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"The creation of any 'buffer zone' must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods," warned one Amnesty campaigner.
Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the "war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment" over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza's border with Israel.
"Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques," the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.
Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza's eastern border.
"In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background," the report states.
Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza'a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.
Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza'a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that "around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left."
"I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now," he added. "Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed."
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: "The Israeli military's relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable."
"Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area," she continued. "These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area."
"The creation of any 'buffer zone' must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods," Guevara-Rosas added. "Israel's measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment."
"The Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area."
Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history."
In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel's obliteration of Gaza's civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine's entire annual gross domestic product.
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.
"International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict," Amnesty explained Thursday.
The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," is a war crime.
Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that "no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed."
Amnesty has repeatedly
accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate" IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," said one campaigner.
Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum, senior administration officials are reportedly considering making the policy—which was meant to be temporary—much harder to lift.
Biden's June directive invoked Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
The policy shuts down asylum requests when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points may allow migrants to seek asylum when the seven-day average dips below 1,500.
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law."
The changes under consideration would reopen entry only after the seven-day average for migrant encounters remains under 1,500 for 28 days.
"The asylum ban itself is arbitrary and duplicative. It has no relation at all to a person's asylum claims, meaning even a person with an extraordinarily strong claim would be denied for crossing at a time when many others, potentially thousands of miles away, are doing the same," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
"There is no doubt that we need to rethink the current asylum system, which would include giving it an infusion of resources so that people don't have to wait five years for a decision," he continued. "But cutting it off to whole swathes of people for reasons unrelated to their claims isn't a fix."
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law, which since it was created in 1980 has mandated that all people on U.S. soil be permitted to request humanitarian protections, regardless of how they got here," Reichlin-Melnick added.
U.S. officials say Biden's order has resulted in a dramatic decrease in asylum claims.
According to The New York Times:
Since Mr. Biden's executive order went into effect, the number of arrests at the southern border has dropped precipitously. In June, more than 83,000 arrests were made, then in July the number went down further to just over 56,000 arrests. Arrests in August ticked up to 58,000, according to a homeland security official, but those figures still pale in comparison to the record figures in December when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Migrant rights advocates condemned the new rules. Less than two weeks after Biden issued the order, a coalition of rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing the policy was illegal and endangered migrant lives.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA's director of refugee and migrants rights, said Wednesday on social media. "High numbers of people being denied their human rights is not a sign of success, it's a disgrace."
Guterres said Israel's "large-scale" operations in the occupied territory were "deeply concerning" as human rights groups also condemned the attack.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres late on Wednesday called for an immediate stop to Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank, which continued into a second day on Thursday, leaving at least 18 Palestinians dead after two days of escalated attacks.
Guterres' remarks came as human rights groups condemned Israel after it launched an incursion into the northern West Bank on Wednesday morning—reportedly the largest attack on the territory in decades. Guterres said the "dangerous developments" were "fueling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority," according to the U.N.'s news service.
"Latest developments in the occupied West Bank, including Israel's launch of large-scale military operations, are deeply concerning," the U.N. chief wrote on social media.
"I strongly condemn the loss of lives, including of children, and I call for an immediate cessation of these operations," he added.
Latest developments in the occupied West Bank, including Israel's launch of large-scale military operations, are deeply concerning.
I strongly condemn the loss of lives, including of children, and I call for an immediate cessation of these operations. pic.twitter.com/ufTWrPcUT7
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 29, 2024
The Israeli assault has included the bulldozing of infrastructure and a wide array of attacks on at least four cities. Guterres was one of many international actors who condemned the incursion over the last two days.
"Israel's launch of a major coordinated military assault on cities and towns across the occupied West Bank follows an escalation in unlawful killings by Israeli forces in recent months and will put more Palestinians at risk," Erika Guevara Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
Guevara Rosas expressed concern that the incursion will destroy critical infrastructure and increase forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank—methods that she said were "key pillars of Israel's system of apartheid."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that he was worried about a displacement crisis like the one in Gaza.
"The last thing that we want is this kind of massive displacement taking place in the West Bank, too," Roth told Al Jazeera.
"Frankly, 'the dream' of the far-right ministers in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government is to 'solve the problem' of the West Bank," he added. "'Solve the problem' of the apartheid regime that Israel is maintaining there, by just getting rid of the Palestinians. That would be a massive war crime."
Rights groups have also expressed concern about an increase in arbitrary detentions of Palestinians in the West Bank, which have already been at a high level since October 7. Those who are detained are often horribly mistreated; more than 50 have died. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, issued a report earlier this month that documented systematic torture in the detention centers.
Israeli forces have detained 25 Palestinians in the northern West Bank in roughly the last 24 hours, Al Jazeera reported, based on data from watchdog groups.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967. In an advisory opinion last month, the International Court of Justice declared the occupation of the Palestinian territories illegal.
Jeremy Corbyn, a member of parliament in the United Kingdom and former leader of the Labour Party, argued that Western governments were complicit in Israel's attack on the West Bank and should implement an arms embargo.
"Israel knows it can commit war crimes with impunity," he wrote on social media. "That is why it has launched its largest assault on the West Bank since 2002. We are witnessing the total erasure of Palestine—and our government is shamefully complicit. End all arms sales to Israel, now."
So far, the U.K. and the U.S., Israel's main arms supplier, have done no such thing. The Biden administration did on Wednesday sanction Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli settler group, and three of the group's individual members, calling out "extremist settler violence."
While much international attention has shifted to the West Bank, Israel's assault on Gaza continues apace. Israeli forces killed at least 15 Gazans in overnight attacks, including two girls who were struck by shrapnel, Al Jazeera reported. Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Gazans and more than 600 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, when Hamas and allied militant groups massacred more than 1,100 Israelis.