A coalition of leading US Jewish groups on Friday turned down an invitation to meet French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot following Paris’s announcement a day prior that it would recognize a Palestinian state in September, while accusing Paris of “dishonoring the victims of October 7.”

In a joint statement, the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, B’nai B’rith International, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, UJA-Federation of New York and World Jewish Congress said they were “deeply concerned that France’s approach undermines prospects for a mutually negotiated future for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Barrot approached one of the groups, the Conference of Presidents, to meet in New York to discuss the recognition move. It declined.

The groups expressed disappointment that they “were invited to discuss a policy that appears to have already been finalized.”

They urged French President Emmanuel Macron to reconsider the decision and commended the White House “for its clear and forceful opposition to the French proposal.”

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday the US “strongly rejects” the plan. “This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th,” he said.

US President Donald Trump said “what [Macron] says doesn’t matter.”

“He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight,” he told reporters at the White House.

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The Jewish groups said that “By taking such a unilateral step, France not only emboldens extremists, but risks the security of the Jewish people around the globe, along with alienating moderate voices and undermining the credibility of French diplomacy in the region.”

They accused Macron of having backtracked on “specific conditions” for recognizing Palestinian statehood, which the groups said he outlined three months ago. These conditions included “the release of hostages still held in Gaza and Hamas’s surrender,” the groups said.

“None of these conditions have been met, contradicting the president’s prior commitments,” they added. “By abandoning these conditions, France rewards Hamas for its continued brutality and sends a dangerous message that legitimizes terrorism while dishonoring the victims of October 7, 2023.”

Barrot, who delivered a letter outlining Macron’s announcement to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, has rebuffed such criticism.

“Hamas has always rejected the two-state solution,” he tweeted on Thursday. “By recognizing Palestine, France proves this terrorist movement wrong. It supports the side of peace against that of war.”

Israel is furious about France’s recognition. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar tweeted on Friday that he had discussed the move with his Canadian counterpart and warned her that Israel is considering an unspecified response.

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“Unilateral steps by France and other countries will only push Israel to take steps of its own,” he wrote. “The French initiative harms the chances of achieving a hostage deal and ceasefire. It won’t promote stability in the region.”

William Daroff, the Conference of Presidents’ CEO, said the decision to rebuff Barrot’s invitation did not represent a permanent policy.

“We routinely meet with foreign leaders, including when we disagree with their policies. However, in this case, the group of invited organizations unanimously agreed not to attend. Speaking with one voice underscores the seriousness of our objection,” he said in a statement. “Should we receive future invitations, we will evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.”

Macron’s move came amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with aid agencies warning of widespread hunger, and failed efforts to bring an end to the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack and to free the hostages still held by the terror group.

Netanyahu and much of the Israeli right have long opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, insisting it would be a security threat and a haven for terrorists.

Since the Hamas onslaught in 2023, Jerusalem has also said that recognizing a Palestinian state now would incentivize further violence, acting as a reward for the rampage, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, of whom 50 are still held, including at least 28 who are confirmed dead.

French-Israeli political analyst Myriam Shermer said that “French Jews and French Israelis feel abandoned by Macron.”

“They feel punished by Macron, who multiplies his criticisms of Israel, whereas France, in their view, should have stood by Israel in the fight against Islamist terrorism,” she said.

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Israeli ministers railed against Macron, with several senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition calling for Jerusalem to annex the West Bank in retaliation.

Netanyahu in his own statement said Macron was recognizing a “state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of the October 7 massacre.”

“Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launchpad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it.”

“Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel,” the premier asserted.

With Israel likely to take punitive measures against France, as it has done to other countries that have recognized a Palestinian state, some ministers argued that the most fitting reaction would be to annex the territory on which Palestinians hope their future state will be located.

“I thank President Macron for providing yet another compelling reason to finally apply Israeli sovereignty over the historic regions of Judea and Samaria, and to definitively abandon the failed concept of establishing a Palestinian terrorist state in the heart of the Land of Israel,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in an English-language tweet.

A group of some 50 Jewish summer campers from France was forcibly removed from an airplane at an airport in Valencia, Spain, on Wednesday evening after a confrontation with staff, according to reports.

Their supervisor, reported to be a woman aged 21, was forcibly detained by security.

The Kineret Camp claimed the incident was rooted in an antisemitic attitude by staff.

Vueling, the low-cost Spanish airline on whose plane the incident happened, said the youths from Kineret Camp, who were returning to Paris from a trip to Spain, “engaged in highly disruptive behavior and adopted a very confrontational attitude, putting at risk the safe conduct of the flight.”

It said they “mishandled emergency equipment and actively disrupted the mandatory safety demonstration” and ignored “multiple warnings,” leading the crew to summon security.

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Some reports said the group sang loudly in Hebrew while aboard the plane. Several reports in Jewish media claimed staff made incendiary statements toward the group, and allegedly called Israel a “terrorist state.” These could not be immediately verified, and their source was unclear.

The woman who was arrested and beaten is the director of the Kinneret summer camp. Fifty Jewish French children, aged 10 – 15, were singing Hebrew songs on the plane. Advertisement The @vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they… https://t.co/V78PEHB58B pic.twitter.com/HizF6SZoaD — עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) July 23, 2025

As of Thursday afternoon, the Foreign Ministry said that most of the group had reached their intended destination, and the remaining passengers departed on a separate flight.

The Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Embassy in Madrid “maintained continuous contact” with authorities at the airport following the incident, the ministry said in a Hebrew-language statement.

“Israel, the Foreign Ministry, and Israeli missions around the world will continue to act and provide assistance to Israelis and Jews in distress wherever they may be,” the ministry added.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli wrote on X that members of the summer camp, aged 10–15, were indeed singing Hebrew songs on the plane.

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“The Vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they are now in Valencia, waiting to return to France,” Chikli posted, blaming the incident on antisemitism.

Video from the scene showed security personnel handcuffing a woman pinned to the ground by security agents, apparently the supervisor.

One of the minors on the flight, 17-year-old Samson, told AFP by telephone that the group had taken their seats on the plane calmly.

“One of my friends shouted a word in Hebrew because he was still a bit in holiday-camp mood,” he said, adding: “Perhaps he said it too loudly.”

Flight staff then warned that they would alert police if it happened again, he said. “We immediately stopped making noise,” Samson said.

The Civil Guard said it had removed 44 minors and eight adults from the plane, saying the arrested person “refused to get off the plane and obey the officers” but was later released.

“The officers were not aware of the religion of the disembarked people at any point during the operation,” the Civil Guard said in a statement.

Parents said the teenagers were forced off the plane after one of them had sung a song in Hebrew.

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A mother whose 17-year-old son was on the flight told AFP on condition of anonymity that the group was returning home from a two-week summer camp.

She said she “could not see what could have justified” the incident, which affected children as young as 12 and 13. “They were disembarked like dogs,” she said.

Karine Lamy, a woman identifying herself as the mother of one of the kids, told i24NEWS that only one of the children had started singing and that after a warning from the crew, the children calmed down and behaved. However, she alleged, security was called anyway and instructed the group to disembark.

She said security personnel then told everyone to place their mobile phones on the floor so videos they recorded could be deleted. According to Lamy, the counselor then objected, saying they had no right to do so, leading to her forcible detainment.

Spanish Jewish site Enfoque Judio said some of the kids had later boarded other flights but that others still did not have return tickets as of Thursday afternoon. It was not clear whether the counselor had been released.

A video shared later by Enfoque Judio showed members of the group being instructed by a group leader to hide all religious symbols during their detention for fear of complicating matters.

????️ INCIDENTE EN VALENCIA | Instrucciones a los menores antes de tomar un nuevo vuelo: “Todo lo que sea kipá, tzitzit, lo que lleven puesto, nos lo quitamos. Ningún signo religioso visible”.

Vídeo: @tony_attal_ https://t.co/L3TjHFfxWf pic.twitter.com/QxONqQGFCX Advertisement — Enfoque Judío (@enfoquejudio) July 24, 2025

The Kineret Camp sent parents a message saying that all of the campers would be home by Thursday, and were receiving kosher food from a local Chabad house, Enfoque Judio reported.

“The removal of the children and their luggage from the plane is a purely antisemitic act,” the message said, according to the report. “We are initiating proceedings against the airline, of which we will keep you informed.”

Vueling had a different version of the story.

“The actions of the onboard staff were solely in response to behavior that compromised the integrity of the flight, as well as the safety of the passengers and the operation as a whole,” the airline said in a statement. “This group mishandled emergency equipment and actively disrupted the mandatory safety demonstration, repeatedly ignoring instructions from crew.”

The crew, acting in accordance with the airline’s procedures, requested the intervention of security, who decided to remove the group from the plane, Vueling said.

“Once at the terminal, the group’s behavior continued to be aggressive. Some individuals displayed a violent attitude towards the authorities, which even led to the arrest of one of the group’s members,” Vueling said. “We categorically deny any suggestion that our crew’s decision related to the religion of the passengers involved.”

In a statement following the incident, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE), which represents the Jews of Spain, expressed its concern, noting that it has contacted Vueling to clarify exactly what had happened on the plane.

“The FCJE believes the airline is responsible for providing immediate and transparent explanations for what happened, as well as conducting an internal review to determine whether there was an inadequate protocol,” it said. “Chants and displays of euphoria on airplanes are not an isolated occurrence, and we believe that if these expressions were the cause of the incident, Vueling needs to clarify the matter.”

Antisemitic sentiments have skyrocketed around the world since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Chikli has singled out Spain as one of the worst offending countries.

The number of antisemitic incidents reported in the country has risen nearly sixfold since 2022, according to a recent report by the Antisemitism Observatory, a joint initiative of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Movement Against Intolerance.

Following the incident, French Parliament member Caroline Yadan called for the case to be investigated.

“If the facts reported… are true, the Spanish airline Vueling will have to answer to justice,” she wrote on X.

“We are going to file a complaint for physical and psychological violence, as well as discrimination on the basis of religion,” Club Kineret’s lawyer Julie Jacob said, adding that those involved were mostly under 15 years old.

Kineret said the police action was brutal and unjustified “and clearly marked by bias.”

Summary

Early in the morning of October 7, 2023, Sagi Shifroni, 41, like many Israelis living near the Gaza Strip that day, was awakened by sirens. When the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri began, he dashed in his sleepwear with his 5-year-old daughter to his home’s “safe room” or mamad. His wife years earlier had persuaded him to remove the door’s outside handle, so when Palestinian fighters broke into his house at about 11 a.m., they were unable to open the safe room door. Shifroni told Human Rights Watch:

I heard glass breaking and a few seconds later I heard shots fired at the door of the safe room. The door was not bulletproof, so the bullets came through. The whole room filled with the smell of gunpowder and broken cement. … My daughter asked me if they were trying to kill us and I told her, ‘Yes, but they won’t manage.’ They tried to knock the door down for a few minutes but couldn’t. They tried to shoot the hinges.

