United Nations
General Assembly
Distr.: General
1 October 2024
Original: English
Seventy-ninth session
Item 71 (c) of the provisional agenda*
Promotion and protection of human rights: human rights situations and reports of special rapporteurs and representatives
Situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967**
Note by the Secretary-General
The Secretary-General has the honour to transmit to the General Assembly the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 5/1.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese
Genocide as colonial erasure
Summary
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, examines the unfolding horrors in the occupied Palestinian territory. While the wholesale destruction of Gaza continues unabated, other parts of the land have not been spared. The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. This trajectory risks causing irreparable prejudice to the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine. Member States must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history.
I. Introduction
1. In March 2024, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israel had committed acts of genocide in Gaza.1 In the present report, the Special Rapporteur expands the analysis of the post-7 October 2023 violence against Gaza, which has spread to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. She focuses on genocidal intent, contextualising the situation within a decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine. She suggests that genocide should be seen as integral and instrumental to the aim of full Israeli colonization of Palestinian land while removing as many Palestinians as possible.
2. The present report is based on legal research and analysis, interviews with victims and witnesses, including in Jordan and Egypt, open-source information and input from experts and civil-society organizations. The Special Rapporteur, still refused access to the occupied Palestinian territory, stresses that Israel has no authority to bar fact-finding mechanisms from the territory that it illegally occupies. The persistent denial of access to United Nations mechanisms and investigators of the International Criminal Court (ICC) may constitute obstruction of justice, in defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order that Israel allow international investigators to enter Gaza and take measures to ensure the preservation of evidence.2
3. While the scale and nature of the ongoing Israeli assault against the Palestinians vary by area, the totality of the Israeli acts of destruction directed against the totality of the Palestinian people, with the aim of conquering the totality of the land of Palestine, is clearly identifiable. Patterns of violence against the group as a whole warrant the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in order to cease, prevent and punish genocide in the whole of the occupied Palestinian territory.
II. Legal framework and developments
4. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur relies on the legal framework considered in previous reports,3 including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law and customary international law, in particular the Genocide Convention and the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, together with relevant legal developments and jurisprudence.
5. Two important legal developments informed the present report. First, in its Advisory Opinion of July 2024, ICJ declared the prolonged presence of Israel in the whole of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including its colony regime,4 as unlawful5 and aimed at annexation.6 It stated that Israeli annexation was designed to be permanent, creating “irreversible effects on the ground”,7 “undermin[ing] the integrity of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”8 and seeking to “acquire sovereignty over an occupied territory”.9
6. The Court recognized the violation of non-derogable norms prohibiting territorial acquisition by force,10 racial segregation and apartheid,11 and protecting the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people,12 concluding that the occupation constitutes an act of aggression, in all but name, deriving in part from its settler-colonial nature.13 It stressed the obligation to rapidly end the occupation, dismantle and evacuate the colonies, provide full reparation to Palestinian victims and allow the return of Palestinians displaced since 1967.14
7. Expanding on the Wall opinion,15 the Court rejected arguments that Israeli “security concerns” justify the occupation.16 The declared unlawfulness of the occupation vitiates claims of purported self-defence; the only lawful recourse available to Israel is its unconditional withdrawal from the whole of that territory.
8. Second, in South Africa v. Israel, the Court ordered provisional measures to prevent and/or stop acts of genocide.17 After recognizing, in January 2024, the existence of a “real and imminent risk [of] irreparable prejudice” to the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza under the Genocide Convention, the Court instructed Israel to “prevent the commission of all acts” outlined in the Convention.18 In March, the Court took notice of the worsening humanitarian crisis,19 and in May, recognizing an “exceptionally grave” risk in Rafah, it ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive”.20 Despite this, Israel, and most other States, continue to disregard such orders,21 with arms continuing to flow to Israel.22
III. The unfolding genocide as a “means to an end”
9. On 14 October 2023, after Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to move south from northern Gaza in 24 hours – “one of the fastest mass displacements in history”23 – the Special Rapporteur warned of the risk of deliberate mass ethnic cleansing.24 This proved prescient. At least 90 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza have now been forcibly displaced – many more than 10 times25 – amid calls from Israeli officials and others for Palestinians to leave and Israelis to “return to Gaza” and rebuild the colonies dismantled in 2005.26
10. Meanwhile, violence has spread beyond Gaza, with Israeli forces and violent settlers having escalated patterns of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.27
11. High-ranking Israeli officials, ministers and religious leaders continue to encourage erasure and dispossession of Palestinians, setting new thresholds for acceptable violence against civilians. The Nakba, which has been ongoing since 1948, has been deliberately accelerated.28
12. In the following sections, the Special Rapporteur examines critical developments on the ground, highlighting patterns of conduct that evidence an intent to employ genocidal acts as a means to ethnically cleanse all or parts of the occupied Palestinian territory.
A. Failure to cease and punish genocide in Gaza
13. Since the previous report of the Special Rapporteur (A/78/545), and despite the ICJ interventions, genocidal acts have proliferated. Nearly a year of scorched-earth assault has led to the calculated destruction of Gaza: the human, material and environmental cost is unquantifiable.29
14. Since March 2024, Israel has killed 10,037 Palestinians and injured 21,767, with more than 93 massacres, bringing the reported totals to nearly 42,000 and 96,000 respectively, although figures from reliable sources are incomplete and may understate the magnitude of the casualties.30 Aid distribution sites,31 tents,32 hospitals,33 schools34 and markets35 have been repeatedly attacked through the indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire. At least 13,000 children, including more than 700 babies,36 have been killed, many shot in the head and chest.37 Approximately 22,500 Palestinians have sustained life-changing injuries.38 By May, a further 10,000 people were estimated to be buried under the rubble,39 including 4,000 children;40 the voices of those trapped and dying are often audible. An uncertain number are forcibly disappeared by Israeli forces.41
15. The magnitude of destruction in Gaza has prompted allegations of domicide,42 urbicide,43 scholasticide,44 medicide,45 cultural genocide46 and ecocide.47 Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains,48 contaminate the ecosystem.49 More than 140 temporary waste sites50 and 340,000 tons of waste,51 untreated wastewater and sewage overflow52 contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A,53 respiratory infections,54 diarrhoea and skin diseases.55 As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.56
16. Continued bombardment of evacuees in purportedly designated “safe zones”57 has continued to create hardship, terror and death.58 Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 per cent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.59 The Rafah offensive in May caused more than 3,500 direct deaths60 and new displacement of almost 1 million Palestinians to uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies.61
17. According to satellite imagery and other sources, Israeli soldiers have built roads and military bases in more than 26 per cent of Gaza, suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.62 The Israeli military expanded the “buffer zone” along the Gaza perimeter to 16 per cent of the territory, flattening homes, apartment blocks and agricultural farms.63 By August 2024, repeated evacuation orders over approximately 84 per cent of Gaza64 had corralled the majority of the population into a shrinking, unsafe “humanitarian zone” covering 12.6 per cent65 of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.66 In early September, two ministers of the Government of Israel openly called for the conquest and annexation of significant areas of Gaza.67
18. Israel has continued to use “medical shielding” arguments to target healthcare facilities.68 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 300 days, 32 out of 36 hospitals were damaged, with 20 hospitals and 70 out of 119 primary healthcare centres incapacitated.69 By 20 August, Israel had attacked healthcare facilities 492 times.70 From 18 March to 1 April, Israeli forces again laid siege to Al-Shifa Hospital, killing more than 400 and detaining 300 people, including doctors, patients, displaced persons and civil servants.71 On 26 August, following mass expulsion orders in Deir al-Balah, where 1 million Palestinians were sheltering, Israeli forces compelled the evacuation of all but 100 of 650 patients in Al-Aqsa hospital.72 On 30 August, Israeli forces bombed a humanitarian truck bound for the Emirati hospital in Rafah, killing several aid workers.73
19. On 16 July 2024, WHO detected the first presence of poliovirus in 25 years – a direct consequence of the destruction of water and sewage systems, obstruction of aid and shelter overcrowding.74 By late August, a 10-month-old baby was partially paralysed by the disease.75 Despite the looming outbreak, Israel delayed vaccinations76 and attacked vaccination areas77 and a United Nations vaccination convoy.78 While humanitarian organizations called for a ceasefire, Israel issued the highest number of evacuation orders since 13 October 2023, targeting areas with the highest concentration of displaced Palestinians,79 forcing the United Nations to suspend humanitarian operations.80
20. Systematic attacks on Gaza food sovereignty indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation.81 Israel has destroyed agricultural land82 and reservoirs83 and attacked distribution centres, coordination teams and aid convoys.84 Hungry crowds waiting for food have been massacred.85 Following constant evacuation orders and the Israeli takeover of the Rafah crossing,86 distribution of daily meals fell by 35 per cent from July to August 2024.87 In August, entry permits for humanitarian organizations nearly halved.88 Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels.89 Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry and fishing economies has been destroyed;90 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity,91 and deprivation for decades to come.92
21. In August 2024, the Finance Minister of Israel, Bezalel Smotrich, stated that starving the entire Gaza population was “justified and moral”, even if 2 million people consequently died.93 In recent months, 83 per cent of food aid was prevented from entering Gaza,94 and the civilian police in Rafah were repeatedly targeted, impairing distribution.95 At least 34 deaths from malnutrition were recorded by 14 September 2024.96 At the time of writing, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was evaluating a plan to block all food supplies to northern Gaza97 proposed by adviser Giora Eiland,98 who previously endorsed introducing epidemics as a military tactic.99 The killing of civilian police and clan leadership providing security for food distribution further compounded the crisis across Gaza.100 Starvation and deprivation tactics in the north have been particularly egregious.101
22. Palestinians have been systematically abused in a network of Israeli torture camps.102 Thousands have disappeared, many after being detained in appalling conditions, often bound to beds, blindfolded and in diapers, deprived of medical treatment and subjected to unsanitary conditions, starvation, torturous cuffing, severe beatings, electrocution and sexual assault by both humans and animals.103 At least 48 detainees have died in custody.104
23. Even when conservatively considered, these multiple torments constitute precisely the irreparable harm that ICJ has warned against since January 2024, and which Israel has intentionally inflicted on the Palestinians as a group.
B. Risk of genocide in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
24. The devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In December 2023, the Defence Minister of Israel, Yoav Gallant, predicted that “when what the IDF did in Gaza becomes clear, that will also be projected on Judea and Samaria [West Bank]”.105
25. From 7 October 2023 to the end of September 2024, Israeli forces carried out more than 5,505 raids.106 Violent settlers, supported by Israeli forces and officials,107 conducted 1,084 attacks,108 killing more than 692 Palestinians – 10 times the previous 14 years’ annual average of 69 fatalities – and injuring 5,199.109
26. The pattern of targeting children is shocking. Since 7 October, 169 Palestinian children have been killed,110 nearly 80 per cent of whom were shot in the head or torso.111 This represents a 250 per cent increase on the previous nine months,112 totalling more than 20 per cent of children killed in the West Bank since 2000.113
27. Echoing the brutality that swept Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank have been subjected to appalling detention practices,114 following orders by the National Security Minister of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir.115 A mass arrest campaign116 led to the detention of tens of thousands, with 9,400 currently detained.117 As in Gaza, many are academics, students, lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders,118 designated as “terrorists” or “national security threats”.119 Leaked videos and interviews with prison officials revealed intentional and systemic abuse and brutality, degradation, torture and even rape.120 At least 12 detainees from the West Bank died as a result of torture and denial of medical care.121
28. In November 2023, Bezalel Smotrich, “Governor of Judea and Samaria” and staunch advocate of colonization and mass expulsion,122 claimed that there are “2 million Nazis” in the West Bank.123 He then promised to turn several areas of the West Bank into a “pile of rubble like … [Gaza]”.124 On 18 August, the Foreign Minister of Israel, Israel Katz, called for the West Bank to receive the same treatment as Gaza.125
29. The northern West Bank has been the subject of particularly severe military violence.126 Protracted sieges,127 relentless raids128 and a major escalation since August 2024, including aerial bombardment,129 have wrought devastation.130 Forty-six drone and air strike operations131 killed 77 Palestinians, including 14 children.132 In Jenin camp approximately 180 homes were levelled and 3,800 structures damaged,133 destroying or damaging power supplies, public services and amenities,134 displacing thousands of families and causing widespread disruption.135 More than 181,000 Palestinians have been affected, many multiple times.136
