A woman pours water as she and other Palestinians, displaced during the two-year Israeli offensive, shelter at a tent camp in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.

The human rights group released a report Thursday (December 5, 2024) in the Middle East that said such actions could not be justified by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack into Israel, which ignited the war, or the presence of militants in civilian areas. Amnesty said the United States and other allies of Israel could be complicit in genocide, and called on them to halt arms shipments.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in the report.

Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic “blood libel.” It is challenging such allegations at the International Court of Justice, and it has rejected the International Criminal Court’s accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister committed war crimes in Gaza.

“The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Israel accused Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate Israel, of carrying out a genocidal massacre in the attack that triggered the war, and said it is defending itself in accordance with international law.

Also read | Israel plans to ‘empty’ Gaza Strip of Palestinians: Mahmoud Abbas

Amnesty says Palestinians face a slow, calculated death

Amnesty’s report adds an influential voice to a growing list of players that have accused Israel of committing genocide — which would put it in the company of some of the deadliest conflicts of the past 80 years, including Cambodia, Sudan and Rwanda.

The accusations have largely come from human rights groups and allies of the Palestinians. But last month, Pope Francis called for an investigation to determine if Israeli actions amounted to genocide, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has signaled readiness to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, accused it of committing genocide.

Israel says it is at war with Hamas, not the people of Gaza. And key allies, including the U.S. and Germany, have also pushed back against the genocide allegations. But Amnesty accused Israel of violating the 1951 Genocide Convention through acts it says are intended to bring about the physical destruction of Gaza’s Palestinian population by exposing them to “a slow, calculated death.”

Amnesty said it analyzed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and early July. It noted that there is no casualty threshold in proving the international crime of genocide, which is defined by the United Nations as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed over 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.”

Israeli officials have previously said that such statements were taken out of context or referred to their stated goal of destroying Hamas, not Palestinian civilians.

Israel says it goes to great lengths to protect civilians and comply with international law – including ordering civilians to evacuate areas ahead of airstrikes and ground offensives. It also says it has facilitated the deliveries of large quantities of food and humanitarian supplies – a claim that is disputed by the U.N. and aid organizations working inside Gaza.

On Sunday, a former top Israeli general and defense minister accused the government of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, where the army has sealed off the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp and allowed almost no humanitarian aid to enter.

Amnesty said it found that Israel “deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction.” Those actions included the destruction of homes, farms, hospitals and water facilities; mass evacuation orders; and the restriction of humanitarian aid and other essential services.

It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war until April that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of other people. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were directed at military objectives.

It said one of the strikes destroyed the Abdelal family home in the southern city of Rafah on April 20, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping. An Associated Press investigation identified at least 60 families in which at least 25 members had been killed.

Amnesty has previously angered Israel by joining other major rights groups in accusing it of the international crime of apartheid, saying that for decades it has systematically denied Palestinians basic rights in the territories under its control. Israel has also denied those allegations.

Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas, lack of aid on UN

Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, residential areas and have built tunnels and other militant infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.

It blames the lack of humanitarian aid on United Nations agencies, accusing them of not delivering hundreds of truckloads of aid that have been allowed in. The U.N. says it is often too dangerous to retrieve and deliver the aid. It blames Israel as the occupying power for the breakdown of law and order — which has enabled armed groups to steal aid convoys — while also accusing it of heavily restricting movement within the territory.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage, including children and older adults. Some 100 captives are still held inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 44,500 people, according to Gaza health officials, whose count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters, though they say more than half the dead are women and children.

The offensive is among the deadliest and most destructive since World War II, and has destroyed vast areas of the besieged coastal territory. It has displaced some 90% of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crammed into squalid tent camps with little in the way of food, water or toilets.

Aid groups say the population is at risk of disease and malnutrition, especially as winter sets in. Experts have warned of famine in northern Gaza, which Israel has almost completely sealed off since launching a major military operation there in early October. Hamas militants have repeatedly regrouped there and in other areas, and the group has faced no major internal challenge to its rule.