Shifroni said smoke started seeping through the door:

It was pretty clear that we couldn’t stay here. If we stayed, we would be dead. At this point I decided to get out, it was more like an instinct. I opened the door of the safe room a bit and saw the whole house was on fire, so I turned to the window and opened it. I saw that the whole patio area outside was also on fire.

Shifroni smashed the window glass and pushed the metal shutters open. He wrapped his daughter in a blanket and told her to hold a pillow to her nose and mouth and breathe through it. Then he jumped out, holding her in his arms. His arms, shoulders, back, and face got severely burned. Only at midnight was he able to get to a hospital to treat his burns.

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Overview of the October 7 Assault

On the morning of October 7, Palestinian armed groups carried out numerous coordinated attacks including on civilian residences and gatherings and on Israeli military bases in the so-called “Gaza Envelope,” the populated area of southern Israel bordering the Gaza Strip. The armed groups attacked at least 19 kibbutzim and five moshavim (cooperative communities), the cities of Sderot and Ofakim, two music festivals, and a beach party. Community security called kitot konenut, or rapid response teams, and local police tried to resist the attackers until Israeli military forces arrived, often several hours after the assault had begun. The fighting lasted much of that day and, in some cases, longer.

The assault took place on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, when many soldiers were on leave. Palestinian armed groups began the assault with barrages of indiscriminate rockets and projectiles toward Israel. Fighters breached the physical barrier separating Gaza and Israel and then attacked nearby communities. Early in the attacks, the fighters disrupted and destroyed communications and surveillance equipment, leaving Israeli forces unable to develop an accurate picture of the situation.

The largest number of deaths occurred during the attack on the Supernova Music Festival, where at least 364 civilians were killed. Across many attack sites, fighters fired directly at civilians, often at close range, as they tried to flee, and at people who happened to be driving vehicles in the area. They hurled grenades and shot into safe rooms and other shelters and fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at homes. They set some houses on fire, burning and suffocating people to death, and forcing out others who they then captured or killed. They took hundreds hostage for transfer to Gaza or summarily killed them.

Agence France-Presse (AFP), which cross-referenced numerous data sources to verify the number of people killed, has assessed that 815 of a total of 1,195 people killed were civilians, including 79 foreign nationals. Among them were at least 282 women and 36 children. The Palestinian armed groups took hostage 251 civilians and Israeli security forces personnel and brought them back to Gaza following the attack. Those abducted either remain as hostages in Gaza, have been released, or have been killed or died in the ensuing fighting. These are included in the overall death toll.

National and international media outlets detailed many of the atrocities that took place on October 7. Some reports minimized the extent of the abuses, while others included allegations of abuses that were later proven incorrect.

Hamas, the Palestinian movement that has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007, stated that its armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the “Qassam Brigades”), led the assault on October 7. Survivor accounts and publicly available digital material from that day show that many of the fighters wore a combination of black or green uniforms or camouflage, some of which resembled Israeli military uniforms. Some wore distinctive headbands or insignia that identified them as members of Hamas or another armed group. Other armed group members wore civilian attire, although some may have been civilians from Gaza who joined the assault.

Most of the victims of the attacks were Jewish Israelis. However, fighters also killed, wounded, or took hostage Israeli dual nationals, Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians from Gaza, and foreign workers, including Chinese, Filipino, Nepali, Sri Lankan and Thai nationals, and at least one national each from Cambodia, Canada, Eritrea, Germany, Mexico, Sudan, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom.

This report aims to capture the nature and extent of violations of international humanitarian law, known as the laws of war, and serious international crimes committed by Palestinian armed groups across numerous attack sites on October 7. The report also examines the role of different Palestinian armed groups involved, and their coordination before and during the attacks.

Human Rights Watch has extensively reported elsewhere on violations of the laws of war by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and on grave human rights abuses and conditions in Gaza, including since October 7.

Methodology

Human Rights Watch conducted research in October and November 2023 in Israel, and remote research through June 2024. The research included interviews in person and remotely with 144 people including: 94 survivors of the October 7 attacks; family members of survivors, hostages and those killed; first responders who collected human remains from the attack sites; medical experts who examined the human remains and provided forensic advice to the Israeli authorities; officials from the municipalities affected by the attacks; journalists who visited the attack sites after Israeli forces secured the areas; analysts of Palestinian political and armed groups; and international investigators. Human Rights Watch verified over 280 photographs and videos posted on social media platforms or shared directly with Human Rights Watch, including those recorded by fighters’ body cameras, cellphone cameras, dashboard cameras, and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras from the attack sites. Human Rights Watch also examined satellite images and analyzed dozens of audio recordings, most shared on armed groups’ Telegram channels.

Violations of International Humanitarian Law

This report details numerous incidents of violations of international humanitarian law—the laws of war—by Palestinian armed groups on October 7, 2023; it does not include violations since then. These include deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects; willful killing of persons in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; sexual and gender-based violence; hostage taking; mutilation and despoiling (robbing) of bodies; use of human shields; and pillage and looting.

International humanitarian law recognizes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as an ongoing armed conflict. The hostilities between Israel and Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups are governed by international humanitarian law for non-international armed conflicts, which are rooted in international treaty law, most notably Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and customary international humanitarian law. These rules concern the methods and means of combat and fundamental protections for civilians and for combatants no longer participating in hostilities and apply to both states and non-state armed groups.

The foremost principle of international humanitarian law is that parties to a conflict must distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Civilians may never be the target of attack. Attacks that deliberately target civilians or fail to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or that would cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to the anticipated military gain, are prohibited.

Members of the organized fighting forces of a non-state party may be targeted during an armed conflict. There is no requirement that members of non-state armed groups wear uniforms or other identifying insignia.

Civilians lose their immunity from attack when and only for such time as they are directly participating in hostilities. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “Interpretive Guidance on Direct or Participation in Hostilities” provides that civilians who participate in “individual self-defense” are not directly participating in hostilities. That is, civilians who use necessary and proportionate force to defend themselves against unlawful attack do not become lawful military targets. Otherwise, states the Guidance, “this would have the absurd consequence of legitimizing a previously unlawful attack.”

Common Article 3 provides a number of fundamental protections for civilians and captured or incapacitated combatants. Violence against such persons—notably murder, cruel treatment, and torture—is prohibited, as well as outrages against their personal dignity and degrading or humiliating treatment, and the taking of hostages.

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Serious violations of the laws of war that are committed with criminal intent—deliberately or recklessly—are war crimes. War crimes, listed in the “grave breaches” provisions of the Geneva Conventions and as customary law, include a wide array of offenses, including deliberate, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks harming civilians and civilian objects, torture and other ill-treatment, hostage-taking, and using human shields, among others. Individuals also may be held criminally liable for attempting to commit a war crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime.

Certain crimes, such as murder, can amount to crimes against humanity, when committed as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.” The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines such an “attack” as a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts listed as crimes against humanity, pursuant to or in furtherance of state or organizational policy to commit such an “attack”—that is, the multiple criminal acts committed. Such a policy includes the state or organization actively promoting or encouraging such an attack, or in certain situations, its deliberate failure to take action.

Criminal responsibility may fall on persons responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including those planning or instigating or assisting the commission of the crimes. In addition, commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes or crimes against humanity as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity by persons within their chain of command and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.

States have an obligation to investigate and fairly prosecute individuals within their territory implicated in war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Violations on October 7

Violations of International Humanitarian Law and War Crimes

Killings

The laws of war prohibit deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the killing of civilians or captured combatants in custody, which are war crimes.

Palestinian fighters repeatedly attacked civilians and summarily executed individuals in their custody. The killings of civilians appear planned because of the many similarities in how killings took place across the attack sites: the armed groups directed many of their attacks at residential areas, fighters began to shoot civilians immediately after the assault began at 6:30 a.m., and the armed groups’ audio recordings and videos of the assault posted on their Telegram channels were indicative of a modus operandi. The Hamas leadership issued some statements after the assault saying its fighters had been instructed to spare women, children and older people, something contradicted by events. Some statements also made no mention of men who, if civilians, are also protected from attack.

Fighters also often extensively damaged people’s property, including by smashing and vandalizing, as well as by burning some buildings to the ground, putting civilians inside at grave risk.

Torture and Ill-treatment

Palestinian fighters committed acts of torture and ill-treatment against individuals they had captured, including those being taken as hostages. Committing torture and other ill-treatment is a violation of the laws of war and a war crime.

Verified videos show fighters hitting and kicking those they took into custody. In one video, a fighter is dragging a woman by the hair. Another depicts a female hostage with visible injuries being pulled out of the trunk compartment of a vehicle by a fighter who drags her by her hair and, together with another man, forces her as she resists into the vehicle’s back seat. One verified video posted to the South First Responders Telegram channel shows men wearing Qassam Brigades headbands taking a man from a bomb shelter at a bus stop near Kissufim. Fighters direct the man toward a car parked next to the bus stop and one hits the man repeatedly with the butt of a rifle. A second fighter approaches with zip ties and proceeds to kick the man twice in the head before another fighter gets him to stop.

Crimes Involving Acts of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Rape and other severe forms of sexual violence are crimes under international law. Acts of sexual and gender-based violence may also constitute the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity. Human Rights Watch found evidence of acts of sexual and gender-based violence by fighters including forced nudity, and the posting without consent of sexualized images on social media. Human Rights Watch was not able to gather verifiable information through interviews with survivors of or witnesses to rape during the assault on October 7. Human Rights Watch requested access to information on sexual and gender-based violence in the possession of the Israeli government, but this request was not granted.

The office of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict visited Israel on the invitation of the government. The team interviewed people who reported witnessing rape and other sexual violence, concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the October 7 attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations.”

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel (UN Commission of Inquiry) conducted an investigation into crimes including those committed during the October 7 assault. In the commission’s June 2024 report it wrote that it had “documented cases indicative of sexual violence perpetrated against women and men in and around the Nova festival site, as well as the Nahal Oz military outpost and several kibbutzim, including Kfar Aza, Re’im and Nir Oz,”[6] and “found indications that members of the military wing of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed gender-based violence (GBV) in several locations in southern Israel on 7 October.”

The extent to which acts of sexual and gender-based violence were committed during the October 7 assault will likely never be fully known: many victims may have been killed; stigma and trauma often deter survivors from reporting; and Israeli security forces and other responders largely did not collect relevant forensic evidence from the attack sites or the recovered bodies.