30. On 27 August 2024, Israeli forces launched operation “Summer Camps” against Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas and Tulkarem, fulfilling the promise to treat the West Bank like Gaza.137 For days on end, thousands were placed under curfew, without food or water.138 Israeli forces targeted ambulances, blocked entrances to hospitals and laid siege to Jenin Hospital.139 Bulldozers destroyed streets and electricity and public health infrastructure.140 Hundreds lost their homes and property;141 more than 1,000 families in Jenin were displaced. 142 Thirty-six were killed, including eight children.143
31. Targeted attacks on the health sector have been replicated in the West Bank. Medical workers and infrastructure were attacked 538 times, killing 23 people and injuring 100 and damaging 54 medical facilities, 20 mobile clinics and 374 ambulances,144 while critical medical care was impeded.145 Permits for Palestinians to access medical care outside the West Bank sharply declined.146
32. On 29 May 2024, governance of the West Bank was officially transferred from military to civilian authorities – furthering de jure annexation – and placed under Bezalel Smotrich, a committed Eretz Yisrael politician.147 The largest single land appropriation in 30 years was then approved.148 Since 7 October, Israel has demolished, confiscated or ordered the demolition of more than 1,416 Palestinian structures, displacing more than 3,200 Palestinians, including approximately 1,400 children.149 At least 18 communities were depopulated under the threat of lethal force,150 effectively enabling the colonization of large tracts of Area C.151 This constitutes an escalation of unlawful conduct already found to be “aimed at dispersing the [Palestinian] population and undermining its integrity as a people”.152
33. The crippling of the economy is another existential threat. Amid extreme insecurity and fear, the suspension of financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority,153 the revocation of 148,000 work permits154 and severe movement restrictions, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the West Bank contracted by 22.7 per cent,155 nearly 30 per cent of businesses have closed, and 292,000 jobs have been lost.156
34. Genocidal conduct in Gaza set an ominous precedent for the West Bank. The deliberate strategy of Israel to render Palestinian life unsustainable has markedly intensified everywhere in the occupied Palestinian territory, with devastating consequences for Palestinian survival.
IV. Understanding the legal complexity and scope of genocidal intent
35. Following the harrowing experience of recent genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and, plausibly, Myanmar,157 what constitutes genocide in law – the destruction of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, in whole or in part, as such – has become better established.158 However, preventing and punishing genocide in practice, in particular proving genocidal intent, is still developing.159
36. The stigma attached to and the consequences of the crime of genocide often deter perpetrators from recording policies, plans and other indications of intent to carry it out (e.g. in writing).160 When direct evidence of intent is unavailable, inferring intent requires a complex assessment of facts, statements and circumstances.161 These factors should be borne in mind:
(a) While recognizing the possible composite nature of genocide is critical to its identification and prevention, the compartmentalization of the conduct into its disparate acts without recourse to broader context can obscure the requisite genocidal intent;
(b) Aside from the five acts that may constitute genocidal conduct, other acts can be indicative of genocidal intent;162
(c) The existing jurisprudence has arisen primarily from the criminal prosecution of individuals;163 this can limit the early recognition of broader State responsibility for genocide, which is crucial to its prevention.
37. Understanding how the intent to destroy manifests – its relationship to the prescribed genocidal acts and the nature and scale of atrocities – is key when identifying conduct that could constitute evidence of genocidal intent as the only reasonable inference.
38. In the following sections, the Special Rapporteur briefly outlines how relevant jurisprudence, analysed in abstracto, is fully capable of capturing genocidal intent in State conduct when a comprehensive interpretative approach is adopted.
