B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights on Monday published a report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, becoming the first major Israeli human rights organizations to join a list of international groups making the charge.

“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,” reads a statement presenting the report. “In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. ”

A growing number of Israel’s international critics have accused it of genocide in its war against Hamas — some even in the days immediately following the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages and sparked the fighting.

Major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have endorsed the charge as the death toll in Gaza has mounted. But this is the first time that leading Israeli human rights watchdogs have made the accusation.

Hamas’s attack on Israel sparked a shift in the country’s policy toward Palestinians in Gaza from “repression and control to destruction and annihilation,” B’Tselem said.

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Israel has consistently and vehemently denied that it is committing genocide, including in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice. The Israel Defense Forces says that it takes extensive measures not to harm civilians in Gaza, and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Government officials did not immediately respond to the report by B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights.

Global pressure on Israel has intensified in recent days as reports of starvation in Gaza have spread. In response, Israel announced several measures to increase the flow of aid to the enclave. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed allegations that Israel is pursuing a deliberate policy of starving Gaza’s civilian population.

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But the groups said the conclusion that Israel was carrying out a genocide was clear.

“The definition of genocide is a coordinated attack with the intent to destroy a group,” Yuli Novak, executive director of B’Tselem, said. “For the past 22 months, we have witnessed unprecedented destruction of civilians, deliberate starvation, and mass forced displacement. Gaza’s residents are displaced, bombed, and starved, stripped entirely of their humanity and rights.”

The Physicians for Human Rights-Israel report was a detailed analysis focusing on what it called the step-by-step dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems including electricity, clean water and access to food.

Its report said Israel has committed three of the acts of genocide defined by international law, including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The Israeli rights groups said repeated statements by Israeli officials and the military endorsing the total destruction, starvation and permanent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, combined with policies on the ground, have demonstrated that Israel is intentionally trying to destroy Palestinian society.

Guy Shalev, director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, said it was significant that Israeli groups were now leveling the accusation, noting that the Jewish-Israeli public often dismisses accusations of genocide as antisemitic or biased against Israel.

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“Perhaps human rights groups based in Israel, and coming to this conclusion, is a way to confront that accusation and get people to acknowledge the reality,” he said.

Israel asserts that it is fighting an existential war and abides by international law. It has rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.

The rights groups, while prominent and respected internationally, are considered in Israel to be on the political fringe, and their views are not representative of the vast majority of Israelis. But having the allegation of genocide come from Israeli voices shatters a taboo in a society that has been reticent to criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Like other rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have not been allowed into Gaza during the war. Their reports are based on documents, eyewitnesses and consultations with legal experts.

Orly Noy, chair of B’Tselem’s executive board, called for more international pressure on Israel to stop its actions.

“This crime must be stopped immediately,” Noy said at a press conference in East Jerusalem. “The responsibility lies first and foremost with Israel, but also with the international community, which must use every means to stop the crimes that are still taking place just 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) from here.”

Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people in their October 7 attack, and took 251 hostage. Fifty are still being held in captivity. Since then, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says nearly 60,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught. Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459.

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Israel and Hamas have engaged in successive rounds of negotiations over the course of the war, leading to two ceasefires and hostage releases, in November 2023 and January to March of this year. Negotiations over another truce and hostage release recently broke down.

In the wake of that impasse, some voices in the government have redoubled their calls on Israel to occupy the Strip and encourage its residents to emigrate, and re-establish settlements there. Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out resettling Gaza.

Two major Israeli human rights groups have stated that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) both published separate reports on Monday in which they accused Israel of genocidal crimes and incitement to genocide.

In its report, B’Tselem examined Israel’s policies in Gaza and statements made by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders on its goals in the enclave. It led the group to “the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

The report includes statistical analysis, as well as personal testimonies and documentation of crimes and incitement.

“Nothing prepares you for the realisation that you are part of a society committing genocide. This is a deeply painful moment for us,” said Yuli Novak, the group’s executive director.

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“But as Israelis and Palestinians who live here and witness the reality every day, we have a duty to speak the truth as clearly as possible: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”

Novak said that the Hamas-led surprise attack on 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis, “created deep existential fear among Israelis”.

“The extremist, far-right messianic government is using that fear to promote an agenda of destruction and expulsion,” she said.

“The lives of all Palestinians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, are being treated as worthless. They can be starved, killed, displaced – and the situation keeps getting worse.”

B’Tselem warned that the patterns of Israel’s “destruction and annihilation” was being replicated in the occupied West Bank, leading to a “real risk the genocide will spread beyond the Gaza Strip”.

Meanwhile, PHRI’s report presented a detailed legal analysis on Israel’s war on Gaza, focusing on the dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system.

It stated that Israel’s aggression meets the criteria for genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a signatory.

PHRI found evidence of a “deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system and other vital systems necessary for the population’s survival”.

That included direct Israeli attacks on hospitals, the deliberate blocking of medical aid into the enclave and of medical evacuations out of the territory, as well as the killing and abduction of medical personnel.

“This is not incidental damage from war – it is a deliberate policy aimed at harming the Palestinian population as a group,” the report concluded.

Guy Shalev, PHRI’s executive director, said: “As people who believe in the sanctity of life, we are obligated to speak the truth: this is genocide, and we must fight it.

“For 22 months, hospital after hospital has been attacked, patients have been denied life-saving treatment, and aid has been blocked. This is a clear and consistent pattern of destruction.”

Shalev said that as medical professionals, it was PHRI’s duty to its colleagues in Gaza who are risking their lives to save others “under impossible conditions, to face the truth and do everything we can to protect them”.

Both groups strongly criticised the international community, which it accused of complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza through either active support or inaction.

They called on global leaders to use all means under international law to stop Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Leading human rights organisations have also reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.

In December 2024, Amnesty International became the first major organisation to conclude that Israel had committed genocide during its war on Gaza, while Human Rights Watