Report analyses official statements, extensive visual and digital evidence, and witness testimony

A deadly mixture of malnutrition and disease has exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death, and destruction in Gaza has been at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century

The broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts mean that genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion

‘Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza’ - Agnès Callamard

‘To avoid the risk of itself being complicit in genocide, the UK must immediately end all arms transfers to Israel’ - Sacha Deshmukh (see bottom of press release)

Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed - and is continuing to commit - genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organisation said in a major new report today.

The 296-page report - ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza - documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity. 

Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid. 

Amnesty has examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually-reinforcing consequences. Amnesty considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time, and also analysed public statements by officials - finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.

International jurisprudence recognises that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed. The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group is sufficient.

Amnesty’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over the nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024, with Amnesty interviewing 212 people - including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza and healthcare workers - while conducting fieldwork and analysing an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. Amnesty also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, Amnesty shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but has received no substantive response. 

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:

“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. 

“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. 

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. 

“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states - the UK and others - must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.

“The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims.

“States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.”

See ‘The UK’s responsibility to help end the genocide’ below. 

Unprecedented scale and magnitude

Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians - including 13,300 children - and injured around 97,000 by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. The offensive has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying vital infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It has thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. 

Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March and was displaced again in May, described his family’s struggle to survive in horrifying conditions: 

“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse … You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.” 

Israel has imposed conditions of life in Gaza that have created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and disease, exposing Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel has also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment. Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion. 

Amnesty is calling for the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law. Amnesty is calling for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally, and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account.

Intent to destroy: 102 official statements analysed

To establish Israel’s specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza, Amnesty analysed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, reviewed dehumanising and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials - particularly those at the highest levels - and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and its unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian Territory. 

Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid. Amnesty concluded these claims are not credible. The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely-populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Its research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid. In its analysis, Amnesty also considered alternative arguments such as ones that Israel was acting recklessly or that it simply wanted to destroy Hamas and did not care if it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, demonstrating a callous disregard for their lives rather than genocidal intent. 

However, regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent. Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty were preceded by officials urging their implementation. Amnesty reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024, which dehumanised Palestinians and called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them. Of these, Amnesty identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent. This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.

Aerial attacks, denial of aid and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure

Amnesty documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 airstrikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians - including 141 children - and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty found no evidence that any of these attacks were directed at a military objective. In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Abdelal family house in Al-Jneinah district in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians - including 16 children - as they were sleeping. While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, or of deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population. 

Amnesty’s report also documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.

After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months studied for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. Israel’s actions thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis. This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health. Time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for more than a year it has repeatedly refused to take the necessary steps, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what can enter the territory. 

Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel has displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians - 90% of Gaza’s population - into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to ten times. These multiple waves of forced displacement have left many jobless and deeply traumatised, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba. Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, the Israeli authorities have refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensure their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate. They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return to areas from which they were displaced in 1948.

On 7 Octocter 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers. Amnesty continues to call for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally, and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October 2023 to be held to account. The crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups during this attack will be the focus of a forthcoming Amnesty report.

The UK’s responsibility to prevent genocide

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:

“As a state party to the Genocide Convention, the UK has a legal obligation to use all reasonable means to help prevent genocide.

“The UK must take urgent steps to make clear to Israel that this country does not support genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, and those acts must end immediately.

“The UK government must, as an urgent first step, work with other countries by all diplomatic and legal means to press Israel into fully implementing the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.  

“To avoid the risk of itself being complicit in genocide, the UK must immediately end all arms transfers to Israel. 

“The UK should also press for multilateral targeted sanctions at the UN Security Council against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.

“The UK must act to ensure justice and accountability, supporting the ongoing International Criminal Court investigation into Palestine and executing any ICC arrest warrants.”