The IOL says that President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed Tuesday that South Africa has inquired with the ICJ whether it needs to issue another preliminary judgment to stop Israel’s planned offensive against Rafah. The Court is permitted to issue provisional orders at any time without having to convene to decide the case finally.

Lizeka Tandwa at the Mail & Guardian reports that the further submission to the court pointed out that “Rafah is the last refuge for the surviving people in Gaza.”

Vincent Magwenya, the spokesman for South African’s president, posted this statement to the presidency web site:

The South African Government has made an urgent request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to consider whether the decision announced by Israel to extend its military operations in Rafah, which is the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza, requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.

Under Article 75(1) of the Rules of Court, “The Court may at any time decide to examine proprio motu whether the circumstances of the case require the indication of provisional measures which ought to be taken or complied with by any or all of the parties.”

In a request submitted to the court yesterday (12 February 2024), the South African government said it was gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction. This would be in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court’s Order of 26 January 2024.

South Africa trusts this matter will receive the necessary urgency in light of the daily death toll in Gaza.

IOL reports that Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, said that South Africa would not remain silent as Israel carried out atrocities in Gaza.

Zane Dangor, Director-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said that Israel is already in violation of of the measures ordered by the Court on January 26, according to TimesLive.

Al Jazeera English: “South Africa makes urgent request to ICJ on Israel’s Rafah offensive”

On January 26, the International Court of Justice instructed Israel to cease actions in Gaza that meet the definition of genocide in international law:

The Court considers that, with regard to the situation described above, Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such . . . The Court further considers that Israel must ensure with immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the above-described acts.

Not only has the Israeli government thumbed its nose at the court’s preliminary injunction, continuing to kill dozens of non-combatants daily and continuing to bomb dense population centers, including refugee camps, but now is planning an operation that human rights organizations are warning would be catastrophic.

The International Court of Justice was established to settle disputes among United Nations member states. The court has found that South Africa has standing to bring this action, which complains that Israel is violating the 1948 Genocide Convention to which both it and South Africa are signatories. Although it may take a long time for the court to rule on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, the court has already issued the equivalent of a preliminary injunction, recognizing the plausibility of the South African allegations.

This imbalance in who is visible on television, in the press, and even often in academia is one of the things that makes the South African genocide case against Israel at the UN’s International Court of Justice so riveting.

Narratives of European history are consumed by the two world wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet menace, and are remarkably inward-looking. From Europe Israel appears as the nation that can do no wrong because it was formed and populated by Holocaust survivors, and it would be churlish for countries like Germany, which committed the Holocaust, and France, Italy and Poland, which were implicated in it, to criticize the state into which they chased those of Europe’s Jews whom they did not simply murder.

Germany thus ranged itself against South Africa, declaring a position in support of Israel and denying that Tel Aviv is committing genocide, despite the daily video available to anyone who wants to see it of the mind-boggling daily Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Germany might seem distant from South Africa, but in fact it was once a neighbor, as I will explain. And its lack of sympathy with the mass murder of non-Europeans is embarrassing it because of its brutal colonial past.

The small southwest African country of Namibia (population 2.3 million) responded sharply to this German claim. You see, the Germans had genocided Namibians, so they are sore about this issue, and seeing Berlin whitewashing the killing of tens of thousands of brown people a little over a century later.

Windhoek’s Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in German last week,

“The Namibian president, Hage Geingob, was extremely angry at the weekend about Germany, which had sided with Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. South Africa’s complaint aimed at stopping Israel’s ongoing warfare in the Gaza Strip and also at broaching the question of whether President Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leadership should be held responsible for a genocide.

Numerous politicians in Namibia reacted angrily and the otherwise reserved First Lady, Monica Geingos, wrote on X: ‘The build up to the Herero-Nama genocide in Namibia, perpetrated by Germany started on 12 January 1904. The absurdity of Germany, on 12 January 2024, rejecting genocide charges against Israel and warning about the “political instrumentalisation of the charge” is not lost on us.’

Geingob had warned in his New Year’s message: ‘No peace-loving person can ignore the massacre of the Palestinians in Gaza.’

The Windhoek Observer reported, “Leader of the official opposition party Popular Democratic Movement, McHenry Venaani, echoed the President’s sentiments. Venaani emphasized the inconsistency in Germany’s moral stance, criticising the nation for expressing commitment to the United Nations Genocide Convention while simultaneously supporting what he called the ‘equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.’ . . . ‘We agree with the president’s statement and Germany is misbehaving. They want to turn a blind eye. Israel cannot do a global punishment because they have lost a thousand people, yes we agree and are not disputing that but what they are is against the law. So what Germany is doing is psychological guilt,’ said Venaani.”

Ironically, Belgium, which committed an earlier genocide in the Congo, has taken the side of South Africa in this dispute.

Aljazeera English Video: “Why is Namibia furious at Germany’s ICJ intervention supporting Israel? | Inside Story”

By 1800, Europe had conquered 35% of the world. Despite the fairy tales they told themselves about their benevolence and their spreading of progress, these conquests were brutal. Philip Hoffman has argued that they depended heavily on advancements in gunpowder technology, which tells you everything you need to know about the character of European advances. By 1914 the Europeans ruled 80% of the world. Gunpowder did not become less important, i.e. the pile of dead bodies only got bigger. Of course colonialism was a complicated system that also required getting buy-ins of various sorts from the colonized, but ultimately it involved keeping guns aimed at the locals and being willing to use them.

The Dutch war on Aceh in what is now Indonesia, 1873–1904, involved killing 60,000 locals by military force or exposure and disease. The US in the Philippines killed at least 20,000 directly and some 200,000 – 400,000 died from exposure and disease.

The historians of the colonial powers have written the history, so that the colonial era is often depicted as a civilizational triumph. It is British railways in India or French road building in Senegal that is celebrated. The pile of dead bodies is mentioned in passing, surrounded by embarrassed silence, when it isn’t suppressed entirely. The history of enslavement and forced labor has often been downplayed. In the second half of the twentieth century, sometimes historians of the metropoles have dropped the colonial dimension entirely from the national narrative, obscuring it. François Furet at one point wrote that he would omit mention of Bonaparte’s conquest of Egypt since the episode occurred beyond French soil. (I fixed that.) Edward Said pointed out in Culture and Imperialism that a lot of Victorian literature is incomprehensible today unless we remember that Britain was an empire at the time and not a small nation-state. Since people in the North Atlantic world don’t much read historians based in the global South, these histories have become invisible.

In 1904, the Herero people rebelled against German colonialism in southwest Africa, and the German government responded in 1904-1908 by committing the twentieth century’s first genocide against them. So writes Hamilton Wende.

Germany was awarded Namibia at the 1884 Berlin conference as part of what historians have characterized as the “scramble for Africa.” Since the Africans were just going about their lives, the “scramble” was by predatory Europeans. Some 5,000 Germans flooded into Namibia and lorded it over a quarter million local Bantus. To this day, whites, including persons of German descent, own 70% of the land there.

After a Herero attack on colonists that killed over 100 in early 1904, the German Schutztruppe or colonial military replied with Maxim machine guns and artillery (Professor Hoffman might note the prominence of gunpowder). Military commander Lothar von Trotha called for the extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples. As many as 60,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama were mowed down just at the beginning of the punitive German campaign.

Germany grudgingly recognized the genocide in 2021, with the foreign minister saying “If you want to call it a genocide, you can.” Germany’s position is that it took place before the 1948 Genocide Convention, however, and so cannot be the basis for any lawsuit or formal reparations. Berlin did pledge $1.4 billion in aid for Namibia, to be paid over 30 years, but without admitting legal liability. At the same time, German officials have often reprimanded Namibians, saying that they cannot compare their experience to the Holocaust, as though extermination of Europeans is forever more significant than the extermination of Africans, millions of whom were killed by Europeans in the 19th century.

Namibians have complained that the sum offered in aid is not enough to compensate for the damage done or for the ancestral lands lost, which people want restored to them. President Geingob says that Namibia is not done with Berlin, and plans a further lawsuit.

So, for a traumatized Namibian population, to have Germany now engage in genocide denial when it comes to Palestinians just brings back the nightmare all over again.

And at the International Court of Justice, Namibia has a voice, even though it still won’t have access to CNN’s air waves or receive much attention in the North Atlantic newspapers of record.

Biden is hiding inside the White House protected by a fence, military police, and snipers on the roof while the children in besieged Gaza are left unprotected from Israel’s genocidal bombing that kills five children every hour.

That’s around 117 children murdered daily. pic.twitter.com/YLf5T4bQGD

— Melissa Garriga 💕 (@MelissaAGarriga) January 13, 2024

The crowds demanded a ceasefire and insisted that Mr. Biden force Israel into one. They also called for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Middle East Eye: “Thousands rally in Washington DC demanding Gaza ceasefire and end to US aid to Israel

American Near East Refugee Aid said Saturday, “The death toll in Gaza is immense and difficult to estimate due to telecommunications cuts. UNOCHA reports that, as of January 11, at least 23,469 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and 59,604 injured. And some 1.9 million people, nearly 85% of Gaza’s population, are internally displaced.

Among the organizers, the Council on American Islamic Relation (CAIR), said “We thank every person who attended this historic event to call for an end to the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and an end to our government’s support for their atrocities. The Biden administration can no longer ignore the millions of Americans who are saying ‘enough is enough.’ It is time for the administration to listen to the people and demand an immediate ceasefire, end its support for the Israeli apartheid government, and hold Israeli officials to account for their crimes against humanity.”

Before the event began, six Palestinian-Americans from Gaza shared the catastrophes that have befallen their families. CAIR writes that, e.g., “Dr. Alaa Hussein Ali (MI) shares the story of the more than 100 members of his family who were killed in November in Israeli attacks, including the murder of his brother by sniper as he attempted to fetch water, and all of his in-laws after fleeing for safety to the south of Gaza.”

Also speaking were presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein, Rep. Andre Carson, Code Pink Director Medea Benjamin, and prominent Muslim-American leaders, including Ilyasa Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X. Gaza-based Aljazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh, many of whose close family members have been killed by Israel, spoke by video.

President Biden had left the White House for Camp David.

One of the more poignant world-wide rallies was staged at the US Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, as the International Court of Justice at the Hague deliberates on the charge of genocide brought against Israel by Pretoria. There was also a big protest in Capetown. The organizers had a statement read out at the latter, according to Matthew Hirsch at Ground Up: “We are here today to be part of the global day of action that will see demonstrations planned in more than 66 cities and at least 36 countries. Today’s rally will be part of a united front of global voices, calling unconditionally for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”

Imtiaz Sooliman of the aid group “Gift of the Givers,” which has had teams in Gaza and the West Bank, said according to Hirsch, “People like us and people all over the world will make sure that the ceasefire comes. The power of the people is more powerful than any government and any weapon in the world.” Of the case brought by South Africa at the Hague, he said, “I feel great to be South African. When we sent our people to the ICJ we brought back the Mandela magic.”

South African attorneys are saying that if the ICJ issues a ruling in South Africa’s favor they will bring civil suits in the U.S. and U.K. on that basis, because of the collaboration of those two governments in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

SABC News: “Activists gather outside US Consulate”

Hundreds of thousands also demonstrated in London, and similarly large crowds came out in numerous other cities around the world.

Middle East Eye: “Hundreds of thousands gather in London for Palestinian solidarity and Gaza ceasefire”

South Africa says that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and has asked the International Court of Justice to intervene and stop Israeli military action in Gaza.

Israel issued its initial defense to South Africa’s charges on Jan. 12, 2024, at the International Court of Justice – the United Nations’ highest human rights court – based in The Hague, Netherlands. Israel argues that its military is trying to minimize civilian harm and that South Africa is trying to both weaponize the term genocide and interfere with Israel’s right of self-defense against Hamas.

But can the International Court of Justice enforce any decision it makes in the case? “The question of the International Court of Justice’s actual powers of enforcement is a key issue on many people’s minds,” said Victor Peskin, a scholar of international relations and human rights.

We spoke with Peskin to better understand the potential impacts of South Africa’s genocide complaint against Israel and the scope of the court’s power.

What is the significance of South Africa bringing these charges?

South Africa is a former apartheid state that underwent a largely peaceful transition to democracy in the mid-1990s. Symbolically, the fact that South Africa is bringing the case may have particular resonance.

However, South Africa has itself been accused of thwarting the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention. This happened after it hosted and failed to arrest Sudan’s then-President Omar al-Bashir in 2015. Al-Bashir was charged by the International Criminal Court with committing war crimes and genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan in the 2000s.

South Africa’s case against Israel is the fourth genocide-related case at the International Court of Justice. The others pertained to the conflicts in Bosnia, Myanmar and Ukraine.

Israel Genocide Case: What Will The ICJ Likely Rule? – w/ Dr. Alonso Gurmendi

What precedent did the Gambia-Myanmar case set for the court?

There is some precedence for countries to bring a case regarding a conflict it is not directly involved in to the International Court of Justice. In 2019, Gambia filed a complaint at the court against Myanmar, regarding its alleged genocide of the Rohingya people, an ethnic minority living in Myanmar.

The Genocide Convention obligates all ratifying states to comply with the treaty. So, countries without a direct connection to an alleged case of genocide can legally bring a genocide complaint forward.

What are provisional measures and why are they important?

The International Court of Justice judges are still reviewing and adjudicating the merits of Gambia’s genocide complaint. There isn’t a final decision on that yet. The court did, within a relatively short period of time after it held a hearing in the case, issue written orders called provisional measures, directing Myanmar to prevent genocide and to preserve evidence related to the case.

If the judges were convinced that the Israeli military’s attacks on Gaza were excessive, they could quickly call for a halt in Israel’s attacks and a cessation of hostilities.

In theory, this could put public pressure on Israel to curtail or halt its military campaign. But even if the International Court of Justice calls for this, it would not necessarily indicate that the court will eventually rule that genocide has occurred.

The International Court of Justice lacks enforcement power. So, is this case more than political theater?

The International Court of Justice does not prosecute individuals, but rather focuses on resolving legal disputes between countries. The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which has the legal authority to investigate and prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, has opened up a separate investigation into Israeli forces’ and Hamas militants’ alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

It’s always an open question – will an International Court of Justice ruling even be enforced and have any tangible effect?

While the International Court of Justice moved at a glacial pace in reaching a final decision in the Bosnia-Serbia case, it has shown that it can move more quickly when addressing mass violence. The judges did issue provisional measures calling for the prevention of violence in the Myanmar and Russia cases.

However, there is little indication that the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures eased Myanmar’s crackdown on the Rohingya. Similarly, the ICJ’s provisional measures calling on Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine has had no apparent effect.

This International Court of Justice could call for the Israeli military to end or curtail its conduct in Gaza, or to ease the flow of much-needed humanitarian aid for Palestinians, for example. This could put considerable international pressure on Israel. It could also push Israel’s strongest allies, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to put more pressure on Israel.

What does the ICJ’s track record on genocide tell us about this current case?

In the first case of this kind, in 1993, Bosnia instituted proceedings against Serbia, which was then part of the former republic of Yugoslavia, for alleged genocide.

The International Court of Justice’s eventual ruling in 2007 in the Serbia case was controversial. The court ruled that genocide was committed in the Bosnian war but that the government of Serbia was not directly responsible for it. Instead, the court ruled that the Serbian government failed to prevent genocide in Srebrenica.

Srebenica was the eastern, Muslim enclave in Bosnia that Bosnian-Serb military forces overran in 1995, murdering around 8,000 Muslim boys and men.

The court also found the Serbian government violated the Genocide Convention by failing to arrest former Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, then wanted for genocide by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia.

That judgment by the International Court of Justice was a big blow and disappointment to many Bosnian Muslims and global human rights activists.

How long could it take the ICJ to determine whether Israel committed genocide?

It could take a number of years. The Bosnia-Serbia case took 14 years. It is unclear if the South Africa-Israel case would have to wait for a final judgment to first be rendered in the Gambia-Myanmar and Ukraine-Russia cases, which have not concluded.

Victor Peskin, Associate professor of politics and global studies, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In fact, if Israel’s extreme far right government can get away with massacring 23,000 people, almost all of them innocent noncombatants and over 8,000 children, then International Humanitarian Law is a dead letter. This development, ironically enough, helps Vladimir Putin in his Ukraine campaign and so undermines the most important foreign policy objective of the Biden administration. Worse, it undermines any objection to war crimes or genocide, anywhere, ever, since it can plausibly be asserted that the US only cares about such matters when it can use these charges against a rival. We are being transported back to 1943, when the Axis could murder millions with impunity, and the Nuremberg trials are being branded a mistake.

Australia’s progressive site, The New Matilda, helpfully provided a written transcript of South Africa’s opening argument on January 11, alleging Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The full proceedings are presented by the SABC network:

SABC News: “South Africa presents its case against Israel at the ICJ”

The opening address was given by Adila Hassim. She is a distinguished attorney with a raft of degrees, who has been practicing since 2003. She co-edited a book on one of her interests, the laws regarding health in South Africa: Health and Democracy: A guide to human rights, health law and policy in post-apartheid South Africa, by Adila Hassim, Mark Heywood and Jonathan Berger (eds)· Siberlnk (2007). She gained renown for her defense of mental health patients who were dumped out of a state facility into conditions of squalor in which some of them died.

Her name shows that she is from South Africa’s Muslim community. South Africa has a population of 59 million, and its Muslims total about 1.5%. Many of them are originally from South India and were converted by Sufi mystics in South Africa. Others have a Malay background. Muslims were denied the vote and discriminated against by whites. Some Muslims played a significant role in the anti-Apartheid movement, which I wrote about here.

Adila Hassim SC, a human rights lawyer based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ms. Hassim’s argument is made on the basis of the Genocide Convention of 1948, which came into effect in 1951.

Article II of the Convention says,

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”

Ms. Hassim began by saying,

“Opening Address – South Africa

South Africa contends that Israel has transgressed article 2 of the convention by committing actions that fall within the definition of genocide. The actions show a systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred.

Gaza is one of the two constituent territories of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, occupied by Israel since 1967. It is a narrow strip of approximately 365 sqkm…. Israel continues to exercise control over the space, territorial waters, land crossings, water, electricity, electromagnetic sphere, and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, as well as over key governmental functions….

Entry and exit by air and sea to Gaza is prohibited, with Israel operating the only two crossing points.

Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated places in the world, is home to approximately 2.3 million Palestinians, almost half of them children.”

She says all this to underline that Israel is in fact the occupying power in Gaza, as the United Nations insists.

She continues,

“For the past 96 days Israel has subjected Gaza to what has been described as one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare.

Palestinians in Gaza are being killed by Israeli weaponry from air, land and sea.

They are also at immediate risk of death by starvation, dehydration and disease, as a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the destruction of Palestinian towns, the insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the impossibility of distributing this limited aid while bombs fall.

This conduct renders essentials to life unobtainable.”

These are the sorts of actions prohibited by Article II, obviously. But Hassim isn’t asking for a summary judgment. Her legal strategy is to ask for what we in the US might call a preliminary injunction.

She says,

“At this provisional measures stage… it is not necessary for the court to come to a final view on the question of whether Israel’s conduct constitutes genocide. It is necessary to establish only whether at least some of the acts alleged are capable of falling within the provision of the convention.

On analysing the specific and ongoing genocidal acts complained of, it is clear that at least some if not all of these acts fall within the Convention’s provisions. These acts are documented in detail in South Africa’s application, and confirmed by reliable… UN sources . . .”

I quoted some of the relevant passages of the complaint at Informed Comment. She now says that she will make a brief oral summary, and will show some video to support her points.

She moves to specific charges, the first of which is, in layman’s terms, mass slaughter:

“Israel’s first genocidal act

The first Genocidal act committed by Israel is the mas killing of Palestinians in Gaza, in violation of article 2a of the Genocide Convention.

As the UN Secretary General explained five weeks ago, the level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza. As I stand before you today, 23,210 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during the sustained attacks over the last three months, at least 70 percent of whom are believed to be women and children. Some 7,000 Palestinians are still missing, presumed dead under the rubble.

Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to relentless bombing where-ever they go. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches, and as they try to find food and water for their families.

They have been killed if they failed to evacuate in the places to which they have fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes.

The level of killing is so extensive that those bodies found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified.



In the first three weeks alone following 7 October Israel deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times, it has deployed 2,000 pound bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as safe. These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps . . .”