Taking of Hostages

Hostage-taking has been defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross as “the seizure, detention or otherwise holding of a person (the hostage) accompanied by the threat to kill, injure or continue to detain that person in order to compel a third party to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release, safety or well-being of the hostage.” Hostages can include civilians and captured military personnel. Hostage-taking is a violation of the laws of war and a war crime.

The Hamas leadership has said that taking hostages was core to their assault plans. The Qassam Brigades and other armed groups took 251 people hostage on October 7, including 40 who were taken from the Supernova Music Festival, and 39 children. As of July 1, 116 hostages were still in Gaza, at least 42 of them dead.

The Qassam Brigades and other armed groups have released multiple videos showing hostages asking to be released and demanding action from the Israeli government to secure their release. The broadcast of these videos of people in captivity are forms of inhumane treatment that constitute the war crime of “outrages upon personal dignity.”

Pillage, Looting and Destruction of Property

Pillage has been defined as the forcible taking of private property. Pillage, as well as destruction of property without military justification, are war crimes.

Palestinian fighters and unarmed people, some of whom may have been civilians from Gaza, stole from homes during the October 7 assault. In some cases, they demanded money and other possessions from civilians sheltering inside their houses.

Crimes Against Humanity

Human Rights Watch has found that the Palestinian armed groups involved in the assault on October 7 committed a widespread attack directed against a civilian population, according to the definition required for crimes against humanity. This is based on the numerous civilian sites that were targeted for the commission of crimes. The attack directed against the civilian population was also systematic, based on the planning that went into the crimes. Human Rights Watch has further found that the criminal acts of the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought, or as a plan gone awry, or as isolated acts, for example solely by the actions of unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza, and as such there is strong evidence of an organizational policy to commit multiple acts of crimes against humanity.

Given, therefore that on October 7, 2023, there was an attack directed against a civilian population and that the murder of civilians and the taking of hostages—imprisonment in violation of fundamental rules of international law—were part of it, these amount to crimes against humanity.

Based on the evidence set out in this report, Human Rights Watch calls for the investigation of other crimes against humanity, including persecution against any identifiable group on racial, national, ethnic or religious grounds; rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; and extermination. These would amount to crimes against humanity if criminal acts meeting the respective definitions of the crimes were committed, and these crimes were committed as part of the “attack” directed against a civilian population.

Palestinian Armed Groups Responsible for Abuses

Evidence collected and analyzed by Human Rights Watch, including statements by witnesses, statements by Hamas officials, and verified video and social media content, demonstrates that the October 7 assault was organized and planned well in advance. The consistent patterns of behavior of the fighters during the attacks and their armaments, vehicles and attire, also indicated a high degree of planning and organization.

Human Rights Watch was able to confirm the participation of various Palestinians armed groups based on headbands the fighters wore to indicate their group affiliation and based on posts that armed groups issued on their Telegram channels claiming responsibility for their actions, including acts of abuse.

Human Rights Watch found strong evidence of the participation of at least five Palestinian armed groups from Gaza in the attacks: Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Quds Brigades; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s armed wing, the National Resistance Brigades or Omar al-Qasim Forces; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s armed wing, the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; and the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, formerly linked to the Fatah political faction.

These groups’ participation was largely confirmed through a detailed analysis of the attackers visible in videos taken during the attacks, including CCTV and body camera footage, some wearing colored headbands linked to specific armed groups, as well as an identification of the Telegram social media channels belonging to specific armed groups on which the footage of abuse was posted, with captions claiming responsibility for the acts shown.

All of these groups were members of a “Joint Operations Room” in Gaza that during escalations in hostilities engage in training, planning and carrying out armed operations against Israel.

The Qassam Brigades led the attack and was the most active armed group on October 7. The group carried out 10 of the 13 breaches of the physical barrier separating Gaza and Israel that Human Rights Watch documented. Their presence is visible in at least 14 different locations across southern Israel, where verified videos show the Qassam Brigades’ fighters taking hostages and killing civilians and members of the Israeli security forces.

The footage analyzed also shows that the Qassam Brigades and the other armed groups involved in the assault coordinated with, and integrated into it, some individuals who appear to be Palestinian civilians from Gaza who committed abuses in conjunction with these forces.

Hamas’s Response to Allegations of Abuse

Hamas responded on April 14, 2024 with a nine-page letter that is attached as an annex and cited throughout this report to questions submitted by Human Rights Watch on February 28. The main assertions made in the letter are that: its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, planned the operation, which it called “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” and led the October 7 assault; “Hamas is committed to respecting international and human rights law”; “the Qassam Brigades was clear in directing its members and fighters not to target civilians”; and it has a “military doctrine not to target civilians.”

It blamed unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza, who it said crossed through the breached border opportunistically, for committing some of the abuses: “People rushed out, along with Palestinian groups that were not participating in the military operation, resulting in chaos in the field and, thus, changing the plan to conduct an operation against military targets.” It added that after the initial, planned attack occurred, “the subsequent stage, in which Gaza residents and armed forces rushed in without coordination with Hamas, led to many mistakes.”

Several Hamas leaders have spoken publicly about the October 7 assault, including praising the operation overall that day but distancing the group from abuses committed. An English-language document titled “Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” issued by the Hamas Media Office on January 21, 2024, states that the attacks only targeted Israeli military sites and fighters avoided harming civilians, and cites chaos on the breached fence areas.

Human Rights Watch has found that based on the information presented in this report, the Hamas claim that on October 7 its forces did not seek to harm Israeli civilians is false—rather, it was part of the plan from the outset. Accounts from survivors along with photographs and verified videos from the attacks show Palestinian fighters seeking out civilians and killing them across the attack sites from the first moments that the assault began, indicating that the intentional killing and hostage-taking of civilians was planned and highly coordinated.

Civilian Deaths in Crossfire

A number of the civilian casualties on October 7 occurred during the fighting between Israeli armed forces and Palestinian fighters. Some of those killed and injured appear to have been killed or injured while in the custody of Palestinian forces, who were holding them as hostages.

There were ongoing government probes into the role the Israeli armed forces played in contributing to the civilian death toll at the time of writing.

Israeli media reports indicate that Israeli forces responding to the assault injured or killed some civilians during attacks on Palestinian fighters in and around the fences separating Gaza and Israel. In one case that the Israeli military investigated, it concluded that its forces killed an Israeli civilian who had been taken hostage near the Gaza and Israel border.

Human Rights Watch is aware of at least two incidents in which Palestinian fighters appear to have used civilians as human shields. Using human shields is a violation of the laws of war and a war crime.

Recovering the Bodies

The scale and intensity of the Palestinian armed group attacks and the subsequent fighting, the taking of scores of hostages to Gaza, and the number of bodies and wounded dispersed across a large area complicated the task for Israeli authorities of promptly recovering and identifying the victims. The initial number of civilians pronounced as killed was later lowered, which Israeli authorities attribute to the confusion in identifying the recovered human remains and determining whether they were victims or attackers.

On October 7, Israeli authorities did not prioritize the gathering of forensic evidence. This has made it more difficult to know with precision the scale and nature of the abuses committed. Members of ZAKA, an umbrella group of voluntary community emergency response teams in Israel, arrived at sites soon after the attacks in some cases as they were ongoing and the military had arrived. ZAKA members collected many of the bodies from the attack sites. Their priority was to, in accordance with Jewish law, preserve Jewish human remains, identify the dead, and allow families to bury their loved ones quickly and with dignity in accordance with Jewish law. Remains were placed in body bags and transported to the Shura Military Base, after which the authorities handed them over to the families for burial.

Aftermath of the Assault

Within days of the Palestinian armed groups’ attacks, Israeli authorities cut off essential services, including water and electricity, to Gaza’s population and blocked the entry of all but a trickle of fuel and humanitarian aid, acts that amount to war crimes. Immediately after the attacks in southern Israel, Israeli forces began an intense aerial bombardment and a later ground incursion, which have continued until the present, reducing large parts of Gaza to rubble. Israeli forces have been responsible for an undetermined number of unlawfully indiscriminate attacks and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population. More than 37,900 Palestinians, most of them civilians were killed between October 7 and July 1, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The October 7 assault cannot justify the atrocities and war crimes committed by Israeli forces in Gaza, just as no act, policy or crime attributable to Israeli authorities can justify the unlawful killing, ill-treatment, hostage-taking, and other crimes that the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups carried out in Israel on October 7.

For the survivors of the October 7 attacks, their communities remain in tatters. Rotem Holin from Kfar Aza, who had moved with her two young children to a hotel repurposed as a temporary shelter, described the impact of the attack on her kibbutz in late October:

We lived through hell and 32 hours of not knowing what’s happening to our families and friends and neighbors. Now we will need to build ourselves new homes- there is nothing left. I can’t even think of living near Gaza because I can’t imagine living through this again. We never thought it would happen. Every person who you see [in the hotel] is broken. They have all probably lost one of their best friends or a family member. Everyone is going from funeral to funeral, and looking at name after name of people killed, and name after name of people taken to Gaza. Our brains haven’t even fully processed this loss. We have to tell our kids that they have friends and teachers who are never coming back. My son recently told me that the father of one of his friends was shot dead, and another friend’s mother, the same.

All parties to the armed conflict in Gaza and Israel should fully abide by international humanitarian law. The Palestinian armed groups in Gaza should immediately and unconditionally release civilians held hostage. They should take appropriate disciplinary measures against armed group members responsible for war crimes, and should transfer for prosecution any individuals facing warrants from the ICC.

Turkey, Iran, Qatar and other countries that have relations with Hamas, its armed wing, and the other armed groups involved in the assault should seek the immediate release of the remaining civilian hostages. Countries providing arms to the Palestinian armed groups who participated in the assault, including Iran, should suspend arms transfers so long as these groups continue to commit violations of the laws of war that go unpunished.

To facilitate independent documentation of abuses by all parties, Israeli and Palestinian authorities and armed groups should cooperate with and provide unhindered access to all of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the UN Commission of Inquiry; the ICC; relevant UN special procedures; and independent human rights organizations.

Recommendations

Since the October 7 assault and Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza, Human Rights Watch has issued numerous reports containing recommendations to the Israeli authorities and the international community. The recommendations included in this report stem from Human Rights Watch’s research into the October 7 assault and violations of international law.

