Amnesty said Israel was acting with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide” [GETTY]
Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” by forcibly displacing most Gazans and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe, allegations Israel dismissed as “blatant lies”.
In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide”.
“Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said.
“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools.”
Amnesty said it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel”, including attacks on civilians, and that Israel had “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”.
The London-based rights group said 1.9 million people, about 90 percent of Gaza’s population, had been forcibly displaced.
Israel rejected the report, accusing Amnesty of spreading “Hamas propaganda”.
“The radical anti-Israel organisation Amnesty has once again chosen to publish baseless lies against Israel,” said foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein.
“Israel is targeting only terrorists and never civilians. Hamas, on the other hand, deliberately targets Israeli civilians and hides behind Palestinian civilians, stealing humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza and causing suffering for both Palestinians and Israelis,” he told AFP.
The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned Israel’s blockade on aid had become a “silent killer” in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, with children and the sick suffering the most.
UNRWA said children and the sick were suffering the most.
“Children in Gaza are going to bed starving. The ill and the sick are not able to get medical care because of shortages in supplies in hospitals and clinics,” its spokeswoman Juliette Touma said.
“Gaza has become a land of desperation…The siege on Gaza is a silent killer, a silent killer of children, of older people, of the most vulnerable in the community.”
Collective failure
UNRWA also said more than 50 of its staff, including teachers and doctors, had been abused by Israeli forces in detention.
“They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten + used as human shields,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.
Israel has accused some UNRWA employees of involvement in the October 7 attack and has subsequently banned the agency from operating within its territory.
Amnesty said the war represented a collective failure by the international community.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s regional director, said Palestinians had endured “extreme levels of suffering while the world showed a “complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it”.