So, certainly a lot of killing, in contravention of II.a.

She concludes,

“The scale of Palestinian child killings in Gaza is such that UN chiefs have described it as a graveyard for children.

The devastation, we submit, is intended to, and has laid waste to, Gaza beyond any acceptable, legal, let alone, humane justification.”

Since the intent to wipe out a people in whole or part is key to the crime of genocide, Ms. Hassim is here attempting to show intent on the part of Israeli officials and generals.

Her second charge is based on Article II.b, “infliction of serious bodily or mental harm”.

“Israel’s second genocidal act

The second genocidal act identified in South Africa’s application is Israel’s infliction of serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2b of the Genocide Convention.

Israel’s attacks have left close to 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed. Again, the majority of them, women and children. This in circumstances where the healthcare system has all but collapsed. I‘ll return to this later in my speech.

Large numbers of Palestinians civilians, including children, are arrested, blind-folded, forced to undress, and loaded onto trucks taken to unknown locations. The suffering of the Palestinian people, physical and mental, is undeniable.”

South Africa addresses the International Court of Justice

Israel will reply on Friday for three hours. There will be no rebuttal, just the two presentations. Israel will almost certainly focus on the horrors of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack (and rightly so), and argue that the 23,000 dead are regrettable collateral damage from the necessary campaign to destroy Hamas. This argument, however, fails on the international legal grounds of proportionate response and the responsibility to avoid reckless endangerment of civilian lives. Still, 9 of the 15 justices of the International Criminal Court are from countries aligned with the US, and this case is the most consequential in the court’s history. If the justices fail in their duty to uphold International Humanitarian Law in this instance, the failure could be fatal to what is left of the legitimacy of international institutions, throwing us back into the jungle.

How many Americans will think no more about the issue because an official of the US government summarily rejected it?

Then Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, actually stood in front of the press and said that the administration is “not seeing any acts that constitute genocide . . . That is a determination by the State Department.”

Miller of course does not mention that there are three dissent channels at State that have been burning up with bitter internal condemnations of statements like that of Miller.

Susana Martinez-Conde, writing at the Scientific American, explained what is going on here:

“Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda for the Nazi German government of the Third Reich, understood the power of repeating falsehoods. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,” he asserted, “people will eventually come to believe it.” This phenomenon, pervasive in contemporary politics, advertising, and social media, is known in cognitive psychology as the “illusory truth effect.”

The lie of these US government spokesmen is that no genocide is happening in Gaza.

The US press is complicit with this outright denial of a monstrous reality. It for the most part has not shown the US public the full barbarity of the Israeli onslaught. Moreover, US television news has almost entirely refused to cover on camera the bloodthirsty statements of Israeli cabinet ministers and military officers.

Compare this situation to Ukraine, where hours of footage has been shown of Russian bombardments of civlians and the hard line statements of Vladimir Putin and others have been highlighted. Reporting on human rights abuses is largely reserved for enemies of the United States.

In contrast, Aljazeera English has done excellent and dangerous coverage, and has lost press staffers to Israeli shelling as they got the story for us.

In stark contrast, The Intercept reveals that CNN reportage has essentially been run under Israeli censorship.

UN spokesmen from agencies such as UNICEF who have been on the ground inside Gaza have given heartbreaking testimonies. For the most part, they have received little airtime on US television channels.

Again, it is Aljazeera English that has properly covered their revelations.

In this way, the most violent attack on a civilian population in recent decades, with the greatest loss of life among children, women and noncombatant men, has been carried out in full view of the world but has been obscured for most Americans.

For those not internet savvy, it isn’t even easy to find the South African complaint, and almost no news articles reporting on it actually link to the text. I couldn’t tell you why.

So below I reprint in HTML, easier to deal with than PDF, two sections of the complaint, dealing with genocidal statements of intent by Israeli officials, and with genocidal actions by the Israeli military that are well-documented.

It is worth reading these chilling accounts, to get a sense of just how big the Big Lie is of the John Kirbys and Matthew Millers:

The text of the South African complaint, provides extensive and damning evidence both of genocidal intent (which is intrinsic to the crime) and of genocidal actions:

D. Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others

101. Evidence of Israeli State officials’ specific intent (‘dolus specialis’) to commit and persist in committing genocidal acts or to fail to prevent them has been significant and overt since October 2023. Those statements of intent — when combined with the level of killing, maiming, displacement and destruction on the ground, together with the siege — evidence an unfolding and continuing genocide. They include statements by the following individuals in the positions of the highest responsibility:

— Prime Minister of Israel: On 7 October 2023, in a televised address by the Government Press Office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “operate forcefully everywhere”.439 On 13 October 2023, he confirmed that “[w]e are striking our enemies with unprecedented might . . .”.440 On 15 October 2023, when Israeli airstrikes had already killed over 2,670 Palestinians, including 724 children,441 the Prime Minister stated that Israeli soldiers “understand the scope of the mission” and stand ready “to defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who

435 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #44 (19 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-44; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #48 (23 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-48.
436 “Abandoned babies found decomposing in Gaza hospital weeks after it was evacuated”, NBC News (2 December 2023), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/abandoned-babies-found-decomposing-gaza-hospital-evacuated-rcna127533.
437 WHO, Women and newborns bearing the brunt of the conflict in Gaza, UN agencies warn (3 November 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-conflict-in-gaza-un-agencies- warn.
438 UN Press Release, Women bearing the brunt of Israel-Gaza conflict: UN expert (20 November 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/women-bearing-brunt-israel-gaza-conflict-un-expert (emphasis added). 439 Prime Minister of Israel, @IsraeliPM, Tweet (10:31 pm, October 7, 2023), https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/1710769906373775373.
440 Address by the Prime Minister of Israel, (13 October 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4HXaZ20M6Q. Translation in “‘Only the beginning’ says Netanyahu as Israel makes first raids into Gaza”, Reuters (13 October 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/now-is-time-war-says-israels-military-chief-2023-10-12/.
441 UNICEF, Immediate Needs Document in the State of Palestine (October – December 2023) (17 October 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/immediate-needs-document-state-palestine-october-december- 2023. (Total as of 17:45, 15 October 2023; children as of 12:00, 14 October 2023).

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have risen against [Israel] to destroy us”.442 On 16 October 2023, in a formal address to the Israeli Knesset, he described situation as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle”,443 a dehumanising theme to
which he returned on various occasions, including: on 3 November 2023, in a letter to Israeli
soldiers and officers also published on the platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter); the letter asserted that: “[t]his is the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. We will not let up on our mission until the light overcomes the darkness — the good will defeat the extreme evil that threatens us and the entire world.”444 The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”.446 The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses”.448

— President of Israel: On 12 October 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media — in relation Palestinians in Gaza, over one million of whom are children: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”449 On 15 October 2023, echoing the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President told foreign media that “we will uproot evil so that there will be good for the entire region and the world.”450 The Israeli President is one of many Israelis to have handwritten ‘messages’ on bombs to be dropped on Gaza.451

— Israeli Minister of Defence: On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and

442 Israel Prime Minister’s Office, PM Netanyahu asks Ministers to Rise for a Moment of Silence (15 October 2023), https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/spoke-start151023 (emphasis added).
443 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Press Release: Excerpt from PM Netanyahu’s remarks at the opening of the Winter
Assembly of the 25th Knesset’s Second Session, 16 October 2023, https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/excerpt-from-pm- netanyahu-s-remarks-at-the-opening-of-the-knesset-s-winter-assembly-16-oct-2023.
444 Prime Minister’s Office in Hebrew, @IsraeliPM_heb (11:44 am, November 3, 2023),
https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM_heb/status/1720406469055500583.
445 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Christmas message from PM Netanyahu, 24 December 2023, https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/christmas-message-from-pm-netanyahu-24-dec-2023.
446 Address by the Prime Minister of Israel, 28 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPkoDk6isc. Translation in, “Israel-Hamas war: ‘We will fight and we will win’, says Benjamin Netanyahu”, Sky News (28 October 2023), https://news.sky.com/video/israel-hamas-war-we-will-fight-and-we-will-win-says-benjamin-netanyahu-12995212.
447 Prime Minister’s Office in Hebrew, @IsraeliPM_heb, Tweet (11:43 am November 3, 2023),
https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM_heb/status/1720406463972004198.
448 Sefaria, I Samuel 15:1-34, JPS, 1985, https://www.sefaria.org/I_Samuel.15.1-34?lang=bi.
449 Rageh Omaar, “Israeli president Isaac Herzog says Gazans could have risen up to fight ‘evil’ Hamas’”, ITV News (13 October 2023), https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-gazans-could-have-risen-up-to-fight-hamas. 450 President of the State of Israel, @Isaac_Herzog, Tweet (10 pm, October 15, 2023), https://twitter.com/Isaac_Herzog/status/1713661051986678189.
451 President of the State of Israel, @Isaac_Herzog, Tweet (5:16 pm, December 25, 2023), https://twitter.com/Isaac_Herzog/status/173933430267074594.

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we are acting accordingly.”452 He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had “released all the restraints”,453 stating in terms that: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”454 He further announced that Israel was moving to “a full- scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces.455

— Israeli Minister for National Security: On 10 November 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir clarified the government’s position in a televised address, stating: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”456

— Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: ‘Tweeting’ on 13 October 2023, Israel Katz stated: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”457 On 12 October 2023, he ‘tweeted’: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”458

— Israeli Minister of Finance: On 8 October 2023, Bezalel Smotrich stated at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet that “[w]e need to deal a blow that hasn’t been seen in 50 years and take down Gaza.”459

— Israeli Minister of Heritage: On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on Facebook: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement].460 He later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e

452 Statement by Yoav Gallant, 9 October 2023, 9 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxvS9VY-t0. Translation in Emanuel Fabian, “Defense minister announces ‘complete siege’ of Gaza: No power, food or fuel”, The Times of Israel (9 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of- gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/.
453 Filmography: Ariel Harmoni, Ministry of Defense, Kipa News, 10 October 2023,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wx7e4u-xM. Translation in Emanuel Fabian, “Gallant: Israel moving to full offense, Gaza will never return to what it was”, The Times of Israel (10 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/gallant-israel-moving-to-full-offense-gaza-will-never-return-to-what-it-was/. 454 Filmography: Ariel Harmoni, Ministry of Defense, Kipa News, 10 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wx7e4u-xM. Translation in “Israeli Defense Minister Warns Hamas ‘Will Regret’ Deadly Attacks”, Bloomberg (10 October 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtjHcnNB0E8.
455 Bill Hutchinson, “Bombarded by Israeli airstrikes, conditions in Gaza grow more dire as power goes out”, ABC News (12
October 2023), https://abcnews.go.com/International/bombarded-israeli-airstrikes-conditions-gaza-grow-dire- power/story?id=103899193#:~:text=The%20airstrikes%20were%20launched%20by,have%20been%20hit%20in%20Gaza. 456 Interview with Itamar Ben-Gvir on Channel 12, 11 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yRl-cc-D3w [10:30 onwards]. Translated by Quds News Network, @QudsNen, Tweet (7:28 pm, November 12, 2023), https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1723784790682358189.
457 Israel Katz, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Member of the Political-Security Cabinet, Member of Knesset, @Israel_katz, Tweet (6:01 pm, October 13, 2023) https://twitter.com/Israel_katz/status/1712876230762967222.
458 Israel Katz, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Member of the Political-Security Cabinet, Member of Knesset, @Israel_katz, Tweet (7:34 am, October 12, 2023) https://twitter.com/Israel_katz/status/1712356130377113904. Translation in “First Thing: no power, water or fuel for Gaza until hostages are freed, Israel says”, The Guardian (12 October 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/12/first-thing-no-power-water-fuel-gaza-until-hostages-freed-israel-says. 459 “By abducting over 100 people into Gaza, Hamas has put Netanyahu in a political bind”, The Times of Israel (8 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/by-abducting-over-100-people-into-gaza-hamas-has-put-netanyahu-in-a-political- bind/.
460 Amichai Eliyahu, Facebook Post (1 November 2023), https://www.facebook.com/eliyau.a/videos/148918588283326/.

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wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”.461 He also posited a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.462

— Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On 11 November 2023, Avi Dichter in a television interview recalled the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of the new Israeli State was forced from or fled their homes, stating that “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.463

— Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee: On 7 October 2023, Nissim Vaturi ‘tweeted’ that: “[n]ow we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.”464

102. Similar statements have been made by Israeli army officials, advisers and spokespersons, and others engaging with Israeli troops being deployed in Gaza:

— Israeli Army Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (‘COGAT’): On 9 October 2023, in a video statement addressed to Hamas and Gaza residents, published by COGAT’s official channel, Major General Ghassan Alian warned: “Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified. Human animals are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”465

— Israeli Army Reservist Major General, former Head of the Israeli National Security Council, and adviser to the Defence Minister:466 On 7 October 2023, Giora Eiland, describing the Israeli order to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, wrote in an online journal: “This is what Israel has begun to do — we cut the supply of energy, water and diesel to the Strip . . . But it’s not enough. In order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving assistance to Gaza . . . The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this

461 Gili Cohen, Dov Gil-Har, Itay Blumenthal, Sulieman Masvidan, “Minister Amichai Eliyahu: Atomic bomb on Gaza? This is one of the possibilities”, Kan (5 November 2023), https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/596470/.
Translation in “Far-right minister: Nuking Gaza is an option, population should ‘go to Ireland or deserts’”, The Times of Israel (5 November 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/far-right-minister-nuking-gaza-is-an-option- population-should-go-to-ireland-or-deserts/.
462 Ibid. The radio comment was criticised by the Prime Minister. Prime Minister of Israel, @IsraeliPM, Tweet (8:05 am, November 5, 2023), https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/1721076229518823826. The Prime Minister’s Office announced that the MK had been suspended from government meetings until further notice, although he reportedly voted in a meeting later that day. “Netanyahu ‘suspended’ the minister who did not fire an atom bomb on Gaza – even though there is no such option in the government regulations”, Yedioth Ahronoth (5 November 2023), https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/ rjdl5ebm6).
463 Interview with Avi Dichter on Channel 12. Hanno Hauenstein, @hahauenstein, Tweet (8:42 pm, November 11, 2023), https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1723441134221869453.
464 Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, @nissimv, Tweet (5:33 pm, October 7, 2023) https://twitter.com/nissimv/status/1710694866009596169. Translation in “Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza”, Opinio Juris (18 October 2023), https://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/18/public-statement-scholars-warn-of-potential-genocide-in-gaza/.
465 Video address by Ghassan Alian, 10 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5a0EWv-o7mE.
466 “Former security officials and strategic advisor: the ‘cabinet’ established by Gallant for himself”, Yedioth Ahronoth (26 October 2023), https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1zlcnoga.

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is their choice.”467 On the same day, he asserted in a national newspaper that “[w]hen you are at war with another country you don’t feed them, you don’t provide them electricity or gas or water or anything else . . . A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary outcome of events” in Gaza.468 He has repeatedly asserted the benefits for Israel of the creation of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stating that “Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point that needs to be made clear to the Americans”,469 and that “[i]f we ever want to see the hostages alive, the only way is to create a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.470 He has indicated that water should be targeted, noting that water in Gaza “comes from wells with salt water unfit for consumption. They have water treatment plants, Israel should hit those plants. When the entire world says we have gone insane and this is a humanitarian disaster — we will say, it’s not an end, it’s a means.”471 In a Times radio interview on 12 October 2023, he reiterated the army should:

“[C]reate such a huge pressure on Gaza, that Gaza will become an area where people cannot live. People cannot live, until Hamas is destroyed, which means that Israel not only stops to supply energy, diesel, water, food … as we did in the last twenty years … but we should prevent any possible assistance by others, and to create in Gaza such a terrible, unbearable situation, that can last weeks and months”.472

Giora Eiland has repeatedly been given a media platform to call for Gaza to be made uninhabitable, declaring “the State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in.”473 In an interview on 6 November 2023, he suggested that, “if there is an intention for a military action at Shifa [Hospital], which I think is inescapable, I hope that the head of the CIA got an explanation of why this is necessary, and why the US must ultimately back even an operation like this, even if there are thousands of bodies of civilians in the streets afterward.”474 Further he proposed that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf . . . Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”475 Echoing the words of President Herzog, he has repeatedly underscored that there should be no distinction between Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians, saying:

467 Giora Eiland, “A new turning point in the history of the State of Israel. Most people don’t understand that”, Fathom (7 October 2023), https://fathomjournal.org/opinion-a-new-turning-point-in-the-history-of-the-state-of-israel-most-people-dont- understand-that/ (emphasis added).
468 Giora Eiland, “The state of Gaza has started a war against Israel – and it should be fought accordingly”, Mako (7 October 2023), https://www.mako.co.il/news-columns/2023_q4/Article-fcf787ad0ba0b81027.htm (emphasis added).
469 Interview with Giora Eiland on Kann News, 17 November 2023. Kann News, @kann_news, Tweet (6:42 pm, November 17 2023), https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1725585143333622129 (emphasis added).
470 Ariel Whitman, “Giora Eiland outlines plan to get hostages back alive”, Globes (8 October 2023), https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-giora-eiland-outlines-plan-to-get-hostages-back-alive-1001459631 (emphasis added). 471 “How should one respond to the massacre of hundreds?”, Yedioth Ahronoth (print) (9 October 2023), https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l5Ow2T0Na20BcoL2yautiobij8ldNsVK/view.
472 How Israel plan to ‘destroy Hamas’ | Major General Giora Eiland, 12 October 2023,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRHz0dZwF2A.
473 Giora Eiland, “This is not revenge. It’s either us or them”, Yedioth Ahronoth (10 October 2023), https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13625377 (emphasis added).
474 “Ex-top general: IDF op against Hamas at Shifa Hospital inescapable; US must back it”, The Times of Israel (6 November 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ex-top-general-idf-op-against-hamas-at-shifa-hospital- inescapable-us-must-back-it/ (emphasis added).
475 Giora Eiland, “It’s time to rip off the Hamas band-aid”, Yedioth Ahronoth (12 October 2023), https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sju3uabba (emphasis added).

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“Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the organization, and on the other hand, if they experience a humanitarian disaster, then it can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the more junior commanders will begin to understand that the war is futile . . . The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer . . . It is precisely its civil collapse that will bring the end of the war closer. When senior Israeli figures say in the media ‘It’s either us or them’ we should clarify the question of who is ‘them’. ‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population who enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.”476

— Israeli Army reservist “motivational speech”: On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — reportedly called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion, was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide as follows, while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle, dressed in Israeli army fatigues:
“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live
. . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”477

— Head of the Israeli army’s Air Operations Group: On 28 October 2023, Lieutenant colonel Gilad Kinan described the Air Force as “work[ing] together with all the bodies in the IDF when the goal is clear — to destroy everything that has been touched by the hand of Hamas”.478

— Commander in the 2908th Battalion of the Israeli army: In a video posted online on 21 December 2023, Yair Ben David said that the Israeli army had “entered Beit Hanoun and did there as Shimon and Levi did in Nablus,” and that

“[t]he entire Gaza should resemble Beit Hanoun”, referring to the city in northern Gaza which has been entirely devastated by the Israeli army..479 The biblical passage in issue reads: “On the third day, when they were in pain, Simeon

476 Giora Eiland, “Let’s not be intimidated by the world”, Yedioth Ahronoth (print) (19 November 2023), in Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance, Chairman of the Religious Zionist Party, @bezalelsm, Tweet (11:20 am, November 19, 2023), https://twitter.com/bezalelsm/status/1726198721946480911. Translation by Talula Sha, Tweet (19 November 2023), https://twitter.com/TalulaSha/status/1726267178201362438 (emphasis added).
477 Bazz News, @1717Bazz, Tweet (7:39 pm, October 11, 2023),
https://twitter.com/1717Bazz/status/1712176168823107986. Translation by Middle East Eye, @MiddleEastEye, Tweet (8:48 pm, October 13, 2023), https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1712918166437806294 (emphasis added).
478 Israel Defense Forces, @idfonline, Tweet (6:23 am, October 28, 2023),
https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1718136442805686351. Informal translation, emphasis added.
479 Yair Ben David, Commander in the 2908th Battalion, statement, 20 December 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK8ZnGKspeI. Translation in “War on Gaza: Israeli commander vows to flatten ‘entire’ Gaza Strip”, Middle East Eye (21 December 2023), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israeli-commander-vows- flatten-entire-gaza-strip.