A. Considering the plurality of facts, circumstances and conduct
39. The magnitude and complexity of the crime of genocide require close analysis of the genocidal conduct as a whole,164 properly situated in its broader context.165 Due consideration should be given to:
• The destruction caused by the nature and scale of atrocities166
• The fog of war167
• Claims to retribution or alternative motives168
• The opportunity to commit genocide169
40. In international practice, the same facts can form the basis of multiple charges (and constitute a war crime or crime against humanity and an act of genocide).170 When determining genocidal intent, it is critical to assess “whether all of the evidence, taken together, demonstrate[s] a genocidal mental state”.171
41. As observed by Judge Trindade in Croatia v. Serbia, an “onslaught of civilians” is not merely a “plurality of common crimes”, but rather a “plurality of atrocities, which, in itself, by its extreme violence and devastation, can disclose the intent to destroy”.172 The focus should be on whether all the acts – e.g. starvation, torture, killing, forced displacement, extermination – considered together in their totality form a pattern of conduct indicative of genocidal intent.173
B. Singularity of intent: destroying “a group” “as such”
42. In proving intent to destroy the group, all relevant factors must be examined holistically. Jurisprudence on genocidal intent is typically focused on “physical or biological destruction” of the group.174 The fact that the Genocide Convention was drafted when colonialism still played a significant role in international relations, and the vivid horror of the Holocaust’s industrial-scale extermination, may account for the focus on physical and biological destruction over social and cultural factors.175 However, genocide is not a crime only of mass killing, as specified in the Convention itself.176 The genocidal act of “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”, for example, entails no killing at all.177
43. Genocide is more structurally complex and insidious, and therefore more difficult to ascertain than crimes such as mass killing or extermination. A wider lens is required to identify the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part as such. International jurisprudence provides that acts other than the five listed in the Convention may be relevant evidence of genocidal intent.178 Accordingly, the historical and sociopolitical context in which genocide occurs is key to identifying how intent forms, and then materializes also through these other acts.
44. Jurisprudence has been broadly focused on determining intent through acts targeting “the very foundation of the group”,179 including the imposition of living conditions leading to “slow death”180 and “the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself”.181 In other words, intent to destroy is assessed holistically and in totality.
45. Jurisprudence has also recognized that a group is “comprised of its individuals, but also of its history, traditions, the relationship between its members, the relationship with other groups, the relationship with the land”.182 Violent destruction of any of these components has a profound impact on the group and its ability to survive.183 Trauma, poverty, food scarcity, forced displacement, loss of homes, land and cultural heritage – and settler-colonialism as an “enduring structure”184 – are widely recognized determinants of individual and societal health.185
46. In settler-colonial contexts, land and its resources are particularly relevant. Land is intrinsic to both a people’s right to self-determination and the settler-colonial project. An inherent conflict exists between the colonizers, who seek to acquire and control the land, and the Indigenous population, for whom the land is integral to their identity: “where they are is who they are”.186 Disconnection from land and cultural roots contributes to the erosion of identity and community resilience, resulting in physically destructive outcomes: poorer health, lower life expectancy and abnormally high suicide rates.187 The issue of land is therefore indicative of how the settler-colonial project destroys – in order to replace – the Indigenous population.188
47. Consequently, components of conduct, such as repeated forced displacement, that result in the disconnection from the land, as well as the destruction of the cultural, educational and economic structures that tie a people to the land, must be considered “significant as indicative of the presence of a specific intent … inspiring [other genocidal] acts”.189 Forced displacement itself, together with aggravating factors – e.g. displacement into dangerous, squalid or toxic conditions – can constitute an underlying genocidal act.190 The particular vulnerability of the group must also be considered.191
48. In short, intent to destroy has become established as the targeting of a group’s existence such that “the group can no longer reconstitute itself”.192
C. Genocidal intent in the context of State responsibility
49. Early identification of genocide is crucial to prevent genocide, ensuring that a central tenet of the post-Second World War international legal system is not a dead letter.
