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Amnesty International has published a new report claiming that Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war. The human rights organisation notes that Palestinians are subjected to a “slow and calculated death” due to systematic air strikes, shelling and blockade, which cause hunger and disease, Reuters reports.
In the report, Amnesty International highlights genocidal actions based on satellite imagery, testimonies of local residents and statements by Israeli government officials, which, according to the organisation’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard, put Palestinians in Gaza in the position of “subhuman beings”, deprived of dignity and human rights.
“Month after month, Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza as a group of people to be physically destroyed,” Agnes Callamard said. According to her, these actions should serve as a “wake-up call to the international community” about the violation of international law.
Amnesty cites numerous air strikes that allegedly resulted in the deaths of civilians, including 141 children. The organisation claims that there is no evidence that these strikes had military targets, which, according to human rights activists, indicates the deliberate killing of civilians.
The report also notes that the living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza have become catastrophic: continuous shelling, blockade and lack of humanitarian aid have led to hunger, disease and increased mortality among the civilian population.
Amnesty emphasises that countries that supply arms to Israel can be recognised as complicit in genocide, as they fail to fulfil their obligations to prevent such crimes.
According to the UN, the war in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 44,000 people, most of them civilians.
Earlier this week, the UN said that the situation in Gaza is “apocalyptic” and far exceeds the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe.