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and Levi, two of Jacob’s sons, brothers of Dinah, took each his sword, came upon the city unmolested, and slew all the males”.480

103. The above statements by Israeli decision-makers and military officials indicate in and of themselves a clear intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group “as such”. They also constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which has gone unchecked and unpunished. The clear inference from the acts of the Israeli army on the ground — including from the vast number of civilians killed and injured, and the scale of displacement, destruction and devastation wrought in Gaza — is that those genocidal statements and directives are being implemented against the Palestinian people. That is also the clear and necessary inference to be drawn from the emerging evidence from Israeli army soldiers serving in Gaza, including those stationed on the ground:

— Israeli Army Colonel, Deputy Head of COGAT: speaking in a video filmed in Beit Lahia — one of the areas of Gaza which appears to have suffered particularly severe levels of destruction — and broadcast on Israeli television on 4 November 2023, Colonel Yogev Bar- Sheshet stated: “[w]hoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future;” another Army Colonel recorded in the same video, Colonel Erez Eshel (Reserve), also commented that: “Vengeance is a great value. There is vengeance over what they did to us … This place will be a fallow land. They will not be able to live here”.481

— Israeli army soldiers: Israeli soldiers in uniform have been filmed on 5 December 2023 dancing, chanting and singing “May their village burn, May Gaza be erased”;482 and, two days later, on a separate occasion inside Gaza on 7 December 2023, dancing, singing and chanting, “we know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek”.483

104. Notably, the second video of soldiers chanting that there are “no uninvolved citizens” in Gaza and that they will “wipe off the seed of Amalek” was filmed on 7 December 2023. By that date, 17,177 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed — an estimated 70 per cent of whom were women and children. 7-8 December 2023 was particularly devasting for Palestinians, with 350 people killed in the space of 24 hours — approximately one Palestinian in Gaza killed every four minutes.484

105. This genocidal rhetoric of governmental and military officials is also widespread and commonplace amongst non-cabinet members of the Israeli Knesset (‘MKs’) who have repeatedly called

480 Genesis 34:25 (NJPS 1985), https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.34.25?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en (emphasis added).
481 Channel 14 segment, 4 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqEj3DzadiM: “Special documentation from the heart of Gaza: this is how our forces fight deep in enemy territory”, Now 14 (5 November 2023), https://www.now14.co.il/נלחמים-כוחותינו-כך-עזה-מלב-מיוחד-תיעוד/.
482 Video of Kobi Peretz with soldiers, 17 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcH2o4c5KZY (emphasis added).
483 Yinon Magal, @YinonMagal, Tweet (6:44 am, 7 December 2023) https://twitter.com/YinonMagal/status/1732652279461757102. Translation by Middle East Eye, @MiddleEastEye, Tweet (1:30 pm, December 8, 2023) https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1733116719668113618 (emphasis added).
484 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #62 (7 December 2023), https://www.unocha.org/ publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-62-enar.

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for Gaza to be “wiped out”,485 “flatten[ed]”,486 “eras[ed]”,487 and “[c]rush[ed] . . . on all its inhabitants”.488 Parliamentarians have publicly deplored anyone “feel[ing] sorry” for the “uninvolved” Gazans, asserting repeatedly that “there are no uninvolved”,489 that “[t]here are no innocents in Gaza”,490 that “the killers of the women and children should not be separated from the citizens of Gaza”,491 that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves”,492 and that “there should be one sentence for everyone there — death”.493 Parliamentarians have stated “[w]e must not forget that even the ‘innocent citizens’ — the cruel and monstrous people from Gaza took an active part . . . there is no place for any humanitarian gesture — the memory of Amalek must be protested”,494 and that “[w]ithout hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not be able to recruit collaborators”.495 Parliamentarians have also called for “mercilessly” bombing “from the air”,496 calling for the use of nuclear (“doomsday”) weapons,497 and a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48”.498

106. Similar genocidal rhetoric is also commonplace in Israeli civil society, with genocidal messages being routinely broadcast — without censure or sanction — in Israeli media. The media reports call for Gaza to be “erase[d],”499 turned into a “slaughterhouse”,500 that “Hamas should not be eliminated” but rather “Gaza should be razed”,501 on the repeated claim that “[t]here are no innocents… There is no

485 Revital Gottlieb, @TallyGotliv, Tweet (5:10 pm, October 29, 2023), https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1718676748542296207.
486 Interview with Katrin “Keti” Shitrit-Peretz on Now 14, 1 November 2023: Now 14, @Now14Israel, Tweet (9:50 pm,
November 1, 2023), https://twitter.com/Now14Israel/status/1719834297832526215; Revital Gottlieb, @TallyGotliv, Tweet (10:41 am, October 10, 2023), https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1711678420235534705.
487 Galit Atbaryan, @GalitDistel, Tweet (12:13 pm, November 1, 2023), https://twitter.com/galitdistel/status/1719689095230730656.
488 Eliyahu Revivo, @revivoeliyahu, Tweet (2:46 pm, November 1, 2023),
https://twitter.com/revivoeliyahu/status/1719727722459508915.
489 Revital Gottlieb, @TallyGotliv, Tweet (3:46 pm, December 7, 2023), https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1732788632430186872.
490 Avigdor Lieberman, @AvigdorLiberman, Tweet (6:45 pm, November 30, 2023), https://twitter.com/avigdorliberman/status/1730297081959530685 (emphasis added).
491 Interview with Katrin “Keti” Shitrit-Peretz on Now 14, 1 November 2023: Now 14, @Now14Israel, Tweet (9:50 pm,
November 1, 2023), https://twitter.com/Now14Israel/status/1719834297832526215 (emphasis added).
492 Meirav Ben-Ari, Knesset Session, 16 October 2023, https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=3497251110531404 [2:29:57] (emphasis added). Translation by Jonathan Ofir, “Israeli Politician Says ‘Children of Gaza Have Brought This Upon Themselves’”, Truthout (18 October 2023), https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-politician-says-children-of-gaza-have-brought-this-upon-themselves/. 493 “MK Yitzhak Kroizer: “The Gaza Strip should be wiped off the map”, Galey Israel (5 November 2023) https://www.gly.co.il/item?id=30587.
Translation in “Fire Israel’s Far Right”, Haaretz (6 November 2023), https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-11- 06/ty-article/.premium/fire-israels-far-right/0000018b-a11c-dc0b-a1cb-e5de69890000.
494 Boaz Bismuth, @BismuthBoaz, Tweet (8:02 am, October 16, 2023) https://twitter.com/BismuthBoaz/status/1713812686784311358.
495 Statement by Revital Gottlieb in the Knesset, 23 October 2023: Knesset Channel, @KnessetT, Tweet (6:10 pm, October
23, 2023), https://twitter.com/KnessetT/status/1716502486331113922.
496 Revital Gottlieb, @TallyGotliv, Tweet (7:39 am, December 13, 2023), https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1734840416522948800.
497 Revital Gottlieb, @TallyGotliv, Tweet (5:59 pm, October 9, 2023) https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1711426284322996613.
498 Ariel Kallner, @ArielKallner, Tweet (10:29 pm, October 7, 2023), https://twitter.com/ArielKallner/status/1710769363119141268. Translated in the New Arab: “’Erase Gaza’: How genocidal rhetoric became normalised in Israel”, The New Arab (30 November 2023), https://www.newarab.com/analysis/erase-gaza- how-genocidal-rhetoric-normalised-israel and informal translation.
499 Interview with Eyal Golan on Now 14, 15 October 2023: Now 14, @Now14Israel, Tweet (1:24 pm, October 15, 2023),
https://twitter.com/Now14Israel/status/1713531211300167928.
500 David Mizrahy Verthaim, @dverthaim, Tweet (4:52 pm, October 7, 2023), https://twitter.com/dverthaim/status/1710684531114602891.
501 Moshe Feiglin, @moshefeiglin, Tweet (6:16 am, October 12, 2023), https://twitter.com/moshefeiglin/status/1712336429982846977.

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population. There are 2.5 million terrorists”.502 One local official, reportedly called for Gaza to be “desolate and destroyed” like the Auschwitz Museum, “demonstrating the madness of the people who lived there”.503 Former MKs have called for a level of destruction akin to that of Dresden and Hiroshima,504 asserting that it would be “immoral” for the Israeli army not to show themselves to be “vengeful and cruel”.505 In an Israeli news interview, one former MK called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying:

“I tell you, in Gaza without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed. We will flatten Gaza, turn them to dust, and the army will cleanse the area. Then we will start building new areas, for us, above all, for our security.”506

107. Those statements by prominent members of Israeli society — including former parliamentarians and news anchors — constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which has gone unchecked and unpunished by the Israeli authorities. That such sentiment appears to be so widespread and mainstream in Israeli society is of particular concern, in circumstances where the soldiers serving in Gaza are largely reservists, drawn from and informed by civil society

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And here, from earlier in the document, is the documentation on genocidal acts by Israel against the Palestinians of Gaza

C. Genocidal Acts Committed against the Palestinian People

43. This section provides an overview of the acts in which Israel has engaged that are genocidal in character, having regard to their nature, scope and context. These acts are ongoing, and ongoing in a conflict context, where Israel is deliberately imposing telecommunications blackouts on Gaza and restricting access by fact-finding bodies173 and the international media.174 At the same time Palestinian journalists are being killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years. In the two months since 7 October 2023, the number of journalists killed already exceeded that of the entirety of World War II.175 Further detail will be provided regarding these acts over the course of these proceedings. However, such information as is available establishes that Israel: (1) is engaged in killing Palestinians in Gaza — including Palestinian children — in large numbers; (2) is causing serious bodily and mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including Palestinian children; and is inflicting on them conditions of life intended to bring about their destruction as a group. Those conditions include:
(3) expulsions from homes and mass displacement, alongside the large-scale destruction of homes and residential areas; (4) deprivation of access to adequate food and water; (4) deprivation of access to adequate medical care; (5) deprivation of access to adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation; and (6) the destruction of the life of the Palestinian people in Gaza; and (7) imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births.

44. United Nations chiefs and the International Committee of the Red Cross (‘ICRC’) — no strangers to conflict situations — have called what is unfolding in Gaza a “crisis of humanity”.176 “Humanitarian veterans who have served in war zones and disasters around the world — people who have seen everything — [say] they have seen nothing like what they see today in Gaza” (United Nations

173 There is a long-standing practice of Israel restricting access to the oPt, alongside expelling and/or denying visas to UN staff, Special Rapporteurs and fact-finding teams, including UN commissions of inquiry: see, e.g., United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, A/78/198 (5 September 2023), para. 4, https://documents-dds- ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N23/260/71/PDF/N2326071.pdf?OpenElement; UN OCHA, Bachelet deplores Israel’s failure to grant visas for UN Human Rights staff in the occupied Palestinian territory (30 August 2022), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/08/bachelet-deplores-israels-failure-grant-visas-un-human-rights-staff- occupied; UN OHCHR, Occupied Palestinian Territory: UN human rights expert says Israel bent on further annexation (12 July 2019), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/07/occupied-palestinian-territory-un-human-rights-expert-says- israel-bent; United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the independent commission of
inquiry established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-21/, A/HRC/29/52 (24 June 2015), para. 3, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-i-gaza-conflict/report-co-i-gaza#report.; United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, A/HRC/40/74 (27 February 2019), para. 3, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIOPT/A_HRC_40_74.pdf; Rebekah Yeager- Malkin, Israel will not renew visa of one UN employee, denies visa for another citing UN response to Hamas attacks”, Jurist (26 December 2023), https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/12/israel-will-not-renew-the-visa-of-one-un-employee-denies-the- visa-of-another/.
174 To date, only correspondents embedded with and subject to the censorship of the Israeli army have been permitted entry; see, e.g., “Foreign correspondents petition Israel Supreme Court for Gaza access”, Reuters (19 December 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/foreign-correspondents-petition-israel-supreme-court-gaza-access-2023-12-19/. 175 IFJ, Ninety-four journalists killed in 2023, says IFJ (8 December 2023), https://www.ifj.org/media- centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/ninety-four-journalists-killed-in-2023-says-ifj; “How deadly is the Israel- Gaza war for journalists?”, AlJazeera (9 November 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/9/how-deadly-is-the- israel-gaza-war-for-journalists.
176 United Nations, Press Conference by Secretary-General António Guterres at United Nations Headquarters (6 November
2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22021.doc.htm; “UN chief says Gaza ‘crisis of humanity’ demands immediate ceasefire”, The Times of Israel (6 November 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/un-chief-says-gaza-crisis- of-humanity-demands-immediate-ceasefire/.

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Secretary-General).177 This is “a moral failure” causing “intolerable suffering” (ICRC President).178 “This is an apocalyptic situation now, because these are the remnants of a nation being driven into a pocket in the south” (Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations).179 They describe Palestinians in Gaza as “living in utter, deepening horror” as they “continue to be relentlessly bombarded by Israel… suffering death, siege, destruction and deprivation of the most essential human needs such as food, water, lifesaving medical supplies and other essentials on a massive scale”; it is “apocalyptic” (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights).180 “An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship” (Principals of the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee).181 Gaza is “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director).182 “It is a “living hell”, it is “a war of all the superlative, everything is unprecedented” and “[w]e are out of words to describe what is going on” (UNRWA Commissioner-General).183

1. Killing Palestinians in Gaza

45. Over 21,110 Palestinians are reported to have been killed since Israel began its military assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 70 per cent of whom are believed to be women and children.184 An additional estimated 7,780 people, including at least 4,700 women and

177 UN, Press Conference by Secretary-General António Guterres at United Nations Headquarters (22 December 2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22095.doc.htm.
178 ICRC, Gaza: ICRC president calls for the protection of civilians in the face of “moral failure“ (4 December 2023),
https://www.icrcnewsroom.org/story/en/2075/gaza-icrc-president-calls-for-the-protection-of-civilians-in-the-face-of-moral- failure; ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories: President of the ICRC arrives in Gaza, calls for the protection of civilians (4 December 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-president-icrc-arrives-gaza.
179 Julian Borger, “‘Apocalyptic’ conditions in southern Gaza blocking aid, top UN official says”, The Guardian (5 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/05/un-martin-griffiths-idf-campaign-southern-gaza- apocalyptic-conditions; Interview with UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths on CNN, 22 November 2023, at Christiane Amanpour, @amanpour, Tweet (3:08 pm, November 22, 2023), https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1727343309486542926. 180 UN OHCHR, Opening statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk at press conference ahead of Human Rights Day (6 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2023/12/opening-statement-un- high-commissioner-human-rights-volker-turk.
181 UN IASC, Statement by Principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, “We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” (5 November 2023), https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/about-inter-agency-standing-committee/statement-principals-inter-agency- standing-committee-situation-israel-and-occupied-palestinian.
182 UNICEF, Statement by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell on the Resumption of Fighting in Gaza (1
December 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/statement-by-unicef-executive-director-catherine-russell-on-the- resumption-of-fighting-in-gaza/.
183 UNRWA, Remarks of UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini at the Global Refugee Forum (13 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini-
global-refugee; UNRWA, @UNRWA, Tweet (2:46 pm, December 12, 2023), https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1734585541591486755.
184 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
For a list of those killed before 27 October 2023, see: Ministry of Health, Palestine, Detailed report for the victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip during the period (7-26 October 2023) (26 October 2023), https://web.archive.org/web/20231026174513/https:/www.moh.gov.ps/portal/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/-ﺑﺎﺳﻤﺎء-ﻧﮭﺎﺋﻲ-ﺗﻘﺮﯾﺮ 1-اﻟﺸﮭﺪاء.pdf. Due to the ongoing bombardment, the UN is currently relying on numbers provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health. UN officials see no reason to doubt the figures, which have not been inflated in the past, and which recent studies demonstrate are not now being inflated, see e.g., Adam Tayor, “More than 20,000 dead in Gaza, a historic human toll”, Washington Post (22 December 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/22/gaza-israel-war-20000-dead/; and Benjamin Q Hunyh, Elizabeth T Chin, Paul B Spiegel, “No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health”, The Lancet (6 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140- 6736(23)02713-7/fulltext. There may in fact be underreporting, as those whose bodies are not brought to a hospital or morgue are not routinely included in the casualty numbers. In circumstances where so many hospitals have ceased

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children, are reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings — dying slow deaths — or decomposing in the streets where they were killed.185 Israel’s blockage of adequate fuel imports, its destruction of infrastructure and the communication blackouts it imposes severely hamper rescue attempts. As of 8 December 2023, only one rescue vehicle was reportedly operational in the whole of Gaza, with survivors forced to try to dig for survivors with their bare hands.186 The level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that bodies are being buried in mass graves, often unidentified.187

46. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza”, as the United Nations Secretary-General — and many other United Nations experts — have now made clear to the international community.188 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in their homes, in places where they sought shelter, in hospitals, in UNWRA schools, in churches, in mosques, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, in the places to which they fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared “safe routes”.189 Reports are multiplying of Israeli soldiers performing summary executions, including of multiple members of the same family — men, women and older people.190 One such account is the reported execution in Gaza City of at least 11 male members of the Annan family and their relatives — boys and men, said to have been separated out by Israeli soldiers and shot in front of their family — before the women and children were then attacked.191 There are also reports of unarmed people — including Israeli hostages — being shot dead on sight, despite posing no threat, including while waving white flags.192 Attacks on Palestinian homes and residential blocks account for

functioning, where Palestinians are unable to reach them — and indeed, as there are repeated reports of people having to resort to burying bodies on the street where they find them, the underreporting could be significant. At present, approximately 7,780 people are missing, presumed dead, but not yet included in the official statistics, Zeina Jamaluddine, Francesco Checchi, Oona M R Campbell, “Excess mortality in Gaza: 7-26, 2023”, The Lancet (26 November 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02640-5/fulltext.
185 Red Crescent Society, Palestine Red Crescent Society Response Report As of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until Sunday, December 24th 2023, 24:00 AM (24 December 2023), p.1, https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/latestresponse23012023/en%20220%202023.pdf.
186 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #63 (8 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-63; and Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy, “Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand”, AP (17 November 2023), https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-buried-rubble-airstrikes-89c0e8d0934d573d94d2fbfeba44d933.
187 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #48 (23 November 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-48- enarhe.
188 Letter by the Secretary-General to the President of Security Council invoking Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, (6 December 2023), https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sg_letter_of_6_december_gaza.pdf; UNICEF, A dystopic scene that seemed to stretch on endlessly (November 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/emergencies/no-safety-for- children-in- gaza/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CUnless%20those%20conditions%20are%20met,need%20a%20humanitarian%20ceasefire%20 now.%E2%80%9D; ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories: Deescalate now to prevent further human suffering (28 October 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-deescalate-now-prevent-further-human- suffering.
189 UN OHCHR, UN Human Rights has “grave fears” about toll on civilians in Gaza (17 October 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/10/un-human-rights-has-grave-fears-about-toll-civilians-gaza; “Gaza civilians afraid to leave home after bombing of ‘safe routes’”, The Guardian (15 October 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/gaza-civilians-afraid-to-leave-home-after-bombing-of-safe-routes; ICRC, The ICRC urges protection for Gaza civilians evacuating and staying behind (13 November 2023), https://blogs.icrc.org/ir/en/2023/11/the-icrc-urges-protection-for-gaza-civilians-evacuating-and-staying-behind/.
190 UN, The Question of Palestine, Unlawful Killings in Gaza (20 December 2023), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Euro-Med Monitor sends UN rapporteurs, ICC Prosecutor primary report documenting dozens of field execution cases in Gaza (25 December 2023), https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6058.
191 UN, The Question of Palestine, Unlawful Killings in Gaza (20 December 2023),
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/.
192 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-70; “Israeli soldiers kill hostages waving white flag after mistaking them for Hamas fighters”, Financial Times (17 December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/2e299603-2fed-4855-9694-9801008c48dc.