To Hamas, the Qassam Brigades and Other Palestinian Armed Groups Participating in the October 7 Assault

Publish a complete list of all the people being held hostage and bodies they are withholding;

Immediately release all civilians held hostage;

So long as they hold hostages, ensure that all hostages are treated humanely; held in humane conditions, with access to adequate medical care, food, and shelter; and are allowed to communicate privately with their families and receive visits from an impartial humanitarian agency;

Ensure that any hostages who are particularly at risk, including older people, any survivors of sexual violence, and those injured or otherwise requiring medical treatment, are immediately given access to adequate and appropriate treatment and services, and are prioritized for release to facilitate their access to medical and psychosocial support services and mental health care;

Immediately cease unlawful attacks, including indiscriminate attacks and targeted attacks against civilians, including the launching of unguided rockets and projectiles toward Israeli population centers;

Take appropriate disciplinary actions against members responsible for ordering or carrying out serious violations of international law;

Cooperate with international authorities, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), UN Commission of Inquiry, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other relevant UN mechanisms and experts, including in order to ensure justice and reparations for victims for crimes committed during the October 7 assault;

Provide prompt and appropriate compensation to victims and their families for deaths, injuries, acts of sexual violence, and property damage resulting from unlawful attacks.

To Palestinian Authorities

Publicly call on all groups holding civilian hostages in Gaza to release them;

Conduct transparent, credible, and impartial investigations into credible allegations of laws-of-war violations committed by persons under their jurisdiction, including those violations detailed in this report, and prosecute in fair, transparent proceedings, those credibly implicated in the abuses at all levels;

Make public the findings of the investigations including into the intended military targets of attacks, if any, that resulted in civilian casualties, and attacks that directly or indirectly damaged civilian infrastructure and other protected objects;

Cooperate with international authorities, including the ICC, UN Commission of Inquiry, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other relevant UN mechanisms and experts, including in order to ensure justice and reparations for victims for crimes committed during the October 7 attacks, including for acts of sexual and gender-based violence;

Do not cooperate or coordinate with or support armed groups credibly found to perpetrate systematic abuses against civilians; and in particular the Qassam Brigades, Quds Brigades, National Resistance Brigades or Omar al-Qasim Forces, Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and Aqsa Martyrs Brigades;

Publicly condemn all targeted, indiscriminate and otherwise unlawful attacks against civilians.

To the Israeli Government

Ensure that all investigations into abuses committed on October 7, particularly sexual and gender-based violence, are conducted in a manner that is victim-centered, fully informed by best practices, respects victims’ and their families’ autonomy and privacy, and connects survivors with comprehensive support services and assistance;

Share with international bodies including the ICC, UN Commission of Inquiry, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights any evidence collected on abuses committed by Palestinian armed groups linked to the October 7 attacks, in line with victims’ rights including the right to privacy, for the purpose of pursuing accountability;

Provide the ICC, UN Commission of Inquiry, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, other relevant UN mechanisms and experts, and independent human rights organizations with immediate cooperation and unhindered access to all of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory;

Continue to ensure that any survivor of the October 7 assault or of subsequent abuses committed while being held hostage, and in particular children and any survivor of sexual and gender-based violence, has immediate and ongoing access to comprehensive and appropriate services including psychosocial support, health care, and evidence collection and preservation, and that services are delivered in a survivor-centered and confidential manner that respects their autonomy and privacy;

Treat all Palestinians detained on suspicion of participating in the October 7 attacks in accordance with humanitarian and human rights law including by refraining from any form of ill treatment during interrogation, providing families with up-to-date information on their relative’s location while in custody and allowing them to communicate directly, and granting them all due process guarantees.

To the UN Security Council

Demand unimpeded access throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory for the ICC, UN Commission of Inquiry, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, other relevant UN mechanisms and experts, and independent human rights organizations investigating the events of October 7 and subsequent hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.

To All States

Impose or keep in place targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, against officials and entities responsible for ongoing grave abuses, while ensuring that these measures do not harm civilians and nongovernmental organizations performing internationally protected activities in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine. All those targeted with sanctions should have the opportunity to challenge such decisions in fair, prompt proceedings by independent courts and judges;

Suspend arms and military assistance to the Palestinian armed groups credibly implicated in grave abuses, so long as they systematically commit abuses amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity with impunity;

Investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated in international crimes committed as part of the October 7 assault, under the principle of universal jurisdiction and in fair, transparent proceedings in accordance with international due process standards;

Support UN investigations into the October 7 assault and urge that the armed Palestinian armed groups involved and Israel cooperate with the ICC, UN Commission of Inquiry, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, other relevant UN mechanisms and experts, and independent human rights organizations;

Protect the ICC’s independence and publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court’s work, its officials, and those cooperating with the institution;

Express support for any arrest warrants the ICC may issue, commit to working to ensure the execution of such warrants, and press Palestinian and Israeli authorities to cooperate with the court;

Support independent justice mechanisms;

Demand unimpeded access throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory for UN and international justice mechanisms and independent human rights investigators into the events of October 7 and the subsequent hostilities between Israeli force and Palestinian armed groups.

To the Governments of Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Qatar and other Gulf States that have Relations with, or Influence over the Qassam Brigades and other Armed Groups in Gaza that Participated in the Assault

Use influence over Palestinian armed groups that hold civilian hostages to push for their immediate and unconditional release.

Use influence over Palestinian armed groups that participated in the October 7 assault and other attacks on civilians to respect international humanitarian law, in particular Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, as per their obligations under Common Article 1.

Methodology

Human Rights Watch interviewed 144 people for this report, most in person in Israel in October and November 2023. Other people were interviewed remotely between October 2023 and June 2024. This includes 94 survivors and witnesses from the October 7 assault. Human Rights Watch also spoke to seven family members of victims and survivors, some of whom went to the attack sites during evacuations or immediately afterward.

Human Rights Watch spoke to two medical experts hired by the Israeli government to examine the remains collected by ZAKA (see below) and provide forensic advice. We also interviewed 17 service providers, investigators, and advocates who were collecting information about acts of gender-based violence reported to have been committed during the attacks.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a former member of the Israel Defense Forces who took part in fighting on October 7. We also spoke to nine journalists who visited the attack sites immediately after the fighting.

Because of their role in collecting bodies of victims from the attack sites, Human Rights Watch spoke to 10 volunteer first responders from ZAKA Search and Rescue (also known as Zihuy Korbanot Ason, or Disaster Victim Identification). ZAKA is an umbrella organization of voluntary community emergency response teams in Israel, funded in part by the Israeli government with a mandate that includes aiding in the identification of victims of terrorism, and gathering remains for Jewish burial. The ZAKA members with whom Human Rights Watch spoke had all been first responders to attack sites. Following October 7, some ZAKA members provided information to the media that proved unfounded. In assessing allegations of abuse, we relied only on information they provided that we were able to independently corroborate through additional information, including multiple accounts, and photographs and videos shared by both ZAKA and other sources and analyzed by Human Rights Watch.

Most of those interviewed were Jewish Israelis, but we also interviewed Palestinians from Gaza, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and foreign workers from Nepal, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Interviews were primarily conducted in Hebrew with the assistance of interpreters, and in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Thai.

Researchers informed all interviewees about the purpose and voluntary nature of the interviews, and the ways in which Human Rights Watch would use the information. We obtained consent from all interviewees, who understood they would receive no compensation for their participation. The names of some interviewees quoted in this report have been changed at their request to protect their privacy. Those referred to with a first name and a single initial surname have been given pseudonyms, while those with complete first names and surnames have not.

Human Rights Watch attempted to interview survivors from all the civilian sites that came under attack on October 7, but was ultimately unable to interview those from the attacks on Moshav Pri Gan, Moshav Yachini, and the Psyduck music festival.

On November 5, Human Rights Watch visited Kibbutz Be’eri. Despite numerous requests, Israeli authorities never granted Human Rights Watch permission to visit any of the other attack sites.

Human Rights Watch verified over 280 videos and photographs taken during or just after the October 7 assault, including 157 which were uploaded onto social media platforms and news websites and 123 which were shared directly with researchers. A researcher also attended a screening of a roughly 45-minute video made of different pieces of footage from October 7, at the invitation of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles.

As per our standard methodology, each video and photograph verified by open-source researchers at Human Rights Watch was then reviewed by members of staff with visual verification expertise. To determine the location of each video and photograph, researchers matched landmarks with available satellite imagery, street-level photographs, or other visual material. Where possible, Human Rights Watch used the position of the sun and any resulting shadows visible in videos and photographs to estimate the time the content was recorded at. Researchers also confirmed that each piece of content had not appeared online prior to October 7, using various reverse search image engines.

Human Rights Watch has adopted specific terminology to distinguish between audiovisual content that we have analyzed and audiovisual content that we have also verified. In the report, Human Rights Watch uses the term “analyzed” for content that has been reviewed and appears authentic, but we have been unable to confirm all temporal, geographic, or contextual aspects. We use the term “verified” for videos or photographs where we were able to confirm the location, timeframe, and context in which they were taken.

When reviewing closed-circuit television (CCTV) and dashcam footage, researchers did not assume the timestamps visible on the videos to be accurate; programming errors, different time zones, daylight savings time, and other factors could have created discrepancies. However, these timestamps have been included in descriptions of videos where relevant. Human Rights Watch reviewed each video frame-by-frame to document how people had been killed, injured, or in other ways harmed.

Much of the visual material Human Rights Watch analyzed was recorded and edited by Palestinian armed groups or CCTV and dashcam footage redistributed by an anonymous Telegram group of self-described Israeli first responders called South First Responders. While Human Rights Watch verified events depicted in content shared by these groups, both the armed groups and South First Responders curated the content they made available. Researchers do not know how much footage they chose not to upload. In addition, much of the footage has been cut and edited together into montages. The report includes claims made by South First Responders in the captions that accompany the videos they posted, with a note indicating whether Human Rights Watch has been able to verify them. When such claims are included, the report states the provenance as originating from the captions of the South First Responders channel.

Some of the content analyzed came from Telegram channels created by Palestinian armed groups identified as participating in the October 7 assault. Human Rights Watch established that these channels belong to the armed groups including by reviewing the date they were set up and whether they had been active long before October 7. We confirmed that the profile images and name matched those of the armed group, and that each channel was posting footage unique to the group. All of the channels had high numbers of followers.

Each armed group’s main Telegram channel posted videos that explicitly claim responsibility for the acts that take place in the video. Many footage montages depicting abuses begin with a title card reading, for example, “Scenes of Quds Brigades storming a number of military posts and settlements in Gaza Envelope as part of Al-Aqsa Flood battle.” On the day of the attack, and in the following days, researchers could not identify any content being cross posted across the various channels, giving a high level of confidence that the content posted was produced by the group running the channel, showing acts that group carried out.

In analyzing the videos, researchers noted consistency between the colored headbands or arm bands with specific insignia that many fighters wear, which match the logos of specific armed groups, and the Telegram channels in which they appear. No armed group channels shared videos of people wearing colors or insignias from different groups.

By identifying the colors and insignias that fighters wore and flagging videos that show them wearing distinctive apparel, Human Rights Watch was able to gain some insights into the level of various Palestinian armed groups’ involvement in the attacks. Human Rights Watch reviewed verified videos to examine what attackers said and if, when, or how armed groups indicated intent or coordinated their attacks. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine whether individuals without insignia or distinctive apparel were affiliated with the groups involved.