50. In assessing State responsibility for genocide – i.e. genocidal intent attributable to the State – ICJ has drawn heavily on the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals.193 While acknowledging that State responsibility can be established “without an individual being convicted of the crime”,194 in Bosnia v. Serbia in 2007, the Court found State genocidal intent only where individual perpetrators had been held criminally responsible. The Court established that, in the absence of direct evidence of State intent, the pattern of conduct must be such that it “could only point to the existence of such intent”.195 This approach was tempered in 2015, in Croatia v. Serbia, where the Court determined that “reasonableness” must be considered when inferring genocidal intent from patterns of conduct.196
51. However, further clarity is needed regarding genocidal intent in the context of State responsibility. State intent can be derived from the aggregate of individual perpetrators’ genocidal intents, but States should not be exonerated simply because there are no individual criminal convictions, which, if they do occur, may come too late to prevent or stop genocide. While ICJ acknowledged that State obligations concerning genocide are “not of a criminal nature”,197 the standard of proof required to ground the responsibility of a State is a quasi-criminal standard. Among other things, this would delay or frustrate justice for victims.
52. Intervening in The Gambia v. Myanmar, currently before ICJ, six Western States argued that the “reasonableness criterion” requires a “balanced approach” so as not to make it “impossible” to determine genocidal intent “by way of inference”198 in other words, urging the Court not to miss the forest for the trees. Otherwise, this risks protecting the State over the victims that the Convention is designed to protect.199
53. Three factors help achieve this balance:
(a) Applying the “only reasonable inference” test involves first filtering out other possible intents that could be inferred but are not reasonably supported by the evidence.200 A balanced consideration of the interplay between motives and intent should determine whether motives “preclude such a specific intent” to destroy a people,201 or whether they are consistent with, or even confirm, genocidal intent as the only reasonable inference;
(b) International law treats the State as a unit, not as separate organs.202 This means that conduct and intent of the State must be considered holistically. A rule of law-regulated State must be viewed as a whole, including its Government, parliament and judiciary and their regulatory functions;
(c) Given the high threshold set for establishing genocidal intent, the failure to illuminate the totality of conduct invites the possibility of invisibilizing the crime itself behind the claimed strategies, policies and actions that are advanced by the wrongdoing State in order to obscure it.203 Failure to recognize genocide in its totality may help create the camouflage that a State could employ to commit it.
V. “Totality triple lens”: Israeli intent towards the Palestinians as a group as such
54. The current intent to destroy the people as such could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality. In this section, the Special Rapporteur applies the framework set out above to the totality of conduct targeting the totality of Palestinians, in the totality of the occupied Palestinian territory (“totality triple lens”). She then analyses specific components of Israeli conduct: the broader context of the political project of Israel in the region; the nature of the destruction inflicted on the Palestinian people; and the motives obscuring the specific intent itself.
A. Totality of the land: “Greater Israel”
55. The ambition for a “Greater Israel” (Eretz Yisrael), consolidating Jewish sovereignty over the territory now comprising both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, has been a long-standing goal since the very inception of the Zionist project and before Israel existed.204 The legally recognized right to self-determination of Palestinians being tied to that land,205 together with their large presence, have represented both legal and demographic impediments to the realization of “Greater Israel”.