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a significant number of the dead,193 with Israel reportedly using Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) to generate up to 100 bombing targets per day.194

47. Israel is said to be dropping ‘dumb’ (i.e., unguided) bombs on Gaza,195 as well as heavy bombs weighing up to 2,000 lbs (900 kgs),196 which have a predicted lethal radius “of up to 360m”, and are “expected to cause severe injury and damage as far as 800 metres from the point of impact”.197 This weaponry is being deployed in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, where approximately one in every 100 people has now been killed. Some Israeli strikes on Palestinian homes and refugee camps have killed upwards of 110 Palestinians.198 An estimated 1,779 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multigenerational families have been killed in their entirety, with no remaining survivors — mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins — often all killed together.199 By 7 November 2023, 312 Palestinian families in Gaza had lost over 10 members each.200 Numerous Palestinian families have lost upwards of 70 members each.201 The level of mortality in Palestinian families is such that medics in Gaza have had to coin a new acronym: ‘WCNSF’, meaning ‘wounded child, no surviving family’.202

193 UN OCHA Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72.
194 Yuval Abraham, “A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza”, +972 Magazine (30
November 2023), https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/; and Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh, “‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza”, The Guardian (1 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing- targets..
195 Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment, reported by Natasha Bertrand and Kattie Bo Lillis, “Exclusive:
Nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise ‘dumb bombs,’ US intelligence assessment finds”, CNN (13 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel- gaza/index.html; and John Paul Rathbone, “Military briefing: the Israeli bombs raining on Gaza”, Financial Times (6 December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/7b407c2e-8149-4d83-be01-72dcae8aee7b.
196 Amnesty International, Israel/OPT: US-made munitions killed 43 civilians in two documented Israeli air strikes in Gaza – new investigation (5 December 2023), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/israel-opt-us-made-munitions- killed-43-civilians-in-two-documented-israeli-air-strikes-in-gaza-new-investigation/.
197 Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), Explosive weapons with large destructive radius: air-dropped bombs (the Mark 80 series and Paveway attachments) (1 March 2016), https://aoav.org.uk/2016/large-destructive-radius-air-dropped-bombs-the- mark-80-series-and-paveway-attachments/; see also: Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Ishaan Jhaveri, Danielle Miller, Aaron Byrd and Natalie Reneau, “A Times Investigation Tracked Israel’s Use of One of Its Most Destructive Bombs in South Gaza”, New York Times (21 December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb- investigation.html.
198 David Gritten, “Gaza health ministry says Israeli strikes kill 110 in Jabalia”, BBC News (18 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67749557.
199 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 78 (27 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-78; Amnesty International, Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza, (20 October 2023), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire- families-in-gaza/; Child Rights Connect, Child Rights Connect deplores the grave violations of children’s rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (23 October 2023), https://childrightsconnect.org/child-rights-connect-deplores-the- grave-violations-of-childrens-rights-in-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/.
200 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 32 (7 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-32.
201 See e.g., UNDP, Statement on the killing of UNDP staff member & family in Gaza (22 December 2023), https://www.undp.org/speeches/statement-killing-undp-staff-member-family-gaza; “Palestinian-Americans speak out about family, friends killed in Israel-Hamas war”, ABC Eyewitness News (19 December 2023), https://abc7ny.com/palestinian- american-gaza-war-victims/14202160/.
202 Save the Children, Children’s Mental Health in Gaza Pushed Beyond Breaking Point After Nearly a Month Of Siege and Bombardment (7 November 2023), https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/childrens-mental- health-in-gaza-deteriorates-one-month-on-.

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48. For Palestinian children, in particular, “[d]eath is everywhere” and “nowhere is safe”.203 A total of over 7,729 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza to date — over 115 Palestinian children in Gaza are killed every day.204 It is estimated that more Palestinian children were killed in the first three weeks in Gaza alone (a total of 3,195) than the total number of children killed each year across the world’s conflict zones since 2019.205 The scale of Palestinian child killings in Gaza is such that United Nations chiefs have described it as “a graveyard for children”.206 Indeed, the unprecedented rate of Palestinian child casualties has prompted UNICEF’s spokesperson to call Israel’s attacks on Gaza a “war on children”. He explained:

“Most crises, they impact children terribly because children are the most vulnerable, but most have about a casualty rate of children of around 20 per cent. This is 40. This is twice as lethal to children as many conflicts we’ve seen in the last 15 or 20 years, and unfortunately that is because of the sheer density of population, the indiscriminate nature, and when we see that there’s been not even lip service to safe zones having water and sanitation for children and young girls. That same disregard for children is being shown in the bombardments. That’s why we see 40 per cent of casualties are children. That’s why it’s a war on children.”207

49. Doctors, journalists, teachers, academics and other professionals are also being killed at wholly unprecedented rates. To date, Israel has killed: over 311 doctors, nurses and other health workers, including doctors and ambulance drivers killed on duty;208 103 journalists, amounting to over one per day,209 and more than 73 per cent of the total number of journalists and media workers killed globally in 2023;210 40 civil defence workers — responsible for helping to dig victims out of the rubble — killed while on duty; and over 209 teachers and educational staff.211 144 United Nations employees have also been killed, the “highest number of aid workers killed in UN history in such a short time”.212 It is

203 UNICEF, Press Release: The war on children resumes: Geneva Palais briefing note (1 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/war-children-resumes-geneva-palais-briefing-note; James Elder (UNICEF Spokesperson), “Bearing witness: No safety for children in Gaza”, UNICEF (15 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/blog/bearing-witness-no-safety-children-gaza.
204 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 73 (19 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-73; UN, United Nations Türkiye, Gaza crisis: Aid agencies warn of ‘tragic, avoidable surge’ in child deaths (22 November 2023), https://turkiye.un.org/en/253479-gaza-crisis-aid-agencies-warn-%E2%80%98tragic-avoidable-surge%E2%80%99-child- deaths.
205 Save the Children, Press Release: GAZA: 3,195 children killed in three weeks surpasses annual number of children killed in conflict zones since 2019 (29 October 2023), https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-3195-children-killed-three- weeks-surpasses-annual-number-children-killed-conflict-zones.
206 UNICEF, Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children (31 October 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press- releases/gaza-has-become-graveyard-thousands-children.
207 Interview with James Elder, UNICEF Spokesperson by CNN, “CNN speaks to UNICEF about dire situation in Gaza”,
CNN (15 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/15/exp-unicef-gaza-james-elder-live-121402pseg1- cnni-world.cnn.
208 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; International Federation of Journalists, Ninety-four journalists killed in 2023, says IFJ (8 December 2023), https://www.ifj.org/media- centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/ninety-four-journalists-killed-in-2023-says-ifj.
209 Ibid.
210 UN OHCHR, Killings of journalists and their family members in Gaza – OHCHR press release (14 December 2023), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/killings-of-journalists-and-their-family-members-in-gaza-dec14-2023/.
211 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023),
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update- 78#:~:text=According%20to%20Ministry%20of%20Education,teachers%20were%20injured%20in%20Gaza. 212 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; UN News, UN honours 101 staff killed in Gaza conflict (13 November 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143512.

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estimated that “it will take years to recover the remains of people from beneath the rubble” and that “the costly, technical process will not result in the identification of each body”.213
50. In addition to being killed by Israeli weaponry, Palestinians in Gaza are also at immediate risk of death by starvation, dehydration and disease as a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the extreme difficulties in distributing such limited aid that is permitted to enter the territory due to the decimation of Gaza’s infrastructure in Israel’s military attacks.214

2. Causing Serious Bodily and Mental Harm to Palestinians in Gaza

51. Over 55,243 Palestinians have been wounded in Israel’s military attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the majority of them women and children.215 Burns and amputations are typical injuries,216 with an estimated 1,000 children having lost one or both legs.217 There are reports of Israeli forces using white phosphorus in densely populated areas in Gaza: as the World Health Organization describes, even small amounts of white phosphorus can cause deep and severe burns, penetrating even through bone, and capable of reigniting after initial treatment.218 There are no functioning hospitals in the North of Gaza, in particular, such that injured persons are reduced to “waiting to die”, unable to seek surgery or medical treatment beyond first aid, dying slow, agonising deaths from their injuries or from resultant infections.219

52. The extreme levels of bombardment and lack of any safe areas are also causing severe mental trauma in the Palestinian population in Gaza.220 Even before the latest onslaught, Palestinians in Gaza suffered severe trauma from prior attacks: 80 per cent of Palestinian children experienced higher levels of emotional distress, demonstrating bedwetting (79 per cent) and reactive mutism (59 per cent), and engaging in self-harm (59 per cent), and suicidal thoughts (55 per cent).221 Eleven weeks of relentless bombardment, displacement and loss will necessarily have led to a further increase in those figures, particularly for the estimated tens of thousands of Palestinian children who have lost at least one parent, and those who are the sole surviving members of their families.222 For the families who remain intact

213 Bassam Massou and Maggie Fick, “Gaza death toll: why counting the dead has become a daily struggle”, Reuters (21 December 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/.
214 UN News, Gaza humanitarian disaster heralds ‘breakdown’ of society (8 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144547; UN News, Gaza: Aid access to north entirely blocked as war escalates in the south (4 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144302.
215 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
216 WHO, WHO leads very high-risk joint humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (18 November 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/18-11-2023-who-leads-very-high-risk-joint-humanitarian-mission-to-al-shifa-hospital-in- gaza.
217 UN News, ‘Ten weeks of hell’ for children in Gaza: UNICEF (19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
218 Amnesty International, Israel/OPT identifying the Israeli army’s use of white phosphorus in Gaza (13 October 2023), https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/israel-opt-identifying-the-israeli-armys-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-gaza/; WHO, White Phosphorus (20 October 2023), https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/white-phosphorus.
219 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
220 WHO, Escalation of Violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (13 November 2023), https://apps.who.int/gb/COVID-19/pdf_files/2023/13_11/Item1.pdf; UN United Nations Office at Geneva, ‘Nowhere and no one is safe’ in Gaza, WHO chief tells Security Council (10 November 2023), https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news- media/news/2023/11/87337/nowhere-and-no-one-safe-gaza-who-chief-tells-security-council.
221 Save the Children, Trapped: The impact of 15 years of blockade on the mental health of Gaza’s children (2022),
https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/gaza_blockade_mental_health_palestinian_children_2022.pdf.
222 Save the Children, Children’s Mental Health in Gaza Pushed Beyond Breaking Point After Nearly a Month of Siege and
Bombardment (7 November 2023), https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/childrens-mental-

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or partially intact, “it’s about doing everything you can so your child doesn’t realise that you’ve lost control”.223

53. It is already known that “[r]epeated exposure to conflict and violence, including witnessing and experiencing housing demolition, combined with Israel’s siege of Gaza since 2007” is “associated with high levels of psychological distress among Palestinians”.224 Indeed, the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 2712 (2023) expressed its “deep concern that the disruption of access to education has a dramatic impact on children, and that conflict has lifelong effects on their physical and mental health”.225 That disruption and its “dramatic impact” on children must be considered, in particular, in the context of the number of Palestinian students and educators who have been killed (4,037 and 209 respectively), and wounded (estimated at 7,259),226 and the number of Palestinian schools having been damaged or destroyed (352, or 74 per cent of the schools in the whole of Gaza).227 Medical professionals assess that “[t]he health effects on all Palestinian children, women, men, older people, people with disabilities, and people of marginalised identities are immense”.228 An Emergency Coordinator for Médecins sans Frontières interviewed on her return from five weeks in Gaza described:

“[I]t’s even worse in reality than it looks. It’s – the amount of suffering is just something… incomparable. It’s really unbearable. I’m speechless when I try and think of the future of this children. It’s generations of children who will be handicapped, who will be traumatized. The very children in our mental health program are telling us that they would rather die than continue living in Gaza now.”229

54. Alongside its military campaign, Israel has engaged in the dehumanisation, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of members Palestinians in Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, have reportedly been arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and remain outside in the cold weather, before being forced on to trucks and taken to unknown locations.230 Medics and first responders, in particular, have been repeatedly detained by Israeli forces, with many being detained incommunicado at unknown locations.231 Videos published by Israeli media on Christmas Day appeared

health-in-gaza-deteriorates-one-month-on-; Maram Humaid, “‘War is stupid and I want it to end’: Injured Palestinian children speak”, Al Jazeera (15 December 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/war-is-stupid-and-i-want-it- to-end-injured-palestinian-children- say#:~:text=At%20least%2024%2C000%20children%20have,with%20some%20in%20critical%20condition..
223 UNICEF spokesperson, quoted in: Nedal Samir Hamdouna, Aseel Mousa and Julian Borger, “The plight of ‘WCNSFs’ –
wounded child, no surviving family”, The Guardian (22 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/22/the-plight-of-gazas-wcnsfs-wounded-child-no-surviving-family.
224 Alix Faddoul, Geordan Shannon, Khudejha Ashgar, Yamina Boukari, James Smith and Amy Neilson, “The health dimensions of violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
225 Security Council resolution 2712, The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question, S/RES/2712 (15 November 2023), https://undocs.org/S/RES/2712(2023).
226 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
227 Ibid.
228 Alix Faddoul, Geordan Shannon, Khudejha Ashgar, Yamina Boukari, James Smith and Amy Neilson, “The health dimensions of violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
229 Aya Batrawy, “An aid worker describes the ‘unbearable’ suffering of wounded children in Gaza”, NPR (26 December 2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/12/26/1221743518/an-aid-worker-describes-the-unbearable-suffering-of-wounded- children-in-gaza#:~:text=Palestinian%20health%20officials%20say%20in,trying%20to%20care%20for%20children.
230 UN OHCHR, OHCHR is alarmed at Israeli strikes on or in the vicinities of schools and hospitals in the north of Gaza (9 December 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-office-ohchr-alarmed-israeli- strikes-or-vicinities-schools-and-hospitals-north-gaza.
231 WHO, WHO calls for protection of humanitarian space in Gaza following serious incidents in high-risk mission to transfer patients, deliver health supplies (12 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/12-12-2023-who-calls-for-

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to show hundreds of Palestinians, rounded up inside Al Yarmouk football stadium in Gaza City, “including children, older people and persons with disabilities, being forced to strip to their underwear in degrading conditions”.232 Many Palestinian detainees who have been released report having been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including the deprivation of food, water, shelter and access to toilets;233 the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (‘OCHA’) reports “video footage showing bruises and burns on the … bodies” of detainees.234 Images of mutilated and burned corpses — alongside videos of armed attacks by Israeli soldiers — billed as ‘exclusive content from the Gaza Strip’, are reportedly circulated in Israel via a social media ‘Telegram’ channel called ‘72 Virgins – Uncensored’.235

3. Mass expulsion from homes and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza

55. It is estimated that over 1.9 million Palestinians out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people
— approximately 85 per cent of the population — have been forced from their homes.236 There is nowhere safe for them to flee to, those who cannot leave or refuse to be displaced have been killed or are at extreme risk of being killed in their homes.

56. Israel is repeatedly issuing ‘evacuation orders’ demanding that Palestinian civilians in certain areas of Gaza leave their homes for other areas. The first such order, issued on 13 October 2023 demanded that the 1.1 million Palestinians living or otherwise present in the North of Gaza, including Gaza City, move to the South of Gaza within a 24-hour window.237 The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the evacuation directive, impacting approximately 36 per cent of Gaza’s territory
— combined with the complete siege of Gaza — was not compatible with international humanitarian law.238 The World Health Organization warned that it “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for hospital patients.239 The evacuation was, however, maintained and has been reissued on a number of occasions, including on 28 October 2023,240 ahead of the Israeli announcement of ground operations in

protection-of-humanitarian-space-in-gaza-following-serious-incidents-in-high-risk-mission-to-transfer-patients–deliver- health-supplies; “Gaza healthcare workers ‘taken’ by Israeli forces, says doctor, amid ‘horrendous conditions’ at hospitals”, CNN (13 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/middleeast/gaza-kamal-adwan-hospital-doctors-idf- intl/index.html.
232 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #77 (26 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-77; Quds News Network, @QudsNen, Tweet (4:02 pm, December 25, 2023), https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1739315746163859606.
233 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #69 (14 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-69; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #77 (26 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-77.
234 Ibid.
235 See e.g., Yaniv Kubovich, “Graphic Videos and Incitement: How the IDF Is Misleading Israelis on Telegram”, Haaretz, (12 December 2023), https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/graphic- videos-and-incitement-how-the-idf-is-misleading-israelis-on-telegram/0000018c-5ab5-df2f-adac-febd01c30000.
236 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day #82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
237 Israeli Defence Forces, @IDF, Tweet (6:50am, October 13, 2023), https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1712707301369434398; UN OHCHR, Israel must rescind evacuation order for northern Gaza and comply with international law: UN expert (13 October 2023) https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/israel-must-rescind-evacuation-order-northern-gaza-and- comply-international.
238 ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories: Evacuation order of Gaza triggers catastrophic humanitarian consequences
(13 October 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-evacuation-order-of-gaza-triggers- catastrophic-humanitarian-consequences.
239 WHO, Evacuation orders by Israel to hospitals in northern Gaza are a death sentence for the sick and injured (14 October 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/14-10-2023-evacuation-orders-by-israel-to-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-are-a- death-sentence-for-the-sick-and-injured.
240 Israeli Defence Forces, @IDF, Tweet (2:16 pm, October 28, 2023), https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1718240244129059167.

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northern Gaza, and again thereafter. Israel has also issued more specific evacuation notices, ordering people in certain parts of Gaza City to evacuate to other parts.241 Many of those who are unwilling or unable to evacuate are then bombed in their homes.242

57. Palestinians fleeing the North pursuant to Israel’s evacuation orders were urged to move south along Gaza’s main traffic artery, Salah Al Din Road, on certain days, during certain designated hours. However, there were numerous reported instances of shelling along the routes and of other violence by Israeli forces against evacuating Palestinian civilians, including inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, and killings.243 Israel has also continued bombing south of Wadi Gaza throughout this time, killing many Palestinians who evacuated,244 initially prompting many Palestinian families to seek to return north to at least risk being bombed in the familiar surrounding of their homes.245 Some of those attempting to return north during the temporary pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas were shot at by Israeli forces, who killed at least two people, and injured others.246

58. On 1 December 2023 — the end of the eight-day temporary truce between Israel and Hamas
— Israel began dropping leaflets, urging Palestinians to leave areas in the South to which they had previously been told to flee — an area constituting approximately 30 per cent of Gaza.247 As stated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, “Israel has reneged on promises of safety made to those who complied with its order to evacuate northern Gaza two months ago. Now, they have been forcibly displaced again, alongside the population of southern Gaza”.248 Israel also published a detailed map online, dividing the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small areas.249 The map was ostensibly intended to provide notice of Israeli orders to evacuate individual areas ahead of planned air strikes. However, as noted by OCHA, “the publication does not specify where people should evacuate to”. Moreover, after months of bombardment — amidst the ongoing electricity blackout imposed by Israel since 11 October 2023 and regular telecommunications blackouts250 — most Palestinians in Gaza have little access to electricity to charge phones or other

241 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #57 (2 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-57.
242 Ibid.
243 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40; UN OCHA, Today’s top news: Occupied Palestinian Territory, South Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine (9 November 2023), https://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-news- occupied-palestinian-territory-south-sudan-somalia-ukraine.
244 See e.g. UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #9 (15 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-9; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #10 (16 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-10; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #24 (30 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-24; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #25 (31 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-25.
245 According to UNRWA, approximately 30,000 Palestinians returned North due the lack of any safe zone, see UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #19 (25 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities- gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-19.
246 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #53 (28 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-53.
247 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #61 (6 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-61.
248 UN OHCHR, Israel working to expel civilian population of Gaza, UN expert warns (22 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/israel-working-expel-civilian-population-gaza-un-expert-warns .
249 IDF, “Based on the ethics and values of our military institution, the IDF publishes a list of block numbers to guide Gaza residents in evacuating the targeted areas” (1 December 2023), https://www.idf.il/ar/-اﻟﺪﻓﺎع-ﺟﯿﺶ/اﻹﺳﺮاﺋﯿﻠﻲ-اﻟﺪﻓﺎع-ﺟﯿﺶ اﻹﺳﺮاﺋﯿﻠﻲ/swordsofiron-011223-150/.
250 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #77 (26 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-77.