To protect the privacy and dignity of victims and survivors, Human Rights Watch has not included direct links to the videos and photographs found online. However, for the purpose of transparency and to allow for independent analysis, we have provided citations of the footage we have analyzed and the date on which it was shared online. The dates of the videos included in the citations correspond to the local time of posting in Israel. The videos and photographs used in the analysis of this report have been preserved by Human Rights Watch in the event they are removed from online sources.

Two independent forensic pathologists reviewed 12 photographs and videos of human remains that Human Rights Watch analyzed and provided their professional assessments.

The report documents attacks on civilian sites and civilian victims on October 7. It does not cover attacks on military sites or military forces with the exception of incidents that help provide context. Human Rights Watch has reported elsewhere on violations of the laws of war by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in the aftermath of these attacks.

In all cases where we provide numbers of those killed in various locations, we provide the source for those numbers. Many of the figures in this report concerning the number of those killed during and in the immediate aftermath of the assault, are based on the tally of victims developed by the news service Agence France-Presse (AFP). To calculate its figures, AFP cross-referenced data published separately by Israel’s social security agency, the armed forces, the police, the Shin Bet security agency and the prime minister’s office for Israelis killed at the attack sites between October 7 and 10, and other sources including its own reporting to identify non-Israeli victims. Human Rights Watch notes, however, that AFP did not count soldiers, police, or members of the rapid response teams as civilians, although police and members of the rapid response teams who do not have a permanent combat role are normally civilians under the laws of war. Human Rights Watch has re-published the overall AFP figures because of the rigorous methodology the agency used to verify its figures, which it shared with Human Rights Watch.

Consistent with our global approach to armed conflicts, Human Rights Watch in this report applies international humanitarian law binding on both states and non-state armed groups in the conduct of hostilities, as well as applicable international human rights law and international criminal law.

It is not within the mandate of Human Rights Watch to address whether any party was justified in resorting to armed force. Human Rights Watch maintains a position of neutrality on issues of jus ad bellum (the law governing justifications to go to war) in order to credibly encourage all sides in armed conflicts to respect jus in bello (the law governing acceptable conduct in war), including and especially protections for civilians. In our reporting globally, Human Rights Watch does not apply the term “terrorists” or “terrorism” to specific actors or acts as there is no internationally agreed-upon definition, and because the label has no bearing on the international legal obligations of warring parties. We did not alter quotes when the terms were used by survivors or witnesses.

Consistent with Human Rights Watch practice in armed conflicts involving non-state armed groups, we typically refer to apparent members of those groups engaged in hostilities as “fighters,” regardless of the terms they or others may use. Members of national armies, in this case the Israel armed forces, are typically referred to as “soldiers.”

In March, Human Rights Watch sent letters with a summary of its findings and questions to senior representatives of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On April 14, Hamas replied with responses (henceforth referred to as the April 14 Hamas letter) that have been included in the report where relevant. The response is included in full in the appendix of the report. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed receipt of the letter but had not provided any substantive response at time of writing.

From January through March, Human Rights Watch sent letters to various Israeli authorities, including the Prime Minister’s Office, Israeli armed forces, Israeli Police, Police Unit Lahav 433, Ministry of Health, and Office of the State Attorney requesting information about the government’s investigations into crimes committed during the October 7 assault.

Human Rights Watch received responses from the Israeli Police, the Office of the State Attorney, and the Israeli armed forces between February 1 and May 23. None of the responses included any substantive information into the government’s investigations or evidence of abuses perpetrated. A representative of the Israeli Police said it was not obligated under Israeli law to provide this information. The Office of the State Attorney said it did not have this information and referred us to other authorities. The Prime Minister’s Office requested an extension to respond to our letter, committing to do so by July 17, 2024.

Israeli authorities have published multiple videos of interrogations of Palestinians they arrested whom they say participated in the October 7 assault. As is our standard practice, we have not made use of the accounts recorded in these and other detainee videos because of the inherent unreliability of such videos. All prisoners must be treated with dignity and not exposed to public curiosity, and such videos often use or encourage the use of torture or other forms of ill-treatment.

Human Rights Watch has not attempted to address directly the considerable misinformation that has circulated about the October 7 events. We have, however responded to inaccurate claims made in the April 14 Hamas letter.

Glossary of Palestinian Armed Groups Involved in the October 7 Assault

At least five Palestinian armed groups participated in the October 7 assault, with two more claiming they also participated. There is some evidence of an eighth group having possibly participated.

Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades: The armed wing of Hamas formed in 1992, according to the group, is the largest, most powerful and well-organized Palestinian armed group based in Gaza. Prior to October 7, the group reportedly comprised at least 20,000 members organized into several brigades. It has training and military camps across the Gaza Strip and has frequently launched rockets indiscriminately toward population centers in Israel since 2001. Mohammad Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, commonly known as Mohammed Deif, is the group’s overall commander. Marwan Issa, who the Israeli forces alleged they killed in March 2024, was the commander of the group’s Gaza forces. Qassam Brigades fighters often wear green and white headbands with opposite color text to identify themselves.

Al-Quds Brigades: The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the size of whose membership is unknown, was founded in 1987. It has launched rockets indiscriminately into Israel and operates cells in the occupied West Bank. In May 2023, Israeli forces killed Khalil al-Bahtini, the group’s north Gaza brigades commander; Jihad Shaker al-Ghannam, secretary general of the military council; and Tariq Muhammad Ezzedine, another military commander. Since then, the group has stopped making public the names of its commanders. In January 2024, the Israeli government said it killed Mamdouh Loulou, allegedly a senior commander, in north Gaza. Quds Brigades fighters often distinguish themselves by wearing black headbands with yellow writing.

National Resistance Brigades, also known as the Omar al-Qasim Forces: The armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was formed in 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, or Palestinian Uprising. It is reportedly made up of small cells operating in Gaza and the West Bank. Its force numbers are unknown. The group has reportedly fired rockets and mortars indiscriminately into Israel. National Resistance Brigades fighters often wear red headbands to identify themselves.

Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades: The armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine formed in 2000, also a faction of the PLO, reportedly has hundreds of members operating in Gaza and the West Bank. Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades fighters often wear red headbands with white writing to identify themselves.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Formed at the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000 and once linked to the Fatah party, the largest faction of the PLO, the group has carried out attacks against Israeli civilians in the West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel. After Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), issued a decree dismantling some armed groups, including the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. In Gaza, Hamas cracked down on the operation of the group as part of a wider crackdown against groups affiliated with Fatah. However, more recently, Hamas has reportedly granted the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades some room to operate. The brigades, operating in Gaza and the West Bank, do not have a unified central command or leadership and are made up of splinter geographical groups, including the Nidal Al-Amoudi Battalion and Ayman Jouda Groups in Gaza. In May 2022, members of the brigades in Gaza reportedly elected Salem Thabet as their military leader.

Aqsa Martyrs Brigades fighters often wear either yellow or white headbands with black writing to identify themselves.

Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades: The armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, a group formed in 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada, was reportedly formed by al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and has conducted joint operations with Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. In 2006, the group joined Hamas in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit inside Israel. On October 9, 2023, the Israeli government stated that it had killed Rafat Abu Hilal, who it alleged was a commander of the group.

Mujahideen Brigades: Originally a unit within the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the group formed in 2007. The number of its fighters is unknown. The leader of the group is reportedly Asad Abu Sharia.

Al-Ansar Brigades: The armed wing of al-Ahrar, a political party that splintered from the Fatah party in 2007, has an unknown number of fighters.

Joint Operations Room in the Gaza Strip: In 2018, Palestinian armed groups operating in the Gaza Strip organized a “joint operations room,” formally referred to as “the Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions,” to coordinate their armed activities against Israel. According to a senior Qassam Brigades commander, Ayman Nofal, the joint operations room “makes decisions on engaging in confrontations before and during a battle, whatever its cause, and plans action through consultation and coordination at the highest levels with regards to the size of the force used, timings, the range and size of strikes, and the nature of participation from various factions, as determined by the Joint Operations Room leaders through coordination, consultation and consensus, as well as the timely exchange of information and assessments of the situation, and details of the military operation.” The joint operations room also helped organize trainings and was responsible for organizing and conducting three major training exercises between the groups since 2020. As of September 2023, the joint operations room comprised 10 Palestinian armed groups: the Qassam Brigades, the Quds Brigades, Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, National Resistance Brigades, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, Mujahideen Brigades, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades—Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Brigade, Martyr Jihad Jibril Brigades, and the Ansar Brigades.

Background

The Gaza Strip has been under Israeli occupation since June 1967, as the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have both determined. Despite having no troops permanently stationed in Gaza since 2005, Israel has remained the occupying power under international humanitarian law before and since October 7, 2003, in light of the continuing effective control it exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants.

In the 1990s, Israel completed a barrier between Gaza and Israel, and in mid-2006 it completed the building of an enhanced security system controlling access between Gaza and Israel, and instituted a formal “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank. The barrier includes a wall with sensors, remote-control machine guns, and barbed wire in the three areas where the border runs adjacent to Israeli settlements. The barrier is patrolled both from the air and on the ground.

North and east of the Gaza Strip, in an area of Israel known as the “Gaza Envelope,” are dozens of small communities, most surrounded by security fences. The communities, some of them kibbutzim, operate farms and small industries. The communities are largely populated by Jewish Israelis. Many host foreign workers and students, who live and work in the communities. Palestinian citizens of Israel and from the Occupied Palestinian Territory also often work in these communities.

In June 2007, Hamas took over internal control of Gaza following the collapse of a Palestinian national unity government. Hamas-led rule in Gaza has been defined by systematic human rights abuses against the population, including arbitrary arrests and torture, acts that by virtue of their systematic nature, may amount to crimes against humanity.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, has operated freely and committed grave abuses, including executions of those accused of espionage for Israel. The Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately towards Israeli communities, in attacks that violate the laws of war and may amount to war crimes because they do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The rocket attacks have killed and injured Israeli and other civilians and wreaked havoc on the communities in the “Gaza Envelope.” By law, all homes in Israel constructed since 1992 are required to have mamads or safe rooms inside them, designed to withstand rocket attacks.

The Qassam Brigades has held Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, Israeli civilians with psychosocial disabilities, in unlawful incommunicado detention for more than nine years.

Hamas does not recognize Israel, considers the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to be “an integral territorial unit” of Palestine, and believes in “resisting the [Israeli] occupation with all means and methods,” as articulated in its revised 2017 charter. Hamas has for years claimed responsibility for and praised attacks on Israeli civilians.

