Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza for forced displacement of Palestinians, according to HRW International

According to Human Rights Watch, Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for its “forced, massive, and deliberate” displacement of almost the entire population of Gaza since the current war began in October 2023. There have been displacements “without any compelling military reason” since the war began. HRW)’s report was published this Thursday. The text states that plans to permanently expel Palestinians from the Strip expressed by some members of the Israeli government involve “ethnic cleansing”.

This humanitarian organization demands that the Jewish state be sanctioned and that it stop selling arms – it cites the United States and Germany – which represent “a blank check for new atrocities”. Furthermore, it requests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague investigate these orders by Israeli forces to displace hundreds of thousands of people – affecting 1.9 out of 2.3 million Gazans – and the imposed refusal to return. Will be done. “Nobody can deny the brutal crimes the Israeli army is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” says Nadia Hardman, one of the report’s authors.

Furthermore, HRW says, Israel also fails to comply with the laws governing war and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by destroying infrastructure and buildings across “a large part of the territory”. In some cases they have done this to create corridors for troops or evacuations that would prevent the population from returning to those places. Attacks also occur along escape routes designated by the military, which has also “deliberately” destroyed the infrastructure necessary for the population’s survival. These include hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries or agricultural land.

“Israel has violated its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can return to their homes, destroying almost everything in its path across large areas,” Hardeman condemned in the 154-page report. ” Destitute, hungry and surrounded: Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in GazaTo prepare it, 39 interviews were conducted with Gazans, 184 orders for the evacuation of the population were analyzed, and satellite images, videos and photographs were studied. It also reminds that Israel was born as a state in 1948 and since then and protected by the “wall of impunity”, it prevents the right to return to the places from which 80% of Gaza’s inhabitants came. The refugee was expelled.

The United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is subject to two laws that restrict its activities, approved in the Israeli parliament in late October. There are even members of the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who do not hide that the goal is to drive Palestinians out of Gaza and settle Jewish residents in the Strip. “The Israeli authorities plan to make permanent the violent and organized displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, who belong to another ethnic group, into the buffer zones and security corridors. These actions by Israeli authorities constitute ethnic cleansing,” HRW warns.

Israeli officials argue that these forced movements of Palestinians took place because Hamas and other armed groups fight among civilians, but “Human Rights Watch research shows that this claim is largely false”. The NGO says Israel does not live up to its obligations as an “occupying power” and largely blocks essential humanitarian aid such as water, electricity and fuel to civilians. Additionally, the report stated, “Evacuation orders are inconsistent, inaccurate and are often not communicated to citizens in sufficient time” or “not at all”.

Israel has continued its military campaign in Gaza for 13 months, so far more than 43,600 people have lost their lives. The army has been carrying out a fierce offensive in the northern Palestinian enclave for five weeks, killing more than a thousand people and displacing hundreds of thousands, according to the United Nations. According to HRW, this operation in the north is the latest evidence of the tactics implemented by the occupation troops with this forced movement of the population.

According to what the newspaper published this Thursday, the Israeli army has decided to investigate 16 attacks carried out by its soldiers with almost 300 deaths in that northern area of ​​the Strip due to possible cases of violations of international law. HaaretzMedia say an investigation is being launched in view of possible international prosecutions against Jewish state military personnel. According to that newspaper, most of the people killed in these weeks’ Israeli attacks in the north have lost their lives in bombings of residential buildings, temporary shelters or public facilities where they took refuge.

The 16 attacks, carried out between 21 October and 2 November, targeted Jabaliya (6), Beit Lahiya (6), Shati (2), Beit Hanun (1) and Gaza City (1), killing at least 285 people in total. People were killed. , Most are residential buildings, in two cases the targets of bombing were UN schools that serve as shelters for the population.

The investigation will be conducted by a military organization dependent on the General Staff known as the FAA Mechanism (Mechanism for fact-finding evaluationin English), the report of which is transferred to the military prosecutor’s office, which decides whether to initiate criminal proceedings. But, as in previous cases, this process could last for years and human rights organizations believe it would only serve to “conceal illegal acts”.

He further said, “Most of them have been closed without initiating criminal investigations against those involved.” HaaretzWhich defines this military mechanism as a tool to protect its soldiers in case of accusations of war crimes. With the Israeli side launching an investigation, the possibility of it being carried out elsewhere at the same time has been curtailed. According to the Israeli NGO Yesh Din, only one case out of 664 opened in previous conflicts in Gaza ended with formal charges and that was of the theft of the equivalent of about 600 euros in a house by several soldiers.

The largest of these attacks occurred on October 29, on the Abu Nasser family’s five-story building in Beit Lahiya, killing a total of 94 people, according to the Israeli newspaper. It describes scenes of numerous dead bodies shown in videos and often published on social networks, as Israeli authorities continue to prevent journalists from accessing the Strip, where, according to the Security Committee, more than 120 journalists or Media workers killed are journalists (CPJ).

Just last June, the United Nations accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity for its strikes in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and another 250 civilians. 101 were murdered in Israeli territory and abducted by soldiers, of whom, according to Jewish state officials, 101 remain in Palestinian territory.

International humanitarian law (IHL) and the Geneva Conventions consider the intentional killing, torture, deportation or illegal transfer or illegal imprisonment of persons, intentional attacks against the civilian population and civilian objects as war crimes, or the killing of prisoners of war.

One of the fundamental principles in IHL is proportionality, which prohibits parties from responding to an attack with excessive violence. This is what Israel is being accused of, whose troops, according to humanitarian organizations and the UN, do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Two other principles also apply, namely that of precaution, which calls for every possible effort to protect citizens from harm, and that of distinction, which requires clear discrimination between objectives. None of them are being accomplished by Israeli forces: according to the United Nations, about 70% of the more than 43,000 dead are women and minors.

If the courts of the place where the acts were committed are not able to prosecute them, it is in the hands of the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague (Netherlands). Individuals are held responsible for these crimes. Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, they can be investigated and prosecuted by any state. In the case of states, this corresponds to the International Court of Justice, which is based in The Hague and dependent on the United Nations.