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devices and no reliable way of accessing the map.251 The United Nations Secretary-General has remarked that “the people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival.”252

59. Palestinians are not safe, even in those “small … slivers”: as United Nations chiefs keep reiterating. “No place is safe”,253 there is “nowhere safe to go”.254 The Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza has pleaded that “[p]eople in Gaza are people … they are not pieces on a checkerboard – many have already been displaced several times. The Israeli Army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes”.255 This is creating terror.256 The increased population density as a result of the evacuation ‘orders’ is also rendering Israeli strikes ever more lethal. On Christmas Eve itself, the Israeli army bombed Al Maghazi Refugee Camp in the Middle Area — an area to which tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled from the North — killing an estimated 86 people, including many women and children, and injuring many others.257 A spokesperson for the OHCHR stated that they were “gravely concerned” that “this latest intense bombardment comes after Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza”.258

60. For many Palestinians, the forced evacuation from their homes is necessarily permanent. Israel has now damaged or destroyed an estimated 355,000 Palestinian homes — amounting to 60 per cent of the entire housing stock in Gaza. The extent of the destruction in the North of Gaza, in particular, has rendered it largely unliveable, with the destruction in the South reaching a similar level. As noted by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, “Gaza’s housing and civilian infrastructure have been razed to the ground, frustrating any realistic prospects for displaced Gazans to return home, repeating a long history of mass forced displacement of Palestinians by Israel”.259 The forced displacements in Gaza are genocidal, in that they are taking place in circumstances calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.260

251 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #56 (1 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-56.
252 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #63 (8 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-63 .
253 UNRWA, Gaza: UNRWA school sheltering displaced families is hit (17 October 2023),
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/gaza-unrwa-school-sheltering-displaced-families-hit
254 UN Secretary-General, Statement attributable to the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General – on the Middle East (4 December 2023), https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2023-12-04/statement-attributable-the-spokesperson-for- the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-the-middle-east%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0.
255 Thomas White, @TomWhiteGaza, Tweet (9:22 AM, December 23, 2023), https://twitter.com/TomWhiteGaza/status/1738475273522205155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw.
256 See, e.g., Israeli strikes on Deir Al Balah on 4 December, preceding civilians being told to flee to these areas, UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #60 (5 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities- gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-60; and on the 12th of December 2023 the City of Rafah, after evacuation orders to Rafah, UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #67 (12 December 2023), , following civilians being told to flee to these areas; Ben van der Merwe, Michelle Inez Simon Olive Enokido-Lineham, and Data & Forensics Unit “Israel said Gazans could flee to this neighbourhood – then it was hit”, Sky News (22 December 2023), https://news.sky.com/story/israel-said-gazans-could-flee-to-this-neighbourhood-then-it-was-hit-13034936. ; Ben van der Merwe, Michelle Inez Simon Olive Enokido-Lineham, and Data & Forensics Unit “Israel said Gazans could flee to this neighbourhood – then it was hit”, Sky News (22 December 2023), https://news.sky.com/story/israel-said-gazans-could-flee- to-this-neighbourhood-then-it-was-hit-13034936.
257 UN OHCHR, Comment by UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango on continued bombardment of Middle
Gaza (26 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/12/comment-un-human-rights-office-spokesperson- seif-magango-continued-bombardment.
258 Ibid.
259 UN OHCHR, Israel working to expel civilian population of Gaza, UN expert warns (22 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/israel-working-expel-civilian-population-gaza-un-expert-warns . 260 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2015, p.71-72, para. 163.

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4. Deprivation of access to adequate food and water to Palestinians in Gaza

61. On 9 October 2023, Israel declared a “complete siege” on Gaza, allowing no electricity, no food, no water and no fuel to enter the strip.261 Although the siege has been partially alleviated since then, with some aid trucks being permitted in since 21 October 2023, this remains wholly insufficient, and well below the pre-October 2023 average of approximately 500 trucks per day.262 Moreover, fuel imports — permitted since 21 November 2023 — are “well below the minimum requirements for essential humanitarian operations”,263 meaning that such limited humanitarian aid as is being allowed in cannot easily be moved around Gaza away from entry points.264 As the Secretary-General has starkly assessed, the level of destruction in Gaza is now so catastrophic that:

“[t]he conditions for the effective delivery of humanitarian aid no longer exist . . . But even if sufficient supplies were permitted into Gaza, intense bombardment and hostilities, Israeli restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications, make it impossible for UN agencies and their partners to reach most of the people in need.”265

62. In light of that, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2720 of 22 December 2023 is widely slated to be ineffectual, despite demanding that “the parties to the conflict allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings” and requesting “that the Coordinator expeditiously establish a United Nations mechanism for accelerating the provision of humanitarian relief consignments”.266 That is because the watered-down resolution fails properly to address the “four elements” identified by the United Nations Secretary-General as necessary for allowing effective aid, capable of assisting Palestinians in Gaza: (1) security (“We are providing aid in a war zone. The intense Israeli bombardment and active combat in densely populated urban areas throughout Gaza threaten the lives of civilians and humanitarian aid workers alike”); (2) staff (“The humanitarian operation requires staff who can live and work in safety. 136 of our colleagues in Gaza have been killed in 75 days — something we have never seen in the history of the United Nations . . . In these appalling conditions, they can only meet a fraction of the needs”); (3) logistics (“Many of our vehicles and trucks were destroyed or left behind following our forced, hurried evacuation from the north, but the Israeli authorities have not allowed any additional trucks to operate in Gaza. This is massively hampering the aid operation. Delivering in the north is extremely dangerous due to active conflict, unexploded ordnance, and heavily damaged roads. Everywhere, frequent communications blackouts make it virtually impossible to coordinate the distribution of aid, and to let people know how to access it”); (4) and the resumption of commercial activities (“Shelves are empty; wallets are empty; stomachs are empty. Just one bakery is operating in the whole of Gaza. I urge the Israeli authorities to

261 Statement by Yoav Gallant, 9 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxvS9VY-t0. Translation by Emmanuel Fabian, “Defense minister announces ‘complete siege’ of Gaza: No power, food or fuel”, The Times of Israel (9 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no- power-food-or-fuel/. Gaza’s only power plant is no longer operational, Israel having reportedly threatened to target the plant if it resumes operation: UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #6 (12 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-6.
262 World Health Organization, WHO Director-General’s remarks at the Emergency Meeting of the United Nations Security Council – 10 November 2023 (10 November 2023), https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director- general-s-remarks-at-the-emergency-meeting-of-the-united-nations-security-council 10-november-2023.
263 UN Palestine, War and health crisis in Gaza a ‘recipe for epidemics’ warns WHO (21 November 2023), https://palestine.un.org/en/253317-war-and-health-crisis-gaza-%E2%80%98recipe-epidemics%E2%80%99-warns-who.
264 MSF, Inside Gaza: Staying alive is only a matter of luck (18 December 2023), https://www.msf.org/inside-gaza-staying-
alive-only-matter-luck.
265 United Nations Secretary-General, People of Gaza ‘Being Told to Move like Human Pinballs’, but Nowhere Is Safe, Secretary-General Tells Security Council, Pleading for Humanitarian Ceasefire (8 December 2023), https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm22076.doc.htm (emphasis added).
266 Security Council Resolution 2720, S/RES/2720, (22 December 2023), https://undocs.org/S/RES/2720(2023).

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lift restrictions on commercial activity immediately. We are ready to scale up our cash grant support to vulnerable families — the most effective form of humanitarian aid. But in Gaza, there is very little to buy”).267 Having regard to those factors, the Secretary-General was clear to advise that focusing on the number of trucks permitted into Gaza daily was misleading:

“Many people are measuring the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza based on the number of trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent, the UN and our partners that are allowed to unload aid across the border. This is a mistake. The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza.”268

63. It is for that reason that United Nations Security Council Resolution 2720 — which fails properly to address the situation on the ground, including by failing to call for a ceasefire — has been described by a former senior UNRWA official as “a greenlight for continued genocide”, marked by “the wholesale and industrial ignoring of international humanitarian law”.269 Oxfam has called the “failure to call for a ceasefire” in the resolution “incomprehensible and utterly callous” as well as a “profound dereliction of duty” on the part of the United Nations Security Council,270 having regard to the extreme seriousness of the situation in Gaza.

64. Israel has now pushed the Palestinian population in Gaza to the brink of famine, with international agencies warning that “the risk of famine is real” (World Food Programme or ‘WFP’) and that it is “increasing each day” (IPC).271 Most of the Palestinian people in Gaza are now starving, with levels of starvation rising daily.272 The World Health Organization warns that “[h]unger is ravaging Gaza”.273 As the United Nations Secretary-General has stated, “[f]our out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza”,274 with Palestinians in Gaza facing the highest levels of acute food insecurity ever classified by the IPC.275 UNRWA’s Commissioner-General describes “[d]esperate, hungry and terrified” people, who are now “stopping aid trucks, taking the food, and eating it right away.”276 The World Health Organization has stated that “[a]n unprecedented 93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food and high levels of malnutrition”. They say that “[a]t least 1 in 4 households are facing ‘catastrophic conditions’: experiencing an extreme lack of

267 UN OCHA, Remarks to the media by the Secretary-General (22 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/remarks-media-secretary-general.
268 Ibid (emphasis added).
269 “UNSC resolution ‘greenlighting genocide’: Former UNRWA official”, Al Jazeera English (22 December 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT0yW6kS3Uo.
270 Oxfam, Oxfam: UNSC’s failure to call for a ceasefire “utterly callous” (19 December 2023),
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/oxfam-unscs-failure-call-ceasefire-utterly-callous.
271 WFP Media, @WFP_Media, Tweet (10:35 pm, December 9, 2023), https://twitter.com/WFP_Media/status/1733616413636530607; and Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Gaza Strip: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for 24 November – 7 December 2023 and Projection for 8 December 2023 – 7 February 2024 (21 December 2023), https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1156749/?iso3=PSE . 272 UN Web TV, Press conference by Carl Skau (World Food Program), 14 December 2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k13/k139z8z7t5; and Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Gaza Strip: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for 24 November – 7 December 2023 and Projection for 8 December 2023 – 7 February 2024 (21
December 2023), https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1156749/?iso3=PSE.
273 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 274 UN OCHA, Remarks to the media by the Secretary-General (22 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/remarks-media-secretary-general.
275 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #75 (21 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-75.
276 UNRWA, Remarks by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini at Geneva Press Conference (14 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/remarks-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini- geneva-press.

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food and starvation and having resorted to selling off their possessions and other extreme measures to afford a simple meal”. They caution that “[s]tarvation, destitution and death are evident”,277 calling Israel’s actions in cutting off Gaza “from water, food, anything which is necessary for any sort of life” “a cruel campaign”, brought “against the whole population of Gaza”.278 Their Emergency Medical Teams Coordinator explained that “every single person” he speaks to is hungry: “Everywhere we go, people are asking us for food even in the hospital, I walked around in the emergency department, somebody with an open bleeding wound, an open fracture; they asked for food. If that’s not an indicator of the desperation, I don’t know what is”.279 The situation is such that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has felt the need to caution that “[s]tarvation must never be a means or result of warfare”.280 Oxfam and Human Rights Watch have gone even further in expressly accusing Israel of using starvation “as a weapon of war” against the Palestinian people in Gaza.281

65. The conditions created by the siege are exacerbated by Israel’s continuing strikes on Gaza, including on its bakeries, water facilities and last remaining operating mill, and its razing of agricultural lands, crops, orchards and greenhouses.282 By 16 November 2023, the food infrastructure in Gaza was already considered “no longer functional”, given shop and market closures, the lack of essential food items, and the inflated price of the scarce food available.283 Bread is scarce or non-existent,284 with food scarcity leading to significant price hikes, and the price of flour increasing by 65 per cent at one stage.285 Livestock that has not been killed is facing starvation, and crops are damaged or destroyed.286 Many Palestinians are resorting to foraging due to hunger, collecting spilled flour from aid distributions from the road, or other unsafe food practices.287

277 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 278 Statement of Christian Lindmeier (World Health Organization spokesperson), 8 December 2023: UN Web TV, Geneva Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR, ICRC, 8 December 2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c (emphasis added).
279 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
280 UN News, Gaza crisis: Starvation must never be allowed to happen, says UN rights chief (22 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145047.
281 Oxfam, Starvation as weapon of war being used against Gaza civilians (25 October 2023), https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/starvation-as-weapon-of-war-being-used-against-gaza-civilians/; and HRW, Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza (18 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel- starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza.
282 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #35 (10 November 2023),
https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-35- enarhe; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40; and HRW, Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza (18 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war- gaza.
283 WFP, Gaza faces widespread hunger as food systems collapse, warns WFP (16 November 2023), https://www.wfp.org/news/gaza-faces-widespread-hunger-food-systems-collapse-warns-wfp.
284 Ibid.
285 Action Against Hunger, Action Against Hunger calls for permanent ceasefire in Gaza (1 December 2023), https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/press-releases/action-against-hunger-calls-for-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza/. 286 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #51 (26 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-51.
287 WFP, Food Security Update for internally displaced populations in Southern Gaza Strip (14 December 2023), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000155014/download/; and “Children collect flour from the ground in Gaza”, Middle East Eye (23 December 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYpZ_aU_Ho.

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66. Water is also severely depleted. Israel continues to cut off piped water for the North of Gaza,288 and the North’s water desalination plant is non-functioning.289 From 15 October 2023, Israel began piping a small amount of water to the South, in part to “push the civilian population to the southern [part of the] Strip”.290 The damage from Israeli airstrikes and shelling has also rendered most of the water system inoperable.291 The World Food Programme has reported that there is only 1.5 to 1.8 litres of clean water available per person per day, for all uses (drinking, washing, food preparation, sanitation and hygiene).292 This is far below the ‘emergency threshold’ of 15 litres per day for “war or famine-like conditions”, or the ‘survival threshold’ of 3 litres per day.293 The World Health Organization Emergency Medical Teams Coordinator described the scene at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, where medical staff were struggling to cope with “no food, no fuel, no water”, stating that “it looks more like a hospice now than a hospital. But a hospice implies a level of care that the doctors and nurses are unable to provide . . . It’s pretty unbearable to see somebody with casts on multiple limbs, external fixator on multiple limbs, without drinking water and almost no IV fluids available”. He said that “patients were crying out in pain, but they were also crying out for us to give them water”. He urged that “[t]he time is now. We are dealing with starving people now, adults, children, it’s unbearable”.294

67. The lack of water is severely impacting lactating women, in particular, who, even if undertaking only a moderate amount of exercise, require a supply of 7.5 litres of water a day for drinking, sanitation and hygiene to keep themselves and their babies healthy.295 Young mothers — unable to breastfeed for lack of proper nutrition arising from the food scarcity — have been forced to use contaminated water to prepare formula — where it is available — risking disease in vulnerable babies. In parallel, the chronic unavailability of formula is also risking the lives of newborn babies, who are already reportedly dying from avoidable causes due to the absence of medical care, food, water and adequate sanitation.296 The impacts of malnourishment on older children may also be particularly grave and long-lasting, preventing them from reaching their full potential in terms of physical growth, cognitive capacity,

288 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day #82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82.
289 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #66 (11 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-66.
290 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #9 (15 October 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-9; and Amy Spiro, Jacob Magid and Agencies, “Israel says it is restarting water supply to southern Gaza Strip”, The Times of Israel (15 October 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-is-restarting-water-supply-to-southern-gaza-strip/.
291 UN News, Barely a drop of safe water to drink in Gaza, UN aid agency warns (20 December 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972; and Anera, Gaza Ceasefire: A Welcome Pause, But Far From Enough (23 November 2023), https://www.anera.org/blog/pause-in-gaza-war-not-enough/.
292 WFP, Gaza Food Security Assessment (6 December 2023), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-
0000154766/download/.
293 UNICEF, Gaza’s Children running out of time: water shortages spark disease alarm (21 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/gazas-children-running-out-time-water-shortages-spark-disease-alarm; and UNICEF, ‘Barely a drop to drink’: children in the Gaza Strip do not access 90 per cent of their normal water use (20 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/barely-drop-drink-children-gaza-strip-do-not-access-90-cent-their-normal- water-use.
294 UN Web TV, Geneva Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR, ICRC, 8 December 2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c.
295 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006 – Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis (14 December 2012), https://www.undp.org/libya/publications/human-development-report-2006-beyond-scarcity-power-poverty-and- global-water-crisis .
296 CARE International, “70% of those killed in Gaza are women and children” CARE warns the Security Council (15 November 2023), https://www.care-international.org/news/70-those-killed-gaza-are-women-and-children-care-warns-un- security-council; Oxfam, Press Release: Babies dying from preventable causes in besieged Gaza – Oxfam (23 November 2023), https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam.

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school performance and productivity later in life.297 Many health workers also lack sufficient food and water to continue working, which will also necessarily further impact on health and mortality rates.298

68. This is all happening to a population that was already extremely vulnerable as a result of Israel’s prior actions against Gaza. Israel has long hindered the creation and repair of water installation and desalinisation plants in Gaza, such that 95 per cent of water from Gaza’s sole aquifer was already unsuitable for consumption prior to 7 October 2023.299 Through its 16-year blockade, Israel also severely impacted water supply.300 Its repeated attacks on Gaza and its restrictions on repairing the degraded wastewater infrastructure damaged the soil, rendering agriculture challenging.301 Israel also restricted access by Palestinians in Gaza to up to 35 per cent of agricultural land and up to 85 per cent of Gaza’s fishing waters.302 Consequently, over 68 per cent of households (around 1.3 million people) were severely or moderately food insecure prior to 7 October 2023, with 58 per cent of the population dependent on humanitarian aid.303 7,685 children under five years of age in Gaza were suffering from life-threatening ‘wasting’, the deadliest form of child malnutrition.304 The impact on Palestinian children of Israel’s forced starvation of Gaza will necessarily be serious and long-lasting.

69. Recent reports of Israeli plans to flood tunnels in Gaza with seawater is of extreme concern, given the risks it would pose of further degradation and collapse of Gaza’s water and sewage infrastructure, and of long-lasting contamination of Gaza’s aquifer and soil.305 Environmental experts have warned that the strategy “risks causing an ecological catastrophe” that would leave Gaza with no drinkable water, devastate what little agriculture is possible and “ruin the conditions of life of everyone in Gaza”.306 The United Nations Special Rapporteur for the right to water is reported to have compared

297 Global Nutrition Cluster – State of Palestine, Call for Immediate Action: Child deaths in the Gaza Strip due to disease and malnutrition can and must be prevented (3 December 2023), https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2023- 11/SoP%20Nutrtion%20Cluster%20advocacy_final.pdf
298 UN Web TV, Geneva Press Briefing: WHO, FAO, UNHCR, ICRC, 8 December 2023, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1eez0ym7c.
299 United Nations, Human Rights Council, The allocation of water resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem A/HRC/48/43 (15 October 2021), https://undocs.org/A/HRC/48/43; Amnesty, The Occupation of Water (29 November 2017), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/; EWASH, Israel’s control of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (26 September 2012), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied- palestinian-territory/israels-control-water-occupied-palestinian-territories.
300 United Nations, Human Rights Council, The allocation of water resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem A/HRC/48/43 (15 October 2021), https://undocs.org/A/HRC/48/43.
301 UN FAO, Farming without Land, Fishing without Water: Gaza Agriculture Sector Struggles to Survive (25 May 2010),
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205890/.
302 UN Palestine, United Nations Common Country Analysis for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (16 August 2022), https://palestine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022- 09/United%20Nations%20Common%20Country%20Analysis%20for%20the%20Occupied%20Palestinian%20Territory_16
_August_2022.pdf.
303 UN OCHA, Food insecurity in the oPt: 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza strip are food insecure (14 December 2018), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/food-insecurity-opt-13-million-palestinians-gaza-strip-are-food-insecure; UN OCHA, Humanitarian Response Plan OPT (January 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/HRP_2023.pdf.
304 Global Nutrition Cluster – State of Palestine, Call for Immediate Action: Child deaths in the Gaza Strip due to disease and malnutrition can and must be prevented (3 December 2023), https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/ files/2023-11/SoP%20Nutrtion%20Cluster%20advocacy_final.pdf.
305 UN OCHA, Humanitarian Coordinator Lynn Hastings briefs the press in Geneva (13 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-coordinator-lynn-hastings-briefs-press-geneva; Emmanuel Fabian, “IDF trial of flooding Hamas tunnels with seawater proves successful, ToI told”, The Times of Israel (15 December 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-trial-of-flooding-hamas-tunnels-with-seawater-proves-successful-toi-told.
306 Damien Gayle and Nina Lakhani, “Flooding Hamas tunnels the seawater risks ‘ruining basic life in Gaza’, says expert”, The Guardian (23 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/23/israel-flooding-hamas-tunnels- seawater-risks-ruining-basic-life-gaza-expert.