Since 2007, the Israeli government has imposed a closure on Gaza, and with narrow exceptions, banned Palestinians from leaving through Erez, the passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel, through which they can reach the West Bank and travel abroad via Jordan.

Israeli authorities have also sweepingly restricted the entry of goods via a second crossing point in the barrier, the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southeast. The Israeli government has instituted a formal “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, despite international consensus that these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory form a “single territorial unit.” Israeli authorities also prohibit the more than 80 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees—people who were expelled or fled in 1948 from what is now Israel and their descendants—from returning to the areas they are from. Prior to October 7, 2023, an estimated 18,500 workers from Gaza had permits to work in Israel.

Human Rights Watch has found that Israel’s prolonged closure of the Gaza Strip constitutes a form of collective punishment and is part of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities are committing against Palestinians.

The Egyptian government has over the years also restricted the movement of Gaza residents via the Rafah crossing.

Over the last 16 years, the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups now present in the Gaza Strip and Israeli authorities have engaged in several rounds of hostilities, including in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2021. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous grave violations of the laws of war, many amounting to war crimes, committed by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups during hostilities.

The high number of abuses since October 2023 stems in part from the impunity for violations during prior hostilities. In addition to the October 7 atrocities that are the subject of this report, Israeli authorities cut off essential services, including water and electricity, to Gaza’s population and blocked the entry of all but a trickle of fuel and critical humanitarian aid, acts of collective punishment that are violations of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

Israeli armed forces have carried out unlawful airstrikes and ground attacks and have unlawfully used white phosphorous in densely populated areas. They have reduced large parts of Gaza to rubble and damaged or destroyed many of Gaza’s homes, schools, hospitals and much of its civilian infrastructure. Israeli authorities ordered the evacuation of everyone in northern Gaza on October 13, causing the vast majority of Gaza’s population to leave their homes, an act that risk forced displacement, which is a war crime.

Between October 7, 2023, and July 1, 2024, the hostilities resulted in at least 37,900 Palestinians killed, and 87,060 others injured, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. That figure includes an unreported number of Palestinian armed group fighters.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated in December 2023, “International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity.”

The principle of non-reciprocity is a fundamental underpinning of international humanitarian law: abuses by one party to the conflict can never justify abuses by the other. Nothing—no act or policy or crime attributable to Israeli authorities—can justify the killing, mutilation, hostage-taking, and other crimes that forces led by the Qassam Brigades carried out inside Israel on October 7, 2023, just as the October 7 assault cannot justify the war crimes and atrocities carried out by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Following the October 7 attacks, the Israeli government evacuated many of the communities in the “Gaza Envelope.” Most residents of these communities had not returned to their homes, at the time of writing.

Abuses During the October 7 Assault

On October 7, 2023, Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, launched a planned and coordinated land, sea, and air assault on Israel from Gaza. It began with a wave of indiscriminate rocket attacks launched from Gaza into southern Israel, reaching as far north as Tel Aviv. The Qassam Brigades launched over 2,200 rockets and projectiles from Gaza toward Israel during the assault.

The Qassam Brigades’ rocket attacks that morning were central to its strategy. Interviewees who were in the “Gaza Envelope” consistently described hearing air raid sirens triggered by rockets sound at 6:30 a.m., prompting many to go into their safe rooms, or, for those outside their homes, into communal bomb shelters.

Fighters from the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups then breached the barrier that Israel has erected around the Gaza Strip in several locations and entered Israel in cars, on motorbikes, on foot, and by motorized paraglider. Some fighters came on boats from sea. The fighters began assaulting military bases, communities, and music festivals.

The Qassam Brigades-led fighters carried out numerous laws-of-war violations during their attacks on at least nineteen kibbutzim and five moshavim (cooperative communities), two cities, two music festivals, and a beach party, as well as multiple military bases, within the “Gaza Envelope.” Not all Palestinian armed group attempts to enter communities or other sites were successful.

With the exception of the festivalgoers and those at the beach, most civilians were sheltering in their safe room when fighters entered their communities, according to those interviewed by Human Rights Watch. Some kibbutz residents said they first learned of the presence of fighters through messages from fellow residents in WhatsApp chat groups and other messaging platforms saying that men speaking Arabic were entering their homes. Avi Dabush, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim, remembers receiving messages over a chat group for his kibbutz saying, “They are trying to get into the shelter. Help! Help! Help!”

Throughout the assault, munitions continued to strike buildings and fields near where civilians were sheltering. They also damaged communication and surveillance towers, impairing the response by Israeli security forces.

In its April 14 letter containing responses to queries from Human Rights Watch based on its findings, Hamas confirmed that the rocket attacks, the breaches of the barrier, and attacks on surveillance equipment were all coordinated components of the assault.

“Operation al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah and resulted in 1,195 people killed, primarily Israeli citizens, according to the news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP). AFP said it assessed that 815 civilians were killed during and after the attacks, including 79 foreigners. Among them were at least 282 women and 36 children. The Palestinian armed groups took 251 people hostage during the assault, according to AFP. Of them, 116 remained in Gaza, at least 42 of them dead, as of July 1, 2024. Another 35 people were killed, and their bodies returned to Israel. Hostages who died are included in the overall death toll. Walla, an Israeli media outlet that published data by age and gender for 756 of the civilians killed, found that 421 civilian victims out of 756 were between 20 and 40 years old; 161 between the ages of 41 and 64; 100 between the ages of 65 and 80; and 25 were over the age of 80. Overall, most of those killed were men and boys, although more than twice as many women than men between the ages of 65 and 80 were killed.

Jewish Israelis were the largest number of victims of the attacks, but fighters also killed, wounded, or took hostage dual nationals, Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians from Gaza, and foreigners, including Chinese, Filipino, Nepali, Sri Lankan and Thai nationals, and at least one national each from Cambodia, Canada, Eritrea, Germany, Mexico, Sudan, Tanzania and the United Kingdom, some of whom were Jewish. In some cases, fighters allowed some people who identified themselves as Palestinians to flee the area unharmed.

The attackers injured and killed healthcare providers and damaged healthcare infrastructure. The nongovernmental organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) documented the killing of two medical workers during the assault, and another two who were shot but survived. PHRI documented fighters opening fire on three ambulances, and an attack on a medical center in Be’eri. Human Rights Watch documented fighters shooting the tire of another ambulance parked in Kibbutz Sufa.

The Israeli armed forces took a long time to mobilize because of the ongoing holiday, partial damage to communication lines, a lack of preparedness, and an initial underestimation of the scale of the assault. As a result, while some Israeli forces engaged immediately in some areas, many communities were left unprotected for hours. Some civilians described to Human Rights Watch feeling abandoned by the military, and most of those Human Rights Watch interviewed said soldiers arrived in their areas only in the afternoon or evening. After the armed forces arrived, in some locations they engaged in hours of fighting with the attackers before civilians could safely be evacuated. Many civilians were only able to flee or evacuate on October 8.

Once civilians were evacuated, the Israeli armed forces continued to battle Palestinian fighters who were still operating inside some areas of Israel for days.

In early 2024, the Israeli military opened investigations into the events prior to and through the immediate aftermath of October 7 including multiple individual probes into the actions of the military during the Palestinian armed group attacks on October 7 until October 10. The Israeli state comptroller also opened a separate investigation, but in June, Israel’s high court suspended the probes into the military and domestic intelligence agency in response to legal filings by a Jerusalem-based NGO that claimed the probes would undermine the military and the public trust.

Human Rights Watch found that during the operation on October 7, fighters led by Hamas’s Qassam Brigades committed numerous serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. Serious violations of the laws of war, many of which may amount to war crimes, include attacks on civilians and civilian objects, unlawful killings, cruel and inhuman treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, mutilation, hostage-taking, destruction of property, use of human shields, and pillage. As this report shows, some of these criminal acts took place as part of a widespread and systematic attack pursuant to an organizational policy, and amount to crimes against humanity.

The April 14 Hamas letter states that the Qassam Brigades forces were instructed not to target civilians, citing a speech to that effect made by the commander-in-chief of the Qassam Brigades. Elsewhere, the letter states that Hamas defines combatants and civilians in line with international humanitarian law, but in the same paragraph adds that most of those it detained during the assault were “found to be working for the Israeli army on tasks of a military nature, even if not directly related to combat,” thereby raising questions about how Hamas defines civilians.

The April 14 Hamas letter states that the Qassam Brigades aimed to target the Israeli armed forces and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence security agency, blaming the quick collapse in the Israeli military’s defenses, and the participation of other armed groups and people as leading to “chaos in the field and, thus, changing the plan to conduct an operation against military targets.” Later, the letter says there were Israeli military targets at the civilian sites including the kibbutzim, and that their presence “indicates Israel’s use of these civilian objects as human shields.” Purportedly as evidence of its claim that the Qassam Brigades did not target civilians, the letter says forces bypassed some civilians closer to the Gaza Strip than the people they attacked.

The letter says the initial part of the assault went largely to plan, but that later stages “led to many mistakes. This operation and everything arising from it require a thorough examination from our side, but it cannot be done at the moment.” However, the letter also notes that “a lack of precision or guided weapons comes in the context of explaining the circumstances that led to injuring civilians during the attacks by Hamas and resistance [groups].” The letter adds that, “the Israeli army bears great responsibility for the killing of many settlers, as noted in Israel’s own reports, either during the targeting of the Spring Festival with planes and artillery shells or the bombing of homes where there were Israeli civilians on suspicion of the possible presence of resistance fighters there.” It says that Hamas fighters carried only “light military equipment” and that much of the violence and destruction was caused by “weaponry not owned by Palestinian resistance fighters but by the Israeli military.”

Contrary to these claims of Hamas and notwithstanding the findings of ongoing government probes into the role the Israeli armed forces played in contributing to the civilian death toll on October 7, evidence collected by Human Rights Watch indicates that only relatively few civilians died during fighting between Israeli armed forces and Palestinian armed groups. Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support the claim that the majority of the deaths were caused by heavy weapons only used by Israeli forces and not by Palestinian armed groups.

The following sections describe the planning of the assault and detail attacks carried out at civilian sites over the course of October 7 and abuses that occurred. The reporting is not a comprehensive account of the abuses committed. The locations are listed in order from the highest to lowest number of civilian casualties, with the largest number of civilians killed and taken hostage at the Supernova music festival and the Be’eri and Kfar Aza kibbutzim.

Planning of the Assault

There is considerable evidence demonstrating the overall planned nature of the October 7 assault, including the complexity of the attack, the number of armed groups involved, and consistency of the methods used during the attack. One key aspect of the assault that required considerable planning was the breaching of the barrier between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel.

