The 296-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the Hamas operation on 7 October 2023, “do not justify genocide."

Israel has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.

The report is the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

In Januray, in a case brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice concluded that the Israeli war on Gaza amounted to acts of genocide.

Last month, the International Criminal Court also issued an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on accusations of committing war crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza war.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said: “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now."

Amnesty cited the deliberate obstruction of aid and power supplies together with “massive damage, destruction and displacement,"  leading to the collapse of water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems, in what it called a “pattern of conduct” within the context of the occupation and blockade of Gaza.

“We did not necessarily start out thinking we would come to this conclusion. We knew there was a risk of genocide, as the International Court of Justice said,” Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s Israel and occupied Palestinian territories researcher, told the Guardian.

“When you join the dots together, the totality of the evidence, it is not just violations of international law. This is something deeper.”

A boy holds the blood-stained shoes of a toddler who was killed from shrapnel following an Israeli strike in Gaza City, as the body (R) is prepared for burial at Al-Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital on December 5, 2024. AFP 

The main allegations in the report are:

1- The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;
2- Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;
3- Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and
4- Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90 percent of the population to unsuitable areas.

As an occupying power, Israel is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population, Kristine Beckerle, an adviser to Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa team, said on Wednesday.

She described Israel’s May offensive on Rafah, until then the last place of relative safety in the strip, as a major turning point when it came to establishing intent.

“[Israel] had made Rafah the main aid point, and it knew civilians would go there. The ICJ ordered them to stop and they went ahead anyway,” she said. “Rafah was key.”

'Erasure'
 

In the days after October 7, Israel imposed a "total siege" on Gaza, with the slogan: "No electricity, no water, no gas". Limited supplies have been allowed in since then.

Palestinians have been subjected to "malnutrition, hunger and diseases" and exposed to a "slow, calculated death," Amnesty said.

The rights group cited 15 air strikes in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and April 20, which killed 334 civilians, including 141 children, for which the group found "no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective".

The Amnesty report also referenced dozens of calls by Israeli officials and soldiers for the demolition, destruction, burning or "erasure" of Gaza.

Such statements highlighted "systemic impunity but also the creation of an environment that emboldens...such behaviour."

"Governments must stop pretending that they are powerless to terminate Israel's occupation, to end apartheid and to stop the genocide in Gaza," said Callamard.

"States that transfer arms to Israel violate their obligations to prevent genocide under the convention and are at risk of becoming complicit," she added.