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the plan to the mythical Roman ‘salting’ of the fields of Carthage to prevent crop growth and render the
territory uninhabitable.307

70. Experts are now predicting that more Palestinians in Gaza may die from starvation and disease than airstrikes,308 and yet Israel is intensifying its bombing campaign, precluding the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians. It is clear that Israel is through its actions and policies in Gaza, deliberately inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.309

5. Deprivation of access to adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza

71. The majority of the 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza are seeking shelter in UNRWA facilities, which primarily consist of schools and tents.310 These locations are themselves not safe: to date — and despite Israel having been provided with the coordinates of all United Nations facilities311
— Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children seeking shelter in UNRWA facilities, and injured over a thousand.312

72. The situation in UNRWA shelters was described as follows by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in his 7 December 2023 letter of which the United Nations General Assembly took note in its Resolution ES-10/22 of 12 December 2023:
“Today, as a result of Israel’s military operation, nearly 1.2 million civilians are sheltering in UNRWA premises. The Agency has become the primary platform for humanitarian assistance to over 2.2 million people in Gaza — a platform on the verge of collapse.
UNRWA is, as of today, still operational in Gaza, though just barely. Our staff are still operating health centers, managing shelters, and supporting traumatized people, some arriving carrying their dead children. We are still distributing food, even though the corridors and courtyards of our premises are too crowded to walk through. Our staff take their children to work so they know they are safe or can die together. More than 130 UNRWA staff are confirmed killed in bombardments, most with their families; the number might rise by the time you read this. At least 70% of UNRWA staff are displaced, and lack food, water and adequate shelter. We are hanging on by our fingertips. If UNRWA collapses, humanitarian assistance in Gaza will also collapse.
The humanitarian situation is now untenable. Conditions in Gaza were already appalling when I stayed overnight two weeks ago. I witnessed constant explosive munitions from sky, land and sea, and the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure.

307 Ibid.
308 Save the Children, Press Release: Deaths by starvation and disease may top deaths by bombs as families squeezed into deadly “safe zones”, two months into Gaza crisis (9 December 2023), https://www.savethechildren.net/news/deaths- starvation-and-disease-may-top-deaths-bombs-families-squeezed-deadly-safe-zones-two.
309 Ibid.
310 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day 82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82; UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (22 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east- Jerusalem.
311 UNRWA, Gaza: UNRWA school sheltering displaced families hit (17 October 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/gaza-unrwa-school-sheltering-displaced-families-hit.
312 UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (22 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank- including-east-Jerusalem.

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This week, the Israeli military forces have instructed people to move further South, forcing Gaza’s population into an ever-shrinking space. Shelters are shockingly overcrowded, with high risk of epidemic illness. In these overfull and unsanitary spaces, more than 700 people use a single toilet, women give birth (an average of 25 per day), and people nurse open wounds. Tens of thousands sleep in courtyards and streets. People burn plastic to stay warm. Nearly 90 UNRWA premises, including schools, have been hit or impacted by munitions, killing over 270 internally displaced people, many this week. In Gaza as a whole, over 16,000 people, two thirds of whom are women and children, are reported killed during bombardments. Large swathes of Gaza are destroyed and uninhabitable.
The premise of UNRWA’s mandate — to provide services to Palestine Refugees until there is a political solution — is at great risk: without safe shelter and aid, civilians in Gaza risk death or will be forced to Egypt and beyond. Forced displacement out of Gaza may end prospects for the political solution that is intrinsic to UNRWA’s mandate, with grave risks for regional peace and security. A forced displacement beyond Palestinian land, reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, must be prevented.
In my 35 years working in complex emergencies, I have never written such a letter —
predicting the killing of my staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfil.”313

73. Those Palestinians with a place in UNRWA shelters are “the lucky ones”, according to UNRWA’s Commissioner-General.314 Others attempt to find shelter in the homes of relatives or strangers, in government facilities, hospital courtyards, or makeshift camps, without any access to food, water or sanitary facilities, or simply live and sleep in the streets, exposed to the elements. UNRWA’s shelters now have on average 486 people using a single toilet,315 while other locations where people are seeking to shelter often have no toilets at all.316 Palestinians are unable to maintain personal hygiene, with menstruating girls and women being particularly impacted.317 The World Health Organization estimates that there is on average “only one shower for every 4500 people”.318 Newborns in shelters are reportedly dying from avoidable causes due to the absence of adequate sanitation, food, water and medical care.319

74. Since the Commissioner-General of UNRWA wrote to the President of the United Nations General Assembly on 7 December 2023, advising that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was already “untenable”,320 over one million Palestinians have continued to be forced by Israeli military ‘orders’ into the Rafah Governorate near the Egyptian border. The area has become the “epicentre of displacement”, with an estimated “fourfold” increase in its population density, thought to now exceed

313 UNRWA, Letter from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to the UN General Assembly President Mr. Dennis Francis (7 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/un-unrwa/letter-unrwa-commissioner-general- philippe-lazzarini-un-general-assembly (emphasis added).
314 UN News, ‘Desperate, hungry, terrified’: Gazans stopping aid trucks in search of food (14 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144807.
315 UNRWA, UNRWA Situation Report #54 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
(18 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-54-situation-gaza-strip-and-west- bank-including-east-Jerusalem.
316 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #69 (14 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-69 .
317 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UNFPA Palestine Situation Report Issue 4 (11 December 2023), https://palestine.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/unfpa_situation_report_4_december_11.pdf.
318 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza. 319 Oxfam, Press Release: Babies dying from preventable causes in besieged Gaza – Oxfam (23 November 2023), https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam.
320 UNRWA, Letter from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to the UN General Assembly President Mr. Dennis Francis (7 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/un-unrwa/letter-unrwa-commissioner-general- philippe-lazzarini-un-general-assembly.

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12,000 people per square kilometre.321 OCHA is warning there is “no empty space left for people to shelter, not even in the streets and other open areas”.322 Al-Mawasi — a sandy, barren strip of approximately 14 square kilometres along the Mediterranean Sea, without aid provisions, water, food or sanitation — the so-called ‘safe zone’ to which Israel has told Palestinians in Gaza to flee, is anything but safe. As UNRWA has underscored “unilaterally-declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe”.323 The Head of Humanitarian Policy at Save the Children International has warned: “People are in overcrowded shelters in makeshift tents. There is no access to clean water, there are crumbling sanitation facilities. We’ve heard of children starving in the so-called ‘safe zone’ of Al- Mawasi.”324

75. Throughout Gaza, there are acute shortages in warm clothes, bedding, blankets and critical non- food items, with people heavily dependent on salvaged wood and waste for cooking and warmth, raising the risk of respiratory diseases.325 There is also an acute shortage of clean water, severely impacting not just the ability to hydrate, but to wash, clean and cook.326 The siege and infrastructure damage from bombing continue to prevent adequate water treatment and distribution, and sewage management, with flooding exponentially increasing the risks of the spread of infectious diseases amongst displaced Palestinians.327 On 20 December 2023, the Director General of the World Health Organization warned that “Gaza is already experiencing soaring rates of infectious disease outbreaks. Diarrhoea cases among children aged under 5 are 25 times what they were before the conflict. Such illnesses can be lethal for malnourished children, more so in the absence of functioning health services”.328 Sewage is flowing into the streets where Palestinians are living, as it can no longer be managed.329 “Everywhere you look, is congested with makeshift shelters. Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry and terrified.”330 These conditions — deliberately inflicted by Israel — are calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinian group in Gaza.

6. Deprivation of adequate medical assistance to Palestinians in Gaza

321 UNRWA Situation Report #56 On the Situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (22 December 2023), https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-56-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank- including-east-Jerusalem; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #75 (21 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-75.
322 UN News, Gaza humanitarian disaster heralds ‘breakdown’ of society (8 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144547.
323 Julian Borger and Ruth Michaelson, “IDF instructions on Gaza refuge zones cruel ‘mirage’, say aid agencies”, The Guardian (7 December 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/idf-israel-gaza-refuge-zones-cruel-mirage- say-aid-agencies .
324 Ibid.
325 ICRC, Israel and the occupied territories: The ICRC urges protection for Gaza civilians evacuating and staying behind (12 November 2023), https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-icrc-urges-protection-gaza-civilians- evacuating-and-staying; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #71 (16 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-71 .
326 WFP, Gaza Food Security Assessment (6 December 2023), https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP- 0000154766/download/.
327 UN News, Barely a drop of safe water to drink in Gaza, UN aid agency warns (20 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #76 (22 December 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and- israel-flash-update-76-enarhe.
328 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, @DrTedros, Tweet (7:05 pm,
December 20, 2023), https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1737549701728092481.
329 UN News, Gaza: Lack of fuel threatening to shut down entire humanitarian operation (16 November 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143672.
330 UN News, Barely a drop of safe water to drink in Gaza, UN aid agency warns (20 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144972.

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76. Almost above all else, Israel’s military assault on Gaza has been an attack on Gaza’s medical healthcare system, indispensable to the life and survival of the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel “has declared an ‘unrelenting war’ on the health system in Gaza”, as observed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. In a statement issued on 7 December 2023, the United Nations expert noted that “[t]he healthcare infrastructure in the Gaza strip has been completely obliterated” and that “[w]e bear witness to a shameful war on healthcare workers”. She warned that “[w]e are in the darkest time for the right to health in our lifetimes” and that “[w]e have descended into depths from which we must quickly emerge”.331

77. In a letter to the United Nations Security Council on 4 December 2023, the International President of Médecins Sans Frontières wrote:332

“Israel has shown a blatant and total disregard for the protection of Gaza’s medical facilities. We are watching as hospitals are turned into morgues and ruins. These supposedly protected facilities are being bombed, are being shot at by tanks and guns, encircled and raided, killing patients and medical staff. The World Health Organization has documented 203 attacks on health care that have led to at least 22 fatalities and 59 injuries of health workers on duty. Medical staff, including our own, are utterly exhausted and in despair. They have had to amputate limbs from children suffering from severe burns without anaesthesia or sterilised surgical tools. Due to forcible evacuations by Israeli soldiers, some doctors have had to leave patients behind after facing the unimaginable choice between their lives or those of their patients. There is no justification for the atrocious attacks on healthcare…
Four of our MSF staff have been killed; many more have lost family members. Numerous other colleagues have been injured. Other humanitarian organisations have reported dozens of their staff have been killed…
Northern Gaza is being erased from the map. The health system has collapsed… Our emergency team in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, has reported massive influxes of wounded after intense bombing. Last Saturday, 60 dead and 213 injured people arrived at the emergency room of Al- Aqsa hospital. These strikes are also hitting overcrowded, squalid refugee camps, where people are barely surviving on the sparse humanitarian aid available. If the bombs do not get them, infectious diseases and starvation will…
“We did what we could. Remember us.” These are the words our Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, who has since been killed in a hospital strike, wrote on a Gaza hospital whiteboard normally used for planning surgeries. When the guns fall silent and the true scale of devastation is revealed, will the Council and its members be able to say the same?”

78. Since early December 2023, Israeli army attacks on Palestinian hospitals have only increased. The Israeli army has continued to attack and besiege hospitals and healthcare centres; to deprive them of electricity and fuel crucial to maintain effective functioning and equipment; to obstruct them from receiving medical supplies, food and water; to force their evacuations and closure; and effectively to destroy them. The North of Gaza, without any functioning hospital for a week, has only four severely challenged partially functioning hospitals available now.333 Israel has transformed Palestinian hospitals

331 UN OHCHR, Gaza: UN expert condemns ‘unrelenting war’ on health system amid airstrikes on hospitals and health workers (7 December 2023) https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/gaza-un-expert-condemns-unrelenting-war- health-system-amid-airstrikes.
332 Médecins Sans Frontières (‘MSF’), Gaza: “It must all stop now”, Letter to UN Security Council (4 December 2023), https://www.msf.org/letter-gaza-un-security-council.
333 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.

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in Gaza from places of healing into “death zone[s]”,334 and scenes of “bloodbath”,335 “death, devastation and despair”.336 Many hospitals have now become mere “place[s] where people are waiting to die”.337 The World Health Organisation describes the situation as “unconscionable” and “beyond belief”.338

79. There have now been more than 238 attacks on ‘healthcare’ in Gaza, in which over 61 hospitals and other healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed.339 Only 13 out of 36 hospitals and 18 out of 72 healthcare centres are still even functioning — some of them barely — despite the overwhelming number of people injured in Israeli attacks.340 The Israeli army has targeted hospital generators, hospital solar panels,341 and other life-saving equipment, such as oxygen stations and water tanks.342 It has also targeted ambulances, medical convoys and first responders.343 311 health workers have been killed (on average four killed per day),344 including at least 22 health workers killed on duty.345 Those killed include some of Gaza’s most experienced and skilled doctors including Dr Hani Al Haitham, Head of the Emergency Section at Al Shifa hospital, killed with his wife, Dr Sameera Ghirafi, and their children;346 Dr Mohammad Dabbour, Head of Pathology at Al Shifa Hospital, reportedly killed with his son and father while attempting to flee Gaza City;347 Dr Medhat Saidam, plastic reconstructive burn surgeon at Al Shifa Hospital and Dr Hammam Alloh, nephrologist at Al Shifa Hospital were killed in attacks on their family homes.348 Interviewed shortly before his death, Dr Alloh responded as follows when asked why he was not fleeing the North to the South: “If I go who would treat my patients? We are not animals, we have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?”.349 The systematic destruction of Palestinian hospitals and the killing of

334 WHO, WHO leads very high-risk joint humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (18 November 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/18-11-2023-who-leads-very-high-risk-joint-humanitarian-mission-to-al-shifa-hospital-in- gaza.
335 UN News, UN workers delivering aid to Gaza hospital describe ‘bloodbath’ in overflowing emergency department (16 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144877.
336 WHO, WHO appalled by latest attack on Indonesian Hospital in Gaza (20 November 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/media/news/who-appalled-by-latest-attack-on-indonesian-hospital-in-gaza.html.
337 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017. 338 UN News, ‘Ten weeks of hell’ for children in Gaza: UNICEF (19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
339 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update Issue 17 (14 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-
_issue_17_for_review.pdf?ua=1.
340 Ibid.
341 The organisation Forensic Architecture has compiled an analysis of the various attacks on Gaza’s hospitals: Forensic Architecture, Destruction of Medical Infrastructure in Gaza (20 December 2023), https://forensic- architecture.org/investigation/destruction-of-medical-infrastructure-in-gaza.
342 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #37 (12 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-37.
343 MSF, MSF convoy attack in Gaza: All elements point to Israeli army responsibility (1 December 2023), https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/msf-convoy-attack-gaza-all-elements-point-israeli-army-responsibility ; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #28 (3 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-28.
344 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – Reported Impact | Day #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-70.
345 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update, issue 14 (23 November 2023),
https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_NOV24.pdf?ua=1.
346 Asmahan Qarjouli, “Israel ‘brutally murdered’ Al-Shifa emergency dept chief in Gaza”, Doha News (19 December 2023), https://dohanews.co/israel-brutally-murdered-al-shifa-emergency-dept-chief-in-gaza/.
347 Weronika Strzyżyńska and Harriet Sherwood, “Doctors, poets, families, babies: victims of Israel’s war on Gaza”, The Guardian (23 October 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/doctors-poets-families-babies-victims-of- israels-war-on-gaza.
348 Vanessa Romo, “Doctors are among the many dead in Gaza. These are their stories”, NPR (16 November 2023), https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1213307710/gaza-doctors-al-shifa-hospital.
349 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72.

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specialist Palestinian doctors is not only impacting the care of Palestinians in Gaza at present, it is also undermining the prospect of a future Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, destroying its capacity to rebuild and to care effectively for the Palestinian people in Gaza.

80. At least 570 Palestinians have been killed at hospitals and healthcare centres in Gaza and a further 746 have been injured.350 They include patients and internally displaced Palestinians, who vainly sought sanctuary on or near hospital grounds, killed by Israeli strikes or snipers.351 Palestinian mothers have been killed in maternity hospitals, and Palestinian children in children’s hospitals.352 Even those tending to and counting the dead –– like Saeed Al Shorbaji, Director of Nasser Hospital’s mortuary –– have themselves been killed.353 Some have been victims of Israeli attacks multiple times over, like 12- year old Dina Abu Mohsen –– interviewed by UNICEF after losing her parents, two siblings and her leg in an Israeli strike on her home –– she was then killed herself when the Israeli army shelled the hospital where she was being treated.354

81. Other Palestinians have died as a direct result of Israel cutting off electricity and fuel to hospitals; they include five premature babies and 40 ICU and kidney patients at Al Shifa hospital.355 Other Palestinians have died as a direct result of Israel’s forced evacuation of hospitals, including at least four babies in Al Nasr hospital, whose tiny bodies were found weeks later –– during a temporary ceasefire –– decomposing in their hospital beds.356 Hospital courtyards have been turned into sites of mass graves: 357 at Al-Shifa Hospital, it was medics themselves who had to dig a mass grave for the decomposing bodies of 179 patients and others.358 Israeli bulldozers excavated and exhumed a hospital mass grave in the besieged Kamal Adwan hospital on 16 December, where 26 Palestinians had been buried.359 Speaking to CNN, Hossam Abu Safiya, Head of Paediatric Services at Kamal Adwan

350 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update Issue 17 (14 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-
_issue_17_for_review.pdf?ua=1.
351 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #38 (13 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-38; and UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel- flash-update-72.
352 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #55 (30 November 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-55.; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #66 (11 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-66.
353 Bassam Massou and Maggie Fick, “Gaza death toll: why counting the dead has become a daily struggle”, Reuters (21 December 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/.
354 UNICEF, @UNICEF, Tweet (10:28 pm, December 17, 2023),
https://twitter.com/UNICEF/status/1736876099890565478.
355 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #42 (17 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-42.; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #44 (19 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash- update-44.
356 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #55 (30 November 2023) https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-55; Human Rights Watch (HRW), “Birth and Death Intertwined in Gaza Strip: Maternity Care Facilities Gravely Affected by Strikes, Blockade (1 December 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/01/birth-and-death-intertwined-gaza-strip.
357 See e.g., the Al Yaman Al Saeed Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp: UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #65 (10 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-65. 358 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #40 (15 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40.
359 Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (‘PCHR’), Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Condemn the Serious Israeli Violations at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Northern Gaza (21 December 2023), https://alhaq.org/advocacy/22388.html.

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Hospital, stated, “[t]he soldiers dug up the graves this morning and dragged the bodies with bulldozers, then crushed the bodies with the bulldozers … I have never seen such a thing before”.360

82. United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES10/21 of 27 October 2023 –– calling for the “respect and protection … of all civilian and humanitarian facilities, including hospitals and other medical facilities … as well as all of humanitarian and medical personnel”361 –– has been resolutely ignored. Doctors and medics have continued not only to be killed but also to be rounded up and disappeared by the Israeli authorities.362 They include the General Director of Al Shifa and his staff, seized and held incommunicado since 23 November 2023.363

83. Those wounded by Israel in Gaza are being deprived of life-saving medical care:364 Gaza’s healthcare system –– already crippled by years of blockade and prior attacks by Israel –– is unable to cope with the sheer scale of the injuries, now at 55,243 injured including at least 8,663 children.365 There are reports of severely injured patients walking for miles trying to find help. UNICEF highlighted the case of a boy from the North “whose leg had been blown off in the violence”, who “had spent ‘three or four days’ trying to reach the south, delayed by checkpoints … The smell [of decomposition] was clear … and that boy had shrapnel all over. Potentially, he was blind and had burns to 50 per cent of his body”.366 OCHA identified the case of a woman with shrapnel injuries in her abdomen, who had walked from the North to the South pressing a towel against her wounds.367 Palestinians have had to evacuate their sick, disabled and wounded in a forced march from the North to the South –– and then again from the South onwards –– dragging hospital beds behind cars, pushing wheelchairs, raising them on makeshift stretchers, or simply carrying them in their arms.368

84. Those hospitals which are still functioning are described as scenes from a “horror movie”.369
The critical shortages of staff and supplies –– including anaesthetics, analgesics, medicine and

360 Abeer Salman and Kareem Khadder, “Doctors accuse Israeli troops of desecrating bodies and shooting civilians at hospital Israel says was Hamas ‘command center’”, CNN (23 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/23/middleeast/kamal-adwan-hospital-gaza-israel-abuse-allegations-intl- cmd/index.html.
361 UNGA Res ES10/21, Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations, A/RES/ES–10/21 (27 October 2023), https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4025940?ln=en.
362 WHO, WHO calls for protection of humanitarian space in Gaza following serious incidents in high-risk mission to transfer patients, deliver health supplies (12 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/12-12-2023-who-calls-for- protection-of-humanitarian-space-in-gaza-following-serious-incidents-in-high-risk-mission-to-transfer-patients–deliver- health-supplies.
363 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #48 (23 November 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-48.
364 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
365 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – Reported Impact | Day #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-70; UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – reported impact | Day #82 (27 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza- strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82 .
366 UN News, Gaza doctors ‘terrified’ of deadly disease outbreak as aid teams race to deliver (28 November 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1144032.
367 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #45 (20 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-45.
368 “Panic as Gaza’s al-Shifa evacuates, Israel army denies ordering it to do so”, Al Jazeera (18 November 2023),
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/18/israel-gives-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-one-hour-to-evacuate.
369 UN Web TV, UNICEF, WHO, OHCHR, UNHCR – Press Briefing: Rob Holand, Emergency Coordinator WHO (1 December 2023), https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1r/k1ro1d247a (at 22:15).