The October 7 assault began with coordinated barrages of indiscriminate rocket attacks that provided cover for Palestinian fighters to breach the barrier around Gaza and enter Israel. An analysis of photographs and videos uploaded on October 7 and in the following days and verified by Human Rights Watch confirmed 13 breaches of the border barriers, led in almost all cases by Qassam Brigades forces.

The footage shows that at least 10 breaches occurred early in the morning. Human Rights Watch verified eight of these incidents through videos shared on the Hamas and Qassam Brigades’ affiliate channels. In two other breaches, Human Rights Watch observed on the attackers either patches or headbands with symbols and wordings showing affiliation with the Qassam Brigades. However, in one specific incident near Kibbutz Sufa to the north, one individual is seen wearing a red headband, which is not usually associated with the Qassam Brigades. Two brigades that Human Rights Watch verified participated in the October 7 attacks wear red headbands, the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the National Resistance Brigades. Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the presence of any other brigade participating in the breaches that occurred in the early morning hours of the assault.

The fighters used several different methods to breach the barriers. A video, made up of several clips and uploaded to the Qassam Brigades Telegram channel, showed fighters using a tractor to break through the first fence near the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza and Re’im in Israel before using explosives to breach the second fence. After this, at least six motorcycles, most with two people on each, drive toward the newly made breach. Most breaches were carried out with some form of explosive. A video uploaded to the South First Responders Telegram channel of a breach in southern Al Fukhari and directly north of Kibbutz Sufa shows that fighters set up ramps to allow pickup trucks and motorcycles to cross over the concrete step. At least three of the fighters are wearing green headbands associated with the Qassam Brigades. In two separate breaches, one near Juhor ad-Dik and Kibbutz Be’eri and a second near Musaddar and Kibbutz Kissufim, fighters chose to breach a large gate in the fence. Near Juhor ad-Dik and Be’eri, fighters appeared to have first broken through a smaller breach next to the gate before using another munition to create a larger hole. Similarly, near Musaddar and Kissufim, a smaller breach is visible right next to the larger gate. In both cases, the breaches allow pickup trucks to pass through, though the video does not show the act of breaching itself in the case of Kissufim.

In the early morning hours, in an apparently coordinated fashion, fighters attempted to disrupt or destroy multiple military communications towers as well as remote-controlled turrets near the border with Gaza and military installations. An analysis and verification of videos uploaded to the Qassam Telegram channel, the South First Responders Telegram channel, and the Palestine Resist Telegram channel shows that the fighters used drones, RPGs, and other explosive ordnances to damage at least three communication towers and three remote-controlled turrets. Satellite imagery taken on October 7 and analyzed by Human Rights Watch shows smoke rising from two additional communications towers.

A remote-controlled turret near a reservoir northwest of Kfar Aza was hit twice by explosives dropped by drones, according to two videos posted to two different Telegram channels, one of which was the channel for the Qassam Brigades. A verified video posted to that channel captures a drone dropping an explosive on a communications tower west of Be’eri and roughly 500 meters from the barrier with Gaza. It appears to detonate above ground level. A second shot from the same video shows the tower on fire. In the video, fighters appear to target surveillance and military infrastructure as they approach military bases. In another video posted to the South First Responders Telegram channel, fighters gather on the outskirts of Sufa, one person fires an RPG that hits a communications tower at the neighboring military base.

The nature of this initial phase of the assault, including the types of targets, the fact that individual attacks were timed to occur simultaneously or in quick succession, all point to a high degree of planning, coordination, and communication among the participating armed groups.

While media reports indicate that only a small number of Qassam Brigades leaders knew the plan, and those participating in the assault were only notified hours before it began, the same reports state that fighters had trained for an assault of similar character for several years before it took place. A BBC investigation uncovered evidence on Telegram that it said showed that groups in Gaza had engaged in a set of four special drills called Strong Pillar, with the first taking place in December 2020 and the last in September 2023, in which forces practiced hostage-taking, raiding compounds, amphibious assault, destroying communication towers, and breaching Israel’s border fences during these exercises, including in a mock kibbutz. According to the investigation, at least 10 groups participated in the special drills, based on headbands they were wearing over their helmets: the Qassam Brigades, Quds Brigades, National Resistance Brigades or Omar al-Qasim Forces, Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, Ansar Brigades, Ayman Jouda Brigades, Jihad Jibreel Brigades, Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, Mujahideen Brigades, and Abdul Qadir al- Husseini Brigades.

A separate BBC investigation highlighted numerous observations made by Israeli armed forces stationed near Gaza in the months leading up to the assault, including witnessing practice raids, mock hostage-taking, and farmers behaving “strangely” by changing their routines and moving closer to the barrier near where the breaches occurred.

Asharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper, reported in January 2024 that the Qassam Brigades had been planning an assault to storm communities surrounding the Gaza Strip since before 2014, citing sources close to the Qassam Brigades leadership. According to the article, five individuals within the Qassam Brigades ultimately approved launching the assault and decided on its timing.

According to the Guardian, which based its account on “multiple sources, including meetings with Israeli intelligence officials, experts, sources with direct knowledge of interrogation reports of fighters captured during the attacks, and material released by Hamas and the Israeli military,” “orders went out” before 4 a.m. on October 7 that those who had been attending the regular training sessions were to go to pray. An hour later, “new instructions were issued” orally for thousands of “Hamas militants” to bring their weapons and any ammunition they had and gather at a designated location. There, “Hamas” leaders handed out more ammunition and more powerful weapons. At 6 a.m., the final orders were reportedly issued: the men were to rush through gaps that would soon be blown or smashed through the perimeter barrier around Gaza and “attack Israeli soldiers and civilians on the other side.” A first wave of 400 fighters crossed the border into Israel at the 15 points where they had breached the security barrier, the Guardian reported.

Throughout the assault, witnesses observed some fighters communicating via radios and moving through the communities in a coordinated fashion. In at least two areas, Israeli authorities apparently recovered well-prepared and detailed documents outlining tactics, techniques, procedures, and specific targets. The existence of a Joint Operations Room involving at least 10 Palestinian armed groups operating in the Gaza Strip, including those who have been identified as participating in the October 7 attacks, to coordinate their armed operations against Israel, the use of radios and coordinated movements, and if authentic, the issuing and carrying of planning documents, strongly support other available evidence that an assault on the communities surrounding Gaza in southern Israel was planned well in advance of October 7.

Alleged Planning Documents Human Rights Watch examined 26 pages of an unspecified number of alleged Qassam Brigades planning documents alleged to have been obtained by Israeli authorities and published after October 7 by the authorities, the US television broadcaster NBC, and the Telegram channel South First Responders. At least two pages appear to be cover pages, three pages include maps, and 21 pages contain tables or figures with accompanying text. From pages of some of the documents, it appears that the pages come from at least three distinct alleged planning documents: a hostage detention plan, a plan to attack Kibbutz Sa’ad, and a plan to attack Kibbutz Mefalsim. In an attempt to authenticate the documents, Human Rights Watch compared these pages to other planning documents not related to the October 7 assault featured in three promotional videos on the Joint Operations Room Telegram Channel, a Telegram channel set up to publish information on the collaboration between the various Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.3 The channel was operational from 2020 until 2023. Documents in these videos share some of the same annotations and formatting of those published shortly after October 7. The documents published after October 7 include a different version of the Qassam Brigades logo than the logo commonly used in official communications. The maps the documents contain some differences and some similarities. The language in the documents is consistent with what one might expect to find in a manual of this nature from Palestinians in Gaza. However, Human Rights Watch’s analysis was unable to verify the authenticity of the documents. In addition, we were unable to verify the chain of custody for the documents. Two international journalists given initial access to them shared details on how Israeli authorities said they had come by the documents. Human Rights Watch reached out to a Hamas representative with questions about the authenticity of the documents but did not receive a reply. Logo On October 12, the anonymously run South First Responders Telegram channel posted five photographs of pages of documents. A Qassam Brigades logo is printed on one document cover page.4 This logo contains some differences, including the positioning of the text and the al-Aqsa Mosque in the back, from the logo the Qassam Brigades more commonly uses in official communications channels, such as on its website and Telegram channel, and in footage analyzed by Human Rights Watch. However, Human Rights Watch did find that the logo seen on the alleged planning document has been used elsewhere, such as on certain headbands worn by Qassam fighters and on older infographics on the Qassam website. Formatting Human Rights Watch compared the 12 pages containing tables and text to documents visible in videos posted to the Joint Operations Room Telegram Channel on September 12 and 13, 2023, showing documents with tables and text. The formatting and color scheme used in the documents are the same: Word-table format and a color scheme of yellow, blue, and green. Maps Two maps were displayed in photographs and videos posted to the Joint Operations Room Telegram Channels in September 2023. These maps share similar features with the maps of alleged planning documents shared by NBC after October 7, such as the red and white scale bar and other map markings, though the numbers are written above the bar in one case and below in the other. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine whether the same software was used to create the maps. The satellite imagery used as background in the maps NBC shared after October 7 are publicly available and were captured in May and June 2021. Two videos posted on the Joint Operations Room Telegram Channels on September 12, 2023, show armed men examining a map marked with a blue line interrupted by repeated blue crosses. These markings match map markings denoting the protective fence on a map of Kibbutz Sa’ad allegedly found after October 7 and published by NBC. While the spacing between the crosses is different, the maps do not use the same scale and format—this could account for the differences in spacing between the crosses. Language Human Rights Watch analyzed the Arabic language seen in 19 pages of the alleged planning documents and had an independent translation team conduct its own analysis of the language in the documents. Human Rights Watch and the independent team assessed that the documents appear to have been originally written in Arabic based on the human errors in the documents, some common, that would not be generated by machine translated text from another language. These include inconsistent spellings, inconsistent application of grammar rules, and structures that are typical of the dialectal or spoken language. The documents contain specialized vocabulary and unusual word choices consistent with the language spoken in Gaza and appropriate to find in a military manual of this nature. The term “hostages” or raha’en appears in the alleged planning documents. Though Hamas representatives have refused to use the term for those they are holding in official communications, this term is repeated by fighters in at least one video filmed by attackers during the assault.

Local Forces that Fought to Repel the Assault –Kitot Konenut (“Rapid Response Teams”)

All of the cooperative communities in southern Israel that were attacked on October 7 had kitot konenut (“rapid response teams”). These are organized community residents serving in a part-time volunteer role to provide a first response to security threats who have access to assault rifles and personal protective equipment. When Palestinian armed groups attacked their communities on October 7, kitot konenut members were quickly activated, and often became involved in gunfights with the assailants. Many were killed or injured.

