 22 statements by senior officials responsible for directing the military offensive that appeared to call for or justify genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.

Such language was repeated frequently, including by Israeli soldiers in the field, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International, in which soldiers are seen calling for Gaza to be “wiped out” or rendered uninhabitable, and celebrating and cheering the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.

killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm

Amnesty International has documented genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip, including killings and causing physical and psychological harm to Palestinians, by examining the findings of its investigations into 15 airstrikes that took place between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024, killing at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and injuring hundreds more. The organization found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military target.

An illustrative example is the Israeli raid on April 20, 2024, which destroyed the home of the Abdel Aal family in the Al-Janina neighborhood east of Rafah, killing Palestinians from three generations, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.

While these cases represent only the tip of the iceberg of Israeli airstrikes, they point to a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberate indiscriminate attacks. The attacks have been carried out in ways designed to cause a disproportionate number of civilian deaths and injuries.

Subjecting Palestinians to living conditions intended to destroy them physically

The report documents Israel’s deliberate imposition of living conditions on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that are designed to gradually lead to their destruction. These conditions have been imposed through three simultaneous patterns that have repeatedly compounded each other’s destructive effects: the sabotage and destruction of life-support infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of broad, arbitrary and vague mass “evacuation” orders aimed at forcibly displacing virtually the entire population of the Gaza Strip; and the denial and obstruction of essential services, humanitarian aid and other life-saving supplies to and within the Strip.

After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, water and fuel. During the nine months covered by this report, Israel maintained an unlawful and suffocating blockade on the Strip, imposed strict controls on access to energy sources, failed to facilitate effective means of delivering humanitarian assistance to the Strip, and prevented the import and delivery of life-saving humanitarian goods and assistance, particularly to areas north of the Gaza Valley; in doing so, Israel exacerbated an already pre-existing humanitarian crisis.

These restrictions, combined with extensive damage to homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, and agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, and mass forced displacement, have led to catastrophic levels of hunger and alarming rates of disease. The impact has been particularly severe and severe on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with long-term consequences for their health expected.

Time and again, Israel has had opportunities to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, but for more than a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps that are clearly within its authority, such as opening sufficient crossing points into the Strip, lifting strict restrictions on what can be brought into the Strip, or obstructing the delivery of aid into the Strip, while conditions have continued to worsen.

Through repeated “evacuation” orders, Israel has displaced some 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of the population of the Gaza Strip – into shrinking and unsafe pockets of land, under inhumane conditions, some of them displaced ten times.

Due to these multiple waves of forced displacement, many Palestinians became unemployed and suffered from deep psychological trauma and suffering, especially since about 70% of the population of Gaza are refugees or the children and grandchildren of refugees, whose towns and villages were subjected to an ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Israel during the Nakba of 1948.

Although the prevailing conditions quickly became unfit for human life, the Israeli authorities refused to consider any measures that would provide protection for the displaced civilians and ensure that their basic needs were met, which shows that their actions were deliberate.

It refused to allow the displaced to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip or to resettle them temporarily in other areas of the occupied Palestinian territory or in Israel, and continued to deny many Palestinians their right under international law to return to the areas from which they were displaced in 1948. Israel did so knowing that there was no safe place for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to flee to.

Accountability for genocide

“The international community’s resounding and shameful failure for more than a year to pressure Israel to end its atrocities in the Gaza Strip, first by delaying calls for a ceasefire, and then by continuing to supply arms, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to stop the genocide made possible by decades of Israeli impunity for its violations of international law,” she added. “States must go beyond making statements of regret or dismay, and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable some of their allies may find evidence of Israeli genocide.”

“The issuance of two arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court last month for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister Yoav Galant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity gives victims hope that long-awaited justice will be served. The world’s nations must show respect for the court’s decision and for the universal principles of international law by arresting these two wanted suspects and handing them over to the ICC,” she continued.

“We urge the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to immediately consider adding genocide to the list of crimes under investigation, and for all states to use all legal avenues available to them to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and go unpunished,” she added.