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disinfectants370 –– have led not only to otherwise unnecessary amputations of limbs,371 but also to amputations without anaesthesia, often undertaken by flashlight.372 Pregnant women are also being subjected to caesareans without anaesthetic.373 Patients are being treated on dirty floors covered with blood, with family members having to stand holding saline bags, where saline is even available.374 There are insufficient staff and resources for adequate wound or post-operative wound care:375 unclean wounds –– often infested with worms and flies –– rapidly become infected, necrotic or gangrenous.376 Patients plead for food and water.377 Even basic pain-management treatment is often unavailable, and patients are at risk of dying from treatable conditions.378 One doctor described having to do procedures without anaesthetic, he said:

“I was forced to do dressing changes on massive wounds, excruciatingly painful wounds. There was a girl with just her whole body covered in shrapnel. She was nine. I ended up having to change and clean these wounds with no anaesthetic and no analgesic. I managed to find some intravenous paracetamol to give her … her Dad was crying, I was crying, and the poor child was screaming…”.379

85. In addition to the war wounded, there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who still need routine medical care for conditions such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease or diabetes.380 Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are also in need of urgent care for kidney disease and cancer, and an estimated 130 premature babies are dependent on incubators for survival at any given time.381 Many of them are now unable to receive medical assistance. UNICEF warns that “[w]omen, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities

370 Jason Burke, “‘We are overwhelmed: southern Gaza’s exhausted doctors forced to leave children die”, The Guardian (24 November 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/we-are-overwhelmed-southern-gazas-exhausted-doctors- forced-to-leave-children-to-die.
371 Claire Gillbody-Dickerson, “Doctors in Gaza forced to amputate limbs because they lack means to treat injuries”, iNews (30 October 2023), https://inews.co.uk/news/world/doctors-gaza-forced-amputate-limbs-hospitals-israel-evacuate-2720777. 372 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #32 (7 November 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-32. 373 UN News, Interview: 5,500 women in Gaza set to give birth ‘in race against death’ (7 November 2023), https://news.un.org/en/interview/2023/11/1143327.
374 UN News, UN workers delivering aid to Gaza hospital describe ‘bloodbath’ in overflowing emergency department (16 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144877.; Rajini Vaidyanathan, “WHO says Al-Shifa ‘looked almost like a battlefield hospital’”, BBC (17 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67732895.
375 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
376 Lilia Sebouai, “‘Bodies scratched, bleeding and full of flies’: Infections plague Gaza’s hospitals”, The Telegraph (6
November 2023),
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/hospital-infections-gaza-medical-supplies-clean-water/; Dr. Hafez Abukhoussa, “The Horrors I’ve Seen Treating Patients at Gaza’s Remaining Hospitals”, Time Magazine (12 December 2023), https://time.com/6358269/horrors-treating-patients-khan-younis-gaza/.
377 UN News, UPDATED: Injured patients ‘waiting to die’ in northern Gaza as last hospital shuts down, amid rising
‘catastrophic’ hunger levels (21 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145017.
378 WHO, WHO delivers health supplies to Al-Shifa Hospital, appeals for continued access to address urgent needs in north Gaza (17 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/17-12-2023-who-delivers-health-supplies-to-al-shifa-hospital– appeals-for-continued-access-to-address-urgent-needs-in-north-gaza; WHO, WHO Director-General’s remarks at the Informal Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (17 November 2023), https://www.who.int/director- general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-remarks-at-the-informal-plenary-meeting-of-the-united-nations-general- assembly 17-november-2023.
379 Interview with Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Channel 4 News, 27 November 2023: “‘We were having to do procedures without anaesthetic’, says Gaza war surgeon”, Channel 4 (27 November 2023), https://www.channel4.com/news/we-were- having-to-do-procedures-without-anaesthetic-says-gaza-war-surgeon.
380 WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update Issue 16 (7 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_DEC7b.pdf. 381 Ibid.

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in the occupied Palestinian territory, both as casualties and in reduced access to health services”.382 Older persons and persons with disabilities lack essential medication, and are at higher risk of communicable diseases, malnutrition and death.383 Pregnant women are also particularly vulnerable.384

86. Experts are beginning to warn that the numbers of Palestinians dying as a result of disease and hunger, could already be outstripping violent deaths caused by Israeli army assaults.385 There have already been over 360,000 documented cases of communicable diseases reported in UNRWA shelters alone, brought on or exacerbated by unsanitary conditions, hunger and lack of clean water, with the actual numbers believed to be considerably higher.386 As stated by the World Health Organization:

“Gaza is already experiencing soaring rates of infectious diseases. Over 100 000 cases of diarrhoea have been reported since mid-October. Half of these are among young children under the age of 5 years, case numbers that are 25 times what was reported before the conflict.
Over 150 000 cases of upper respiratory infection, and numerous cases of meningitis, skin rashes, scabies, lice and chickenpox have been reported. Hepatitis is also suspected as many people present with the tell-tale signs of jaundice.
While a healthy body can more easily fight off these diseases, a wasted and weakened body
will struggle. Hunger weakens the body’s defences and opens the door to disease.
Malnutrition increases the risk of children dying from illnesses like diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles, especially in a setting where they lack access to life-saving health services.
Even if the child survives, wasting can have life-long impacts as it stunts growth and impairs
cognitive development…
The people of Gaza, who have already suffered enough, now face death from starvation and diseases that could be easily treated with a functioning health system. This must stop. Food and other aid must flow in far greater amounts. WHO reiterates its call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”387

87. Experts assess that the death toll from disease and hunger “could be multiples of that from fighting and air strikes”.388 Israeli is through its relentless attacks on the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza is deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.389 Writing in the British medical journal, The Lancet, a group of medics “highlight the

382 UNICEF, Joint Statement by UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, WFP and WHO on Humanitarian Supplies Crossing into Gaza (4 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/joint-statement-by-unicef-undp-unfpa-wfp-and-who-on- humanitarian-supplies-crossing-into-gaza/.
383 HRW, Gaza: Israeli Attacks, Blockade Devastating for People with Disabilities (1 November 2023), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/01/gaza-israeli-attacks-blockade-devastating-people-disabilities; UN OHCHR, Occupied Palestinian territory and Israel: UN experts call for permanent ceasefire to protect rights and futures of women and girls (14 December 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/occupied-palestinian-territory-and-israel-un-experts- call-permanent.
384 See further Section 8 infra.
385 See e.g., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, @DrTedros, Tweet (6:26 am, November 29, 2023), https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1729748696890245146; UN News, ‘Ten weeks of hell’ for children in Gaza: UNICEF (19 December 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144927.
386 UNICEF, State of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report Issue No. 10, 7-13 December (14 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.; WHO, oPt Emergency Situation Update Issue 16 (7 December 2023), https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/oPt_Emergency_Situation_Update_-_DEC7b.pdf.
387 WHO, Lethal combination of hunger and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza (21 December 2023), https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza.
388 Henry Mance, “UN aid chief Martin Griffiths: ‘the war in Gaza isn’t halfway through’”, Financial Times (18 December 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/01b592be-47c7-4a20-9bbd-621aa40f7640.
389 Ibid.

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health dimensions of violence resulting from the ongoing siege and attacks against Palestinians” rightly
warning of a “grave risk of genocide against the Palestinian people”.390

7. Destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza

88. On 16 November 2023, 15 United Nations Special Rapporteurs and 21 members of United Nations Working Groups, warning of a “genocide in the making” in Gaza, observed that the level of destruction that had by then taken place of “housing units, as well as hospitals, schools, mosques, bakeries, water pipes, sewage and electricity networks . . . threatens to make the continuation of Palestinian life in Gaza impossible”.391 As they note, Israel has in its bombing campaign against Gaza used “powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.”392 Israel has destroyed not only individual homes, houses, and whole apartment blocks; it has destroyed entire streets, and entire neighbourhoods: Shuja’iyya, a suburb of Gaza City, once home to approximately 110,000 Palestinians, appears to now be a vast wasteland, entirely flattened as far as the eye can see.393 Its shops, schools, vibrant market place, family homes, doctors clinics, historic streets and Ibn Uthman Mosque, and everything that once sustained Palestinian life there has been damaged or destroyed, along with so many of its people.394 Other areas in Gaza appear to have experienced a similar level of destruction, including Beit Hanoun,395 Beit Lahia,396 Gaza Old City,397 Al Rimal,398 and Nuseirat refugee camp in the South.399

89. Across Gaza, Israel has targeted the infrastructure and foundations of Palestinian life, deliberately creating conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinian people. In addition to the attacks previously cited on homes, neighbourhoods, hospitals, water systems, agricultural lands, bakeries and mills, Israel has also targeted the foundational civil

390 Alix Faddoul, Geordan Shannon, Khudejha Ashgar, Yamina Boukari, James Smith and Amy Neilson, “The health dimensions of violence in Palestine: a call to prevent genocide”, The Lancet (18 December 2023), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02751-4/fulltext.
391 UN OHCHR, Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide against the Palestinian people (16 November 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent- genocide-against.
392 UN OHCHR, Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide against the Palestinian people (16 November 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent- genocide-against (emphasis added).
393 “The documentation that dropped Gazans’ jaws: the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood was completely wiped out: Watch”, JDN (20 December 2023), https://www.jdn.co.il/video/2103783/; Israeli soldier reports “Shujaiya neighbourhood gone”: Bazz News, @1717Bazz, Tweet (2:50 pm, December 20, 2023), https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1737485648158748674, (translation by Middle East Eye, @MiddleEastEye (8:00am, December 21, 2023), https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1737744722649546979).
394 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #74 (20 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-74.
395 UN OCHA, Before and after: satellite images of Gaza showing damage caused in hostilities (9 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/and-after-satellite-images-gaza-showing-damage-caused-hostilities.
396 Dominic Bailey, Erwan Rivault, Daniele Palumbo, “Nearly 100,000 Gaza buildings may be damaged, satellite images show”, BBC News (1 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872.
397 UN OCHA, Before and after: satellite images of Gaza showing damage caused in hostilities (9 November 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/and-after-satellite-images-gaza-showing-damage-caused-hostilities.
398 Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Destruction of al-Rimal
Neighborhood in Gaza City, an Attack on the Economic Existence of a National Group (19 October 2023), https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/21943.html; “How Israeli Airstrikes Destroyed a Busy Neighbourhood in Gaza”, The Financial Times (24 October 2023), https://ig.ft.com/gaza-damage/.
399 Dominic Bailey, Erwan Rivault, Daniele Palumbo, “Nearly 100,000 Gaza buildings may be damaged, satellite images show”, BBC News (1 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872.

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system in Gaza. Israel has targeted the Palace of Justice,400 — the main Palestinian court building in Gaza — housing the Palestinian Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Appeal, the Court of First Instance, the Administrative Court and the Magistrates’ Court, as well as an archive of court records and other historical files. Israel has also significantly damaged the Palestinian Legislative Council complex.401 It has targeted Gaza City’s Central Archive building, containing thousands of historical documents and national records dating back over 100 years, and forming an essential archive of Palestinian history, as well as more modern records for Gaza City’s urban development.402

90. Israel has left Gaza City’s main public library in ruins.403 It has also damaged or destroyed countless bookshops, publishing houses, libraries,404 and hundreds of educational facilities.405 Israel has targeted every one of Gaza’s four universities — including the Islamic University of Gaza, the oldest higher education institution in the territory, which has trained generations of doctors and engineers, amongst others,406 — destroying campuses for the education of future generations of Palestinians in Gaza. Alongside so many others, Israel has killed leading Palestinian academics, including: Professor Sufian Tayeh, the President of the Islamic University — an award-winning physicist and UNESCO Chair of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Palestine — who died, alongside his family, in an airstrike; Dr Ahmed Hamdi Abo Absa, Dean of the Software Engineering Department at the University of Palestine, reportedly shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he walked away, having been released from three days of enforced disappearance; and Professor Muhammad Eid Shabir, Professor of Immunology and Virology, and former President of the Islamic University of Gaza, and Professor Refaat Alareer, poet and Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, were both killed by Israel with members of their families. Professor Alareer was a co-founder of ‘We are Not Numbers’, a Palestinian youth project seeking to tell the stories behind otherwise impersonal accounts of Palestinians — and Palestinian deaths — in the news.407

91. Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centres of Palestinian learning and culture, including: the Al Zafar Dmari Mosque and Center for Manuscripts and Ancient Documents;408 the Orthodox Cultural Centre; the Al Qarara Cultural Museum; the Gaza Centre for Culture and Arts; the Arab Social Cultural Centre; the Hakawi Society for Culture and Arts; and the Rafah Museum — Gaza’s newly opened museum of Palestinian heritage, housing hundreds of cultural and archaeological artefacts. Israel’s attacks have destroyed Gaza’s ancient history: eight sites have been damaged or

400 ,Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre, 2023 Hostilities And Escalating Violence In The OPT | Account of Events (13 December 2023), https://www.diakonia.se/ihl/news/2023-hostilities-in-gaza-and-israel-factual-account-of- events/.
401 Josh Holder, “Gaza After Nine Weeks of War”, The New York Times (12 December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/12/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-satellite-images-israel-invasion.html.
402 International Council on Archives, Statement of the International Council on Archives on the Destruction of the Central
Archives of the Municipality of Gaza (13 December 2023), https://www.ica.org/en/statement-of-the-international-council-on- archives-on-the-destruction-of-the-central-archives-of-the.
403 Mohamad El Chamaa, “Gazans mourn loss of their libraries: Cultural beacons and communal spaces” The Washington Post (1 December 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/30/gaza-library-palestinian-culture/.
404 Laila Hussein Moustafa, “Opinion: When libraries like Gaza’s are destroyed, what’s lost is far more than books”, Los
Angeles Times (12 December 2023), https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-12/gaza-library-bombing.
405 UNICEF, UNICEF in the State of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report No. 10 (14 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.
406 Brendan O’Malley, Wagdy Sawahel, “Israel bombs Gaza university, alleging use by military”, University World News
(12 October 2023), https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20231012162739531.
407 We Are Not Numbers, Tributes to Refaat Alareer, killed Dec. 9, 2023 (18 December 2023), https://wearenotnumbers.org/tributes-to-refaat-alareer-killed-dec-9-2023/.
408 ANSCH, Report on the Impact of the Recent War in 2023 on the Cultural Heritage in Gaza Strip – Palestine (7 November 2023) https://www.heritageforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Report-of-the-effects-of-the-last-war-of- 2023-on-the-cultural-heritage-in-Gaza-Strip-Palestine-english.pdf.

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destroyed, including the ancient port of Gaza (known as ‘Anthedon Harbour’ or ‘Al Balakhiya’) — the archaeological site of a 2,000-year-old Roman cemetery listed on both the Islamic Heritage List and the tentative UNESCO World Heritage List.409 Israel has also destroyed Gaza City’s ‘Old City’, including its 146-year-old historic houses, mosques, churches, markets and schools. It has also destroyed Gaza’s more recent history of more hopeful times, including the Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center — site of a historic meeting between United States President Bill Clinton and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat 25 years ago — and an important cultural hub for Palestinians in Gaza, with its theatre, library and event space.410 And Israel is destroying Gaza’s future academic and cultural potential: alongside the 352 Palestinian schools it has damaged or destroyed,411 the 4,037 students and 209 teachers and educational staff it has killed, alongside the other 7,259 students and 619 teachers it has injured.412

92. Israel has damaged or destroyed an estimated 318 Muslim and Christian religious sites, demolishing the places where Palestinians have worshipped for generations.413 These include the Great Omari Mosque, originally a fifth century Byzantine church, an iconic landmark of Gaza’s history, architecture and cultural heritage, and a place of worship by Christians and Muslims for over 1,000 years.414 Israeli shelling has also damaged the Church of Saint Porphyrius, founded in 425 AD and believed to be the third oldest church in the world — alongside two other churches that have sustained direct Israeli fire.415 Gaza’s Christians themselves have been targeted and killed by Israel in the very church compounds where they sought shelter.416

93. Along with its destruction of the physical monuments to the history and heritage of the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has sought to destroy the very Palestinian people who form and create that heritage: Gaza’s celebrated journalists, its teachers, intellectuals and public figures, its doctors and nurses, its film-makers, writers and singers, the directors and deans of its universities, the heads of its hospitals, its eminent scientists, linguists, playwrights, novelists, artists and musicians. Israel has killed and is killing Palestinian story-tellers and poets, Palestinian farmers and fishermen, alongside Gaza’s local legends: pastry chef Masoud Muhammad al-Qatati, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his house on 3 November 2023, whose shop’s motto ‘let the poor eat’ — and reputation for giving away the popular Palestinian treat ‘knafeh’ to indigent customers — earned him the nickname ‘Father of the Poor’; 84- year-old Elham Farah, from one of Palestine’s oldest Christian families — a reputed accordionist and music teacher, known as ‘Mother Orange’ to generations of Palestinian music students for her shock of red hair,417 — shot dead by an Israeli sniper outside the Holy Family Church in Gaza City when she

409 UNESCO, Anthedon Harbour (2 April 2012), https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5719/.
410 “Erasing History: The Destruction of Gaza’s Cultural Heritage by Israel’s War Machine”, LBC International (8 December 2023), https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/news-bulletin-reports/740070/erasing-history-the-destruction-of-gazas-cultural- heritage-by-israels/en.
411 UNICEF, UNICEF in the State of Palestine Escalation Humanitarian Situation Report No. 10 (14 December 2023), https://www.unicef.org/media/150141/file/SoP-Humanitarian-SitRep-14-December-2023.pdf.
412 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #78 (27 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78.
413 Palestine Red Crescent Society, Response Report as of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until Sunday, December 24th 2023, 24:00 AM (24 December 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestine-red-crescent- society-response-report-saturday-october-7th-2023-600-pm-until-sunday-december-24th-2023-2400-am-enar.
414 “Images show major damage to Gaza’s oldest mosque”, BBC News (8 December 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67664853.
415 “Photos show Gaza’s Church of Saint Porphyrius, one of the oldest churches in the world, after the complex was damaged by Israeli airstrikes”, Business Insider (24 October 2023), https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-gaza-war-church- airstrikes-damage-2023-10.
416 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #72 (18 December 2023), https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-72. 417 “84-year-old Elham Farah: Accordionist, aunt and Gaza’s first ever music teacher killed by Israeli sniper”, The New Arab (7 December 2023), https://www.newarab.com/features/gazas-first-music-teacher-elham-farah-killed-sniper.

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returned home for warm clothes, and was left to bleed to death;418 and Al-Shaima Saidam, the student with the highest final high school exam grades in the whole of Palestine, killed with multiple members of her family in a strike on Al Nuseirat refugee camp.419 Just as Israel is destroying the official memory and records of Palestinians in Gaza through its destruction of Gaza’s archives and landmarks, it is obliterating Palestinian personal lives and private memories, histories and futures, through bombing and bulldozing graveyards,420 destroying family records and photographs, wiping out entire multi- generational families,421 and killing, maiming and traumatising a generation of children.422 As a Palestinian man, in a video by UNRWA, succinctly sums up: “These are all our memories, our entire lives . . . Now it’s all gone; everything has turned into ashes.”423

94. The Israeli army — erecting the Israeli flag over the wreckage of devastated Palestinian homes, towns and cities, including in Gaza City’s Palestine Square itself,424 and spurred on by calls from within the Israeli government and without to ‘flatten Gaza’ and re-establish Israeli settlements on the rubble of Palestinian homes,425 — is destroying the very fabric and basis of Palestinian life in Gaza. Israel is thereby deliberately inflicting on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction.

8. Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births

95. As set out above, Israel’s actions are impacting Palestinian women and children in Gaza especially severely, with 70 per cent of those killed estimated to be women and children. Two mothers are estimated to be killed every hour in Gaza. Over 7,729 children were estimated to have been killed by 11 December 2023 alone,426 and at least 4,700 other women and children are reported missing,

418 Nadda Osman, “Israel-Palestine war: The elderly Christian music teacher killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza”, Middle East Eye (14 November 2023), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-christian-music-teacher-killed-gaza.
419 Nader Durgham, “Israel-Palestine war: Palestine’s top student killed by Israeli air strikes”, Middle East Eye (17 October 2023), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-top-high-school-student-killed.
420 “Damage to Gaza War Cemetery shows challenge of caring for monuments in conflict zones”, Canadian Press (10 November 2023), https://www.cp24.com/news/damage-to-gaza-war-cemetery-shows-challenge-of-caring-for-monuments-in- conflict-zones-1.6639255; Christoph Koettl, Christian Triebert, “Satellite Imagery and Video Shows Some Gazan Cemeteries Razed by Israeli Forces”, The New York Times (14 December 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/14/world/middleeast/gaza-cemeteries-damage-israel.html.
421 Mahmoud Mushtaha, “A Second Nakba: Israeli attacks are erasing entire families from Gaza’s civil registry”, The New Arab (31 October 2023), https://www.newarab.com/features/gaza-entire-families-being-wiped-out-civil-registry.
422 UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #74 (20 December 2023),
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-74; UNICEF, Emergency Response Children Trapped In Gaza Conflict Face Generational Trauma (1 November 2023), https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/children- trapped-gaza-conflict-face-generational-trauma.
423 Quoted in UN OCHA, Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #70 (15 December 2023), https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-70.
424 “Israeli flag raised in symbolic Palestine Square in Gaza City, video shows”, CNN (8 December 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-08- 23/h_7516b0f4b4970e9a01bffb26f1bb4739.
425 “Far-right minister calls for Israel to ‘fully occupy’ Gaza, reestablish settlements”, The Times of Israel (15 December 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-minister-calls-for-israel-to-fully-occupy-gaza-reestablish-settlements/.
426 UNICEF, Joint Statement by UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, WFP and WHO on Humanitarian Supplies Crossing into Gaza (4 November 2023), https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/joint-statement-by-unicef-undp-unfpa-wfp-and-who-on- humanitarian-supplies-crossing-into-gaza/; UN Women, Facts and figures: Women and girls during the war in Gaza (22 December 2023), https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/feature-story/2023/10/facts-and-figures-women-and-girls- during-the-war-in-gaza.

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believed to be buried under the rubble.427 There are multiple eye-witness accounts of pregnant women being killed by Israeli soldiers, including while trying to access healthcare.428

96. Pregnant women and children –– including newborn babies –– are also particularly impacted by displacement, lack of access to food and water, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation, and lack of access to health services. These effects are severe and significant. An estimated 5,500 of approximately 52,000 pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza giving birth each month are doing so in unsafe conditions, often with no clean water, much less medical assistance, “in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening, and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise”.429 Where they are able to get to a functioning hospital, pregnant women are having to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthetic.430

97. Given the lack of access to critical medical supplies, including blood– doctors are being compelled to perform ordinarily unnecessary hysterectomies on young women in an attempt to save their lives, leaving them unable to have more children.431 Indeed, the Minister of Health for the State of Palestine, Dr May al-Kaileh, confirms that the only option facing Palestinian women in Gaza who ‘bleed out’ after giving birth is to undergo a hysterectomy in order for their lives to be saved.432 The lack of available drugs, such as the anti-D injection –– given to Rhesus negative women on the birth of a Rhesus positive baby –– also seriously impacts the possibility of future healthy pregnancies for affected women.

98. Premature births have reportedly increased by between 25-30 per cent, as stressed and traumatised pregnant women face a myriad of challenges, including being compelled to walk long distances in search of safety, attempting to escape from bombs and being crowded into shelters in often squalid conditions. Particularly in northern Gaza, cases of placenta abruption –– a serious condition that occurs to pregnant women during childbirth which is potentially life-threatening to both mother and baby –– have more than doubled.433

99. An ever-increasing number of Palestinian babies in Gaza are reportedly dying from entirely preventable causes, brought about by Israel’s actions: newborns up to three months old are dying of diarrhoea, hypothermia, and other preventable causes. Without essential equipment and medical support, premature and underweight babies have little to no chance of survival.434 Palestinian newborn

427 Red Crescent Society, Palestine Red Crescent Society Response Report As of Saturday, October 7th 2023, 6:00 PM Until Sunday, December 24th 2023, 24:00 AM (24 December 2023), p.1, https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/latestresponse23012023/en%20220%202023.pdf..
428 “ﺟﺒﺎﻟﯿﺎ ﺑﻤﺨﯿﻢ اﻟﺰﻋﺘﺮ ﺗﻞ ﻓﻲ واﻟﺪﻣﺎر اﻟﺤﺼﺎر ﻣﺸﺎھﺪ”, Al Jazeera (23 December 2023), https://www.aljazeera.net/videos/2023/12/23/اﻟﺰﻋﺘﺮ-ﺗﻞ-ﻓﻲ-واﻟﺪﻣﺎر-اﻟﺤﺼﺎر-ﻣﺸﺎھﺪ ; “Israeli forces ‘kill pregnant women in Gaza, run over bodies with bulldozers’: report” The New Arab (23 December 2023), https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-army- shot-pregnant-women-ran-over-bodies-report.
429 WHO, Women and newborns bearing the brunt of the conflict in Gaza, UN agencies warn (3 November 2023),
https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-conflict-in-gaza-un-agencies- warn.
430 UN News, Interview: 5,500 women in Gaza set to give birth ‘in race against death’ (7 November 2023),
https://news.un.org/en/interview/2023/11/1143327.
431 Juzoor for Health and Social Development, The ravages of war: impact on mothers & newborns in Gaza (11 November 2023), https://www.juzoor.org/cached_uploads/download/2023/11/11/maternal-health-report-final-1699726911.pdf.;
2023), October (30 Arabic Jazeera Al اﻟﻒ اﻣﺮأ ﺣﺎﻣﻞ ﻓﻲ ﻏﺰة ﯾﻮاﺟﮭﻦ ﻣﺼﯿﺮا ﻣﺠﮭﻮﻻ “,”50 . تروى-ألول-مرة-تفاصيل-مرعبة-عن-واقع-50-ألفhttps://www.aljazeera.net/women/2023/10/30/
432 Interview with Dr Mai Al-Kaileh (Palestinian Minister of Health) on Al Arabiya, 27 December 2023, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1W2QFCvmM8/?igsh=Ynk1NjRzdndnaHM5.
433 Oxfam, Babies dying from preventable causes in besieged Gaza – Oxfam (24 November 2023), https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam. 434 Ibid.

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babies have died due to the lack of fuel to supply hospital generators;435 others have been found decomposing in their hospital cots, medical staff taking care of them having been forced by Israel to evacuate.436

100. On 3 November 2023, the World Health Organisation warned that “[m]aternal deaths are expected to increase given the lack of access to adequate care”, with deadly consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births.437 The impact will necessarily be long lasting and severe for Palestinians in Gaza as a group. By 22 November 2023 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, has expressly warned that:

“[T]he reproductive violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children could be qualified as… acts of genocide under Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide … including “imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group”. She stressed that “States must prevent and punish such acts in accordance with their responsibilities under the Genocide Convention.” 438

Adhikari explains that “the ≠Khomani San are a tiny remnant of the foraging communities that once inhabited most of the land that currently constitutes South Africa.” They have now been pushed into the Kalahari desert in the North Cape province. Outsiders sometimes refer to the San as “Bushmen.” The Dutch Trekboers who went into areas beyond the Cape, especially in the late 1700s, conducted what can only be called a genocide against the San, whom they did not consider entirely human.

The Germans in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) committed genocide against the Herero people in 1904–07. Their tactics presaged the slaughter of WW I in that they used machine guns on crowds and lightly armed anticolonial men.

Some African thinkers consider the system of Apartheid practiced by white South Africans in 1948-1994 as a form of genocide, but the two crimes differ in their technical definition in international law.

In international law, genocide is not the same as annihilation. As defined in contemporary treaties such as the Rome Statute, it can involve killing relatively few individuals, but doing it in such a way as to deliberately cripple their ability to survive as a people. The key elements are intentionally targeting a people because of its ethnic identity and attempting to wipe out its peoplehood. Israel’s destruction of all Gaza universities and many other schools, and its killing of so many professors and journalists in what looks like a campaign of targeted assassinations, looks genocidal, since schools and universities and the press carry a people’s identity.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was known for preaching, singing and dancing for the church when he was in high school. He was trained as an attorney under the Apartheid regime, and was jailed by the white Afrikaner government twice for protesting, including spending 6 months in prison after the Soweto uprising. (He was born in Soweto.) In 1982 he helped found and became general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, which grew to 300,000 members under his leadership and staged the largest strike in South Africa’s history in 1987.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, courtesy South African Government

In the Apartheid period, Israel was a staunch supporter of the Apartheid regime and even sought nuclear cooperation with it against Black African countries. The United States government also frequently ran interference for Apartheid-era Pretoria.

In 1994 Ramaphosa led the drafting of South Africa’s first democratic constitution. He served in parliament for some years. He later was involved in promoting the country’s private sector. He was elected president in 2017.

Ramaphosa roundly condemned the Hamas attack of October 7. But the BBC reports that a week into Israel’s aerial bombardment of the Strip, the president “led 60 party leaders as they waved Palestinian flags, while wearing the traditional chequered black and white Palestinian scarf, the keffiyeh. He said regarding the Palestinians, “They are people who have been under occupation for almost 75 years . . . They have been waiting and waging a war against a government that has been dubbed an apartheid state.” He added, “We have always pledged our solidarity, and have always insisted that the only solution, especially with the issues of Palestine, is a two-state solution.”

On Friday, South Africa preferred a case against Israel with the International Court of Justice for genocide in Gaza. The ICJ adjudicates cases between UN members, and both South Africa and Israel are members. Both are also signatories to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Pretoria’s Department of International Relations said Friday, “South Africa is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants.” The phrases “indiscriminate use of force” and “forcible removal of inhabitants” are both technical terms that refer to war crimes in the Geneva Conventions and other instruments of International Humanitarian Law. The government underlines that it “condemns all violence and attacks against all civilians, including Israelis.” This latter is a reference to the Hamas atrocities of October 7, which left over a thousand Israelis dead, the bulk of them innocent civilians.

Pretoria explained, “As a State Party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa is under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring. Therefore, at a special meeting held on 8 December 2023, Cabinet directed that the International Court of Justice in The Hague be approached to obtain an order directing Israel, which is also a State Party, to refrain from any acts that may constitute genocide or related crimes under the Convention.”

Please watch this video for its important discussion of the ways in which international tribunals of justice have consistently discriminated against peoples in the global South and in favor of those in the wealthy North.

SABC: “SA drags Israel before the International Court of Justice: Sophie Mokoena weighs in”

South Africa has a nominal GDP of some $400 bn annually and its military is ranked 33rd in the world. It is a member of the BRICs bloc of countries outside the North Atlantic centers of power and wealth.

The ICJ reported (see the letter below) that South Africa said of the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are commnitted with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

The reason the South African government of Cyril Ramaphosa said that Israel’s actions were committed with “specific intent” is that intentionality is important to the definition of genocide. If a country took an action that inadvertently led to the destruction of a people, that would not be genocide, however tragic it was.

South Africa charged that “the conduct of Israel – through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence – in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

Pretoria asked the Court to take provisional measures immediately to halt the ongoing genocide.

This is the letter that the ICJ issued in recognition of the South African claim:

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE

Peace Palace, Camegieplein 2,2517 KJ The Hague, Netherlands Tel.: +31(0)70302 2323 Fax: +31(0)70364 9928

Press Release

No. 2023/77

29 December 2023

The Republic of South Africa institutes proceedings against the State of lsrael and requests the Court to indicate provisional measures.

THE HAGUE, 29 December 2023. South Africa today filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, conceming alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Application, “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel – through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence – in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

The Applicant further states that “Israel, since 7 October 2023 in particular, has failed to prevent genocide and has failed to prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide” and that “Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza”.

South Africa seeks to found the Court’s jurisdiction on Article 36, paragraph 1, of the Statute of the Comt and on Article IX of the Genocide Convention, to which both South Africa and Israel are parties.

The Application also contains a Request for the indication of provisional measures, pursuant to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court and Articles 73, 74 and 75 of the Rules of Court. The Applicant requests the Court to indicate provisional measures in order to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention” and “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations tmder the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”.

Pursuant to Article 74 of the Rules of Court, “[a] request for the indication of provisional measures shall have priority over all other cases”.

Kouthar Sambo at South Africa’s Radio 91.3 quoted NFP member Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam as saying in late February, “As a country that has experienced the devastating effects of Apartheid, we cannot turn a blind eye to the gross human rights violations being committed against Palestinians. It is imperative for South Africa to take a stand and speak out against these atrocities. We therefore, call upon all political parties to support this resolution to downgrade South Africa’s embassy in Israel.”

Pretoria. Pixabay. File.

Lehlohonolo Mashigo wrote at The Star that “The NFP highlighted that, during the apartheid era, downgrading diplomatic relations with South Africa was a powerful tool for the international community to exert pressure on the apartheid government to end its discriminatory policies.” He then quoted the NFP Party statement:

“By downgrading our embassy in Israel, we will send a strong message that South Africa will not tolerate or condone any country that practises racial segregation and apartheid-like policies. This action will put diplomatic pressure on Israel to end its discriminatory policies.”

Emam is quoted as asserting,

“The attempts to reduce the Palestinian Struggle for liberation to merely a religious conflict is a reductionist approach that ignores the complex and varied nature of the oppression and human rights violations being committed against Palestinians by the State of Israel . . . We urge all MPs to stand for freedom, justice and human rights by supporting this resolution.”

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, has been pressured on this issue since soon after he came into office in 2018. As far back as January 2019 Ramaphosa said in response to a question on when the downgrade would happen,

“Government is in the process of giving effect to a resolution of the governing party that South Africa should downgrade its embassy in Israel.

Our approach is informed by our concern at the ongoing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the refusal of the government of Israel to enter into meaningful negotiations to find a just and peaceful resolution to this conflict.

We are also concerned about the resurgence of confrontation and conflict in the region and about the grave humanitarian cost of further intransigence.

Our approach is also informed by an appreciation of the constructive role South Africa is being called upon to play in the quest for peace in the Middle East.

We are clear on our support for the achievement of the Palestinian state, alongside the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security with its neighbours.

In implementing this conference resolution, we are mindful of South Africa’s responsibility to continue engaging with all parties to the conflict to see where we would be able to provide assistance.

As such, the South African government remains seized with the modalities of downgrading the South African Embassy in Israel, and we will communicate once Cabinet has fully finalised on this matter.”

It seems clear that this step was a long time coming, and also that the ANC has been dragging its feet on it.

My guess is that the ANC bit the bullet now because of the extremist character of the current Israeli government, some ministers of which have openly spoken about wiping out Palestinian villages or formally annexing Palestinian territory.

Older South Africans who remember the Apartheid government of the 1970s and 1980s and who have visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that it brought bad memories flooding back into their minds and that the situation actually seemed to them worse than South Africa’s Apartheid had been. Apartheid is the Dutch word for racial segregation.

At a recent African Union meeting, the Israel delegate was asked to leave. Ramaphosa said he supported that decision.

A court in South Africa has confirmed the constitutional right of the country’s citizens to an environment that isn’t harmful to their health. This includes the right to clean air, as exposure to air pollution affects human health. Air pollution also affects land and water systems, and decreases agricultural yields.

The case, referred to as the “Deadly Air” case, was brought against the government by two environmental justice groups – groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action. They were represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights. The case concerned air pollution in the Highveld Priority Area. The area includes one of South Africa’s largest cities, Ekurhuleni, and a large portion of the Mpumalanga province.

Air pollution levels in the area are often over the legal thresholds specified in the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. These standards are set to protect health. Exceeding the threshold therefore indicates a health risk. There have been some small improvements in air quality in the area, but not enough to ensure that it’s in compliance with the established standards.

The fact that the standards were exceeded was a key aspect of the case and the judgement. The judgement declared that the poor air quality in this area:

is in breach of the residents’ section 24(a) constitutional rights to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being.

The case is important for a number of reasons. The first is that there was no penalty if air quality standards weren’t met even though the standards are set to protect health. The judgement highlights how important compliance with standards is as clean air is confirmed as a constitutional right.

The second is that the court’s finding that air quality is a constitutional right underscores the urgency with which South Africa needs to act. The hope is that the ruling will help unlock many of the challenges that have hindered improving air quality in this region and across the country.

Air pollution sources and solutions

The sources of air pollution in South Africa are diverse and complex. Managing them therefore requires a multi-sectoral approach.

When it come to pollution in the Highveld Priority Area, the focus is often placed on industrial emissions, especially from large emitters such as the state utility Eskom and chemical giant Sasol. But they aren’t the only sources of pollution in the area. And in many instances, the concentrations that South Africans breathe at ground-level are driven by other, closer sources. These include vehicles, veld fires, mining, waste burning, and burning of fuels such as wood or coal for cooking or heating.

The pollution levels are often highest in low-income settlements, urban areas, and areas close to large industries. Often, the highest levels of pollution are in vulnerable communities.

While it’s true that there are different sources of pollution across South Africa, most of the emissions are from the burning of fossil fuels. Approximately 86% of South Africa’s primary energy supply is from fossil fuels. In 2018, the total primary energy supply from renewable energy was 6%.

The contribution of fossil fuels to air pollution levels varies by place and time of year. But in many urban and industrialised areas, air pollution levels are dominated by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

The decarbonisation of South Africa’s energy system would therefore have large and rapid benefits to air quality.

A number of steps should be taken to get the process on the road.

What needs to be done

To improve air quality, the emissions of pollutants from a variety of sources must be decreased. This needs the involvement of different levels of government and coordination across numerous sectors and stakeholders.

Inadequate coordination among sectors has been a huge challenge in air quality management. This is due in part to the fact that improving air quality falls within the mandate of national as well as local government environment departments. But the sources of pollution and where policies and action are needed to decrease emissions, such as industry, mining, transport and energy, fall under other parts of the government to regulate.

To improve air quality, the active involvement of departments such as transport, mineral resources and energy, for example, are needed. In addition, local sources of pollution are often under the control of local government while regional sources such as large industries and pollution from highways are under provincial and national government.

Issues with local service delivery and waste management can lead to burning of waste that releases toxic pollutants right at ground level where people breathe. Thus effective air quality management stretches across sectors and levels of government.

This means that the various tiers of government need to be working in a co-ordinated way, which isn’t happening.

Another important step that needs to be taken is ensuring robust information on air pollution, especially the amount that is emitted, is available. This isn’t the case at the moment, which makes it difficult to track the trends of pollution.

For example, industrial emissions from regulated sources are collected by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment. But information on the amount emitted and the emission-reduction technologies that industries are using aren’t available. The importance of these data are highlighted in the court judgement.

This kind of information could make communities aware of the levels of pollution being emitted near them. In addition, scientists could use it to:

• better simulate current air quality levels

• assess the impacts of policies and interventions on air pollution

• interpret the long term trends in the concentration of pollutants.

Experiences from other countries have shown that improving air quality takes dedication, resources and time but has large health, environment and economic benefits.

I’m hopeful that this court decision can help improve coordination and dedication across sectors in the development, implementation and enforcement of policies to improve air quality. This is urgently needed as South Africa tries to forge a path towards a just energy transition, which involves moving away from its heavy dependence on fossil fuels in a way that manages the negative effects on jobs and communities.

South Africa has stated its commitment to a just transition through its domestic plans and international partnerships.

At the time of publishing, the government hadn’t indicated whether it would appeal this landmark decision. As the decision can act as a catalyst for improved air quality in South Africa, it would be a shame if the government did appeal.

Rebecca Garland, Associate Professor, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.