Under international humanitarian law, civilians are immune from attack unless and for such time they take a direct part in hostilities. Directly participating in hostilities typically means engaging in combat or directly assisting combatants, such as by supplying ammunition. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in its “Interpretive Guidance on Direct Participation in Hostilities,” sets out parameters for “individual self-defense or self-defense of others.” This permits a civilian to use strictly necessary (i.e. minimum amount of force necessary, firearms as a last resort), and proportionate (i.e. commensurate to the seriousness of the unlawful act) force to defend against an unlawful attack or other abuses without themselves becoming a lawful target of attack.

The ICRC Interpretive Guidance states:

[A]lthough the use of force by civilians to defend themselves against unlawful attack or looting, rape, and murder by marauding soldiers may cause the required threshold of harm, its purpose clearly is not to support a party to the conflict against another. If individual self-defence against prohibited violence were to entail loss of protection against direct attack, this would have the absurd consequence of legitimizing a previously unlawful attack. Therefore, the use of necessary and proportionate force in such situations cannot be regarded as direct participation in hostilities.

Thus, “rapid response team” members who used necessary and proportionate force in response to unlawful attacks or other abuses would not lawfully be subject to attacks as civilians directly participating in the hostilities. However, such members who acted beyond these legal limits, such as to join with regular military forces in counterattacks or operations with a nexus to the conflict more broadly, would be civilians directly participating in the hostilities. Furthermore, the rapid response teams in communities in the “Gaza Envelope” are different and distinct from armed settler groups in the West Bank that have repeatedly engaged in unlawful attacks against Palestinian civilians.

Supernova Music Festival

The Supernova Sukkot Gathering was an outdoor trance music festival that began at 9 p.m. on October 6 in a field very close to Kibbutz Re’im in the Eshkol region, about three kilometers from the border with Gaza. Another music festival had taken place the day before at the same location. The Supernova Sukkot Gathering was billed as a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom,” and had three stages, a camping zone, and an area with a bar and food. According to organizers, between 3,500 and 4,000 people came to the event. They said that the festival was initially announced with no location specified and that they selected the location of the festival only two or three weeks prior to the event. Their teams started setting up the venue about one week before October 7, they said.

Human Rights Watch interviewed three people who attended the music festival as guests and three who were part of the organization and security team for the event. Researchers also spoke to a bus driver and a young man, both of whom drove to the festival site to help rescue people after the attack began. A reported 364 civilians—about 45 percent of all the civilians killed during the October 7 attacks and about 10 percent of those who attended the festival—were killed at the site. Another 200 were injured, and attackers took 40 people hostage.

Accounts from Survivors

People who attended the festival said they remembered a flurry of incoming rocket fire at about 6:30 a.m. Almog Senior, 30, was at the festival with four friends. He described the moment the attack started: “We were dancing at the main stage during sunrise. Then we started to notice smoke in the sky and a few minutes later the music stopped. Then, we saw the Iron Dome [Israel’s anti-missile system] intercepting rockets.”

Abraham C., who was working at the event, said he and other organizers told everyone to head to safety and then walked over to the parking lot to make sure people could leave. Abraham headed to his car and started driving to the main road at about 7 a.m. He described what happened:

I got a call from one of my friends saying he had gone to the main road and had seen terrorists who shot at the car in front of him, and then he had run toward the festival site. I realized what was happening, but I didn’t understand the scale of the attack. I assumed it was only two terrorists, whom I knew we could neutralize. I called the chief police officer assigned to the event, but he didn’t answer. I called my co-organizer, but he didn’t answer.

Abraham drove northeast, away from Gaza. He was trying to get to a police station but at one point took a wrong turn and saw two gunmen wearing what he said looked like police uniforms and bulletproof vests and carrying AK-style assault rifles and handguns blocking the road at a nearby junction.

An organizer of the event who was managing security, Roi G., said that at 6:45 a.m., half his team began helping people to evacuate the car park and the other half moved people out of the party area. As they were moving people out, many gunmen entered the party, and at about 8 a.m., opened fire on Roi and his six colleagues, including with what he identified as RPGs and machine guns, killing four of Roi’s colleagues.

Roi and his two surviving colleagues fled with four festivalgoers through the fields, where they found an abandoned car that they drove to a nearby settlement that was not under attack. Roi then returned to the festival site to rescue more friends who he said called him fearing for their lives. He heard shouting in Arabic in the background.

Sagi B., who was also part of the security team, was near the stage when his colleague Bar Kupershtein radioed him, saying there was a wounded person about 300 meters from the festival site in the field near the main road:

I drove a golf cart over to Bar and the [wounded] guy, [who] said he had been driving down the road when two terrorists suddenly started shooting at his car at Re’im Junction. He kept driving until he saw Bar by the road and stopped. This is when I realized there were terrorists, but I did not understand the scale. We gave him first aid, and immediately reported the incident to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the police. Within minutes 10 more cars of people who had been driving down the road pulled up next to us—all of them were injured. At that time, we were seven policemen and eight security officers in the field.

Sagi had started driving the wounded in the golf cart to the two ambulances they had on the festival grounds when he got a call from other security officers saying that jeeps were approaching. By the time he returned to the location where he had found the injured man, “only one policeman was still alive, and the vehicles were on fire,” Sagi said. “There was gunfire and RPG fire all around.” Sagi, who was armed, took cover behind vehicles and said he saw around 20 gunmen, all in green pants and black or green shirts, and body armor, with the exception of one man who appeared to be the commander, who was wearing a tiger-stripe patterned camouflage uniform. The gunmen were carrying what he identified as machine guns, RPGs, AK-style assault rifles, and M4 assault rifles. Sagi saw gunmen shooting people, then checking their bodies to see if they were dead, and then firing more rounds at them. He said soon after, an armored vehicle he identified as a tank arrived with Israeli soldiers inside who had been injured. One soldier from the tank handed him a weapon, and immediately thereafter was shot and killed. The remaining police officer was also shot, leaving Sagi to continue shooting at the gunmen on his own. He said:

I was encircled and alone. They kept firing at me, including with an RPG. A bullet hit me in the right thigh. I realized I could not fight anymore because I was injured and had run out of ammunition. So, I had to run 450 meters through an open field as they were shooting at me. I miraculously made it to the tree line alive. I made an improvised tourniquet and stayed there until 2 p.m., when a group of soldiers and a man whose wife had called him to rescue her from the party evacuated me.

Youssef al-Ziadna, 47, a Palestinian Bedouin bus driver for a private company, had been hired to ferry festivalgoers to the city of Be’er Sheva over the weekend. At 6 a.m., he got a call from someone at the festival, asking for the bus to pick up some people. He was approaching the site in his minibus at 6:30 a.m., when he saw incoming rocket fire. Then, a

President Isaac Herzog pleads for the public to put aside division and work for peace and unity across Israeli society at the annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Western Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

He opens his speech with a message to the 59 hostages who remain captive in Gaza, telling them: “A whole nation is missing you, worrying for you, crying your cry.”

Israel is “a nation tormented beyond measure,” the president says. “A nation that knows — deep in its soul, burned with longing and anxiety — that the wound cannot heal until you return.”

“Here, at the place where our soldiers swear to defend the homeland and the freedom of Israel — we too swear, I swear, not to rest and not to be still. Not to rest and not to be still. Not even for a moment. To act with all our might, by every means, to take one more step, and another, until all of you come home,” Herzog vows.

The president then turns to the main focus of his speech and shares the stories of several families that lost two or more family members in fighting or terror attacks.

“We have seen how the words ‘cleared for publication’ can destroy an entire world,” says Herzog, referring to the statements published by the military and in the media when a soldier is killed in action. “And, horrifyingly, how sometimes, within the very same home, yet another world is destroyed — how one family must endure loss upon loss, live life upon life layered with longing.”

He says that it is thanks to these families, “who gave everything — and then gave everything again,” that Israel endures.

“Beloved and cherished bereaved families,” he then says, “the truth must be spoken: We have never sought to live by the sword. We are not war-loving people.”

“On the contrary: peace was, and remains, our greatest yearning. We will never give up on reaching out for peace. Never,” Herzog vows. “At the same time, we will never renounce, even for a moment, our duty to defend ourselves, and our historic and natural right to exist—like every nation—sovereign in our homeland.”

He says that peace “is not only an aspiration outward, toward our neighbors, but a supreme, binding duty inward, within our own home.”

Throughout this difficult war, I have met thousands of bereaved families. One message, one plea, one cry rose from every heart, from every soul, again and again: lower the flames. Mend the hearts. Keep us one people.”

“Enough! Enough division! Enough polarization! Enough hatred!” the president implores. “We must not, by our own hands, bring about the destruction of our national home.”

He ends with a call for the public to “remove the IDF from political disputes,” and to “place the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the police, and all security services above all disputes.”

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories assesses that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip “continues to be difficult and challenging,” but there is no widespread famine, contrary to claims made by Hamas.

COGAT says it continuously assesses the situation in Gaza, working to identify, alongside humanitarian aid groups, “pockets” where there are difficulties with access to food, to assist those areas.

According to COGAT’s assessments, “there is no famine in the Gaza Strip,” however, it acknowledges that “there are issues of access to food.”

Images being circulated by Hamas and media outlets of malnourished children in Gaza are not indicative of a widespread phenomenon, COGAT claims: “There is no documented famine, contrary to the false claims Hamas spreads systematically.”

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has been on a downward trend recently, COGAT assesses, mainly because the IDF is now in control of 75% of the Strip’s territory. This means that Gaza’s estimated 2 million population is squeezed into just 25% of the Strip, which has led to several issues, especially concerning sanitation.

Additionally, actions taken by Israel to limit Hamas’s “takeover” of the humanitarian aid — such as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution sites — have harmed the terror group’s military wing, governance and its ties with the civilian population, according to COGAT’s assessments.

However, these “achievements” have led to extreme population density, chaos and the collapse of public order in Gaza, and as a result, “the humanitarian situation becomes far more complex,” COGAT has determined.

COGAT says that there is no shortage of water entering Gaza, and that food and other supplies should now be reaching Palestinians at an increased rate after the United Nations began transporting aid that had been mounting at the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings.

On Sunday, the UN did not collect any aid waiting at the Gaza crossings, leading Israel to publicly accuse it of allegedly refusing to cooperate. In the past two days, the UN resumed regular operations and collected 270 trucks’ worth of aid for distribution, according to COGAT figures.

The UN has repeatedly claimed that COGAT has refused its requests for collection and distribution authorization, and that dangerous and complex conditions inside Gaza made aid distribution very difficult. However, COGAT claims that nothing changed between Sunday and the rest of the week, and that when the UN wants to distribute aid, it can.

Currently, the contents of hundreds of aid trucks are still waiting on the Gaza side of the border crossings, with the main bottleneck being the collection and distribution, according to COGAT, which adds that the delays “have been the real cause of reduced aid availability and of food insecurity among the population.”