Amnesty says the U.S. needs to press for an end to the war

The United States, which has provided crucial military aid to Israel and shielded it from international criticism, has repeatedly appealed to Israel to facilitate more aid, with limited results.

The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza at times likely violated international humanitarian law but that the evidence was incomplete.

Ms. Callamard urged the United States, Germany and other countries supplying arms to Israel to pressure Netanyahu to end the war.

Palestinian woman Buthayna Abu Jazar reacts as she holds the hand of her son Hazma, who was killed in an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip May 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The health ministry in Gaza said on Monday (December 2, 2024) that at least 44,466 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The toll includes 37 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 105,358 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations chief said on Monday (December 2 , 2024) the situation in war-torn Gaza was “appalling and apocalyptic”, warning conditions faced by Palestinians in the territory may amount to the “gravest international crimes”.

In remarks read out on his behalf at a Cairo conference aimed at increasing humanitarian aid, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community to “build a foundation for sustainable peace in Gaza and across the Middle East”.

Mr. Guterres highlighted the devastating toll of the conflict and the urgent need for international action.

“Malnutrition is rampant… Famine is imminent. Meanwhile, the health system has collapsed,” he said.

The UN chief added that Gaza now has “the highest number of children amputees per capita anywhere in the world”, with “many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anesthesia”.

The secretary-general also criticised the severe restrictions on aid delivery, calling the current levels “grossly insufficient”.

According to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) count, only 65 aid trucks per day had been able to enter Gaza this past month, compared to a pre-war average of 500.

Palestinians check the grounds of a school after an Israeli air strike hit the site, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on September 11, 2024, amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas.
| Photo Credit: AFP

An Israeli air strike on Wednesday (September 11, 2024) hit a central Gaza school, with the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency reporting 10 killed in the facility turned displacement shelter and the military saying it had targeted militants.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking safety in school buildings.

Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months, saying Palestinian militants were operating there and hiding among displaced civilians, charges denied by Hamas.

The Al-Jawni school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

“There are 10 martyrs, including women and children, in the Israeli bombing of Al-Jawni school”, he said, also reporting “a number” of wounded. AFP was unable to independently verify the toll.

The Israeli military said its air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre” on the school grounds, without elaborating on its outcome or the identities of those targeted.

The Hamas government media office said about 5,000 displaced people were sheltering at the school, which used to be run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, when it was hit on Wednesday.

Al-Jawni has been hit at least five times in more than 11 months of war, Mr. Bassal said.

In July, at least 16 people were killed in an Israeli air strike the military said had targeted “terrorists”.

Israel’s military offensive since the October 7 attack has killed at least 41,084 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which also includes hostages killed in captivity.

Washington:

US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” over the recovery of six bodies of hostages, including that of an Israeli-American from the Gaza Strip.

Terming the development as “tragic” and “reprehensible” Biden on August 31 unequivocally warned that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes” while vowing to keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of remaining hostages held by the Palestine group.

The US President said Israeli forces had on Saturday recovered six bodies of hostages held by Hamas in a tunnel under the city of Rafah.

“We have now confirmed that one of the hostages killed by these vicious Hamas terrorists was an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

The Israel Defence Force (IDF) Spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, was cited by Times of Israel as saying that the six hostages recovered from southern Gaza’s Rafah were “brutally murdered” by Hamas shortly before IDF troops arrived.

Talking to reporters after leaving a church in Delaware, Biden said, “It’s time this war ended.” “We should end this war.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that Hamas “must be eliminated” and cannot be allowed to control Gaza.

Harris extended her condolences to 23-year-old American citizen Goldberg-Polin’s parents Jon and Rachel, and declared, “I have no higher priority than the safety of American citizens, wherever they are in the world. President Biden and I will never waver in our commitment to free the Americans and all those held hostage in Gaza.”

“Hamas is an evil terrorist organisation. With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands. I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world. From its massacre of 1,200 people to sexual violence, taking of hostages, and these murders, Hamas’ depravity is evident and horrifying,” she said in a White House statement.

