Israel committing genocide against Palestinians: AI report

KABUL (Pajhwok): Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a report published on Thursday, an allegation Israel angrily denied.

The London-based human rights group said it reached the conclusion after months of analysing incidents and statements of Israeli officials. Amnesty said the legal threshold for the crime had been met, in its first such determination during an active armed conflict.

Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 that precipitated the war.

Amnesty's own branch in Israel distanced itself from the findings of its parent group, saying it had played no part in the research and did not believe Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

However, in a long statement, it said the killing and destruction in Gaza had reached "horrifying levels" and called for an investigation into possible crimes against humanity.

The United States disagrees with Amnesty International's conclusion that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war.

Gaza's Health Ministry says that Israel's military campaign since then has killed more than 44,500 Palestinians and injured many others.

Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times.

Amnesty's report came just two weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. They have both denied the allegations.

Presenting the report to journalists in The Hague, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the conclusion had not been taken "lightly, politically, or preferentially".

She told journalists after the presentation: "There is a genocide being committed. There is no doubt, not one doubt in our mind after six months of in-depth, focused research."

Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group's physical destruction.

Amnesty urged the ICC prosecutor to investigate alleged genocide.

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