56. Successive Governments have pursued this goal, predicated on the erasure of the Indigenous Palestinian people.206 Even after the Oslo Accords, which marked international support for a two-State solution, the plan was advanced.207 Since then, Israeli colonies have increased from 128 to 358,208 and settler numbers have grown from 256,400209 to 714,600.210 The 2018 Nation State Law asserted exclusive Jewish sovereignty over “Eretz Yisrael” and “Jewish settlement” in that area as a national priority.211 On 28 December 2022, the current Government of Israel announced its plan to expand the colonies in the West Bank212 and aggressively advanced substantial land confiscation and settlement expansion. In September 2023, before the General Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu exhibited a map of Israel erasing the occupied Palestinian territory and superimposing Israel.213
57. The cultivation of a political doctrine214 that frames Palestinian assertions of self-determination as a security threat to Israel has served to legitimize permanent occupation.215 The deliberate dehumanization of the Palestinians has accompanied systematic ethnic purges from the period 1947–1949 to today.216 Ideological hatred of Palestinians as such has pervaded segments of society and the Israeli State apparatus.217
58. Meanwhile, despite the oppression, Palestinians refuse to leave the land, and in fact the population has grown. The increasing risk of a majority-Jewish State becoming unachievable has progressively made destruction an unavoidable part of the process.218
59. The events of 7 October provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a “Greater Israel”. Calls for the displacement of Palestinians into the Arab world, amid conquest, colonization and annexation, grew.219 The leaked Ministry of Intelligence of Israel “concept paper” from October 2023 outlining the expulsion of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,220 alongside widespread and explicit support within the governing coalition,221 identifies an opportunity to recolonize Gaza,222 which the Government seized, taking advantage of the fog of war. In parallel in the West Bank, following 7 October, annexation and colony construction intensified.223
60. The State’s intent to destroy, expressed in various statements and plans, and inferable from conduct considered in context, has gradually become more recognizable. This conduct had already, prior to 7 October, had the effect of “a cumulative, multilayered and intergenerational impact on the Palestinian society, economy and environment and [had caused] the deterioration of the living conditions of the Palestinians”.224
61. The violence and trauma suffered by the Israelis on 7 October deepened collective animosity, and calls for annihilation grew.225 In a manner reminiscent of other genocides, the ensuing vengeful atmosphere prepared the soldiers to become “willing executioners” of the heinous tasks required of them.226 An opportunity presented itself to sever Palestinian connection to the land, with foreseeable consequences for their Palestinian existence,227 as outlined below.
B. Totality of the group: destruction of the Palestinian people
62. Since 7 October 2023, the decimation of Palestinian human life has been swift and extensive. Amid mass killings, eradication of family lines, large-scale targeting of children and torture, the occupied Palestinian territory is being intentionally rendered unliveable – one home, school, church, mosque, hospital, neighbourhood, community, at a time. Spreading from Gaza to the West Bank, calculated destruction reveals a deliberate campaign of connected incidents, which must be considered cumulatively.
63. Israel has pursued a pattern of conduct “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction”,228 as evidenced by the systematic destruction of already precarious life-sustaining healthcare, food security and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) infrastructure. Although varying in intensity across the occupied territory, in Gaza this destructive violence has already led to starvation, epidemics and forced displacement with no possibility of safe return – as expressly intended. The destruction of infrastructure across the occupied Palestinian territory imperils the long-term survival of the group. The deliberate degradation of public health is a technique of genocide “by attrition”.229 More than 500,000 children with no schooling and 88,000 students without universities230 are doomed to dire outcomes.
64. For Palestinians, further layers of agony and forced displacement aggravate their inherited trauma and psychological vulnerability as Nakba survivors.231 Months of relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another – fleeing bombs and bullets, with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food and healthcare – have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children.232 The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides, and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging, and triggering further displacement.233 Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to “the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself”.234
65. As was foreseeable, the overall conduct of Israel post-7 October has inflicted severe psychological harm on all Palestinians, both direct victims and those witnessing in exile. The overall aim is to humiliate and degrade Palestinians as a whole. Prisoners stripped and sadistically tortured en masse; bodies of adults and children piled up and decomposing in the street; survivors forced to eat animal food and grass and drink seawater or even sewage; the maiming of thousands, including young children left limbless before they could even crawl; the destruction of homes and violation of intimate life; having absolutely nothing to return to. Mass graves and the exhumation and relocation of bodies are specific acts of desecration, which themselves can suggest genocidal intent.235 Combined, these acts go far beyond what international jurisprudence recognizes as “step[s] in the process of destruction of the … group”.236 The pain and loss will impact generations to come.237
66. Genocide could manifest in the targeting of members of the same group in different parts of their territory, through acts of varying intensity.238 In the background, Palestinians inside Israel (“the enemies within”) have also experienced suppression.239 The relentless attacks against the United Nations, and, in particular, UNRWA, threaten the socioeconomic lifelines of millions of Palestinian refugees across the broader region, and cannot be ignored.
67. The destructive consequences of Israeli conduct reverberate well beyond the Gaza epicentre, as the same patterns of genocidal conduct have begun to appear in the West Bank. The only inference to be reasonably drawn from all this is of a clear intention to attack “the group’s capacity to renew itself, and hence to ensure its long‑term survival”.240