Goldberg Polin was held hostage while he was trying to escape terrorists who infiltrated the Nova music festival and lost his hand in a grenade blast in the October 7 attacks.

Israel President Isaac Herzog said in a statement that the “heart of an entire nation is crushed into pieces”. He said the killing of the hostages “proves Hamas’s readiness to carry out crimes against humanity.” He added the country’s “sacred goal” was to bring them home.

Following Hamas attacks on October 7, Israel launched a war against the Palestinian group, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities as per reports.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

 Mohammed Deif, right, was the head of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades since 2002 and has enjoyed a cult status among supporters of the militant group.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

On October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants were carrying out a deadly attack in Israel, Mohammed Deif called the attack ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. “Today, the people claim their revolution,” Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said in the speech that was released by Hamas on the same day.

“The Israelis have attacked [our] worshippers and desecrated Al-Aqsa [Mosque], and we have previously warned them. The enemy desecrated Al-Aqsa and dared to harm the Prophet’s path,” he said, referring to Islam’s third holiest place of worship that’s located in Jerusalem. “Hundreds have been martyred and injured this year due to the occupation’s crimes… We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time is over for them [Israel] to continue to act without accountability. Thus, we announce the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation,” he declared.

At least 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack. Israel declared war on the organisation on the same day, and has been waging a disastrous war on Gaza ever since, killing at least 39,000 Palestinians. Israel’s leadership also said Hamas leaders were “dead men walking”. On July 13, Israel targeted Deif in an air strike on a compound in the outskirts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. On August 1, the Israeli military announced that it believed Deif was killed in an air strike. Hamas is yet to confirm its commander’s death.

The cat with nine lives

Deif had been on Israel’s kill list at least since the early 2000s. In 2002, he lost an eye in an Israeli strike. In 2006, Israel struck a building in which Hamas leaders had assembled. The attack seriously injured Deif, but he survived. In August 2014, after an initial ceasefire was announced following weeks of fighting, Israel carried out an airstrike targeting him. The attack killed Deif’s wife and two children, but he escaped again. The escapes earned him the nickname among the Palestinians, “the cat with nine lives”.

Born in Khan Younis, Gaza, in the 1950s, Deif, whose real name was Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, studied in Gaza’s Islamic University, which was co-founded in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader who was killed by Israel in 2004. Yassin, the tallest Muslim Brotherhood leader in Gaza, was then running Mujama al-Islamiyaan, which Israel had recognised as a charity.

Deif was an active member of the Brotherhood and when Hamas was founded, after the first intifada broke out in 1987, Deif joined the new Islamist movement with zeal and vigour. During the intifada protests, he was briefly arrested by the Israelis. Having orchestrated several attacks in the 1990s, Deif rose through Hamas’s ranks quickly. In 2002, at the height of the second intifada, he was appointed the head of the Qassam Brigades, after its leader Salah Shehade was killed by Israel.

At that time, the Brigades were not much of a force. Named after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an Islamic preacher who led violent resistance against British colonialists and Zionist settlers in historic Palestine and was killed in 1935, the Brigades were involved in attacks on Israeli troops as well as civilians. After Deif took over the Brigades, Hamas carried out a host of suicide attacks inside Israel. Israel held him personally responsible for the deaths of many of its citizens. The U.S. had also designated him as a terrorist. In 2015, the U.S. State Department said Deif “is known for deploying suicide bombers and directing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. During the 2014 conflict, Deif was the mastermind of Hamas’s offensive strategy.”

Cult figure

When Hamas emerged as a popular organisation within the Palestinian territories and showed signs of moderation and willingness to contest elections, Deif’s focus shifted from terror tactics such as suicide bombings to building a semi-conventional military command structure with resources such as rockets and mid-range missiles. Hamas acquired much of its rocket capability under his command. Among the supporters of Hamas, Deif enjoyed a cult status. The group always maintained a web of secrecy around its shadow commander.