Israel/OPT: UN Report Concluding Israel is Committing Genocide in Gaza Must Spur International Action

In response to a report submitted by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, to the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council today concluding that Israeli authorities and forces have committed and are continuing to commit genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard said:

“As Israeli authorities and forces intensify their brutal campaign of annihilation, particularly in Gaza City, the UN Commission of Inquiry’s damning report provides further confirmation of what Amnesty International and others have been concluding for months: that the Israeli authorities and Israeli forces have committed and are continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Building on its previous report, the latest report by the Commission of Inquiry concludes that there is reasonable ground to conclude that Israeli forces and authorities have committed four acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, namely: killing members of the group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births. Crucially, the report also concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Statements made by Israeli authorities provide direct evidence for genocidal intent, and the pattern of conduct of Israeli forces provide circumstantial evidence that genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of evidence.

“The Commission of Inquiry joins a growing number of international human rights bodies and experts in concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“There is no more time for excuses: as the evidence of Israel’s genocide continues to mount the international community cannot claim they didn’t know. This report must compel states to take immediate action and fulfill their legal and moral obligation to halt Israel’s genocide. The international community, especially those states with influence on Israel, must exert all possible diplomatic, economic, and political pressure to ensure an immediate and lasting ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza. The findings of this report should compel all states to halt all arms and security transfers to Israel to re-evaluate their trade ties with Israel to ensure they are not contributing to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, apartheid, other crimes against humanity or war crimes, or the unlawful occupation of the OPT.

“With Israel intensifying its brutal campaign of destruction and displacement, especially in Gaza City, including through the mass forced displacement of its residents and the erasure of its millennia-old heritage, the stakes have never been higher. The very existence of Palestinians in Gaza is under threat. The scale of deaths and destruction has already been cataclysmic, but we are at a juncture where states have the tools to prevent further crimes. They must demonstrate that they also have the will to do so.”

“The UN Commission of Inquiry’s report also warns the international community of its serious concerns that the specific intent to destroy the Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the OPT, that is the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Amnesty International urges all states, beginning with those that have supported Israel for the last two years to shift course, to hear the findings of expert after expert, and to do all in their power to protect Palestinians and stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza and prevent its possible spread to the rest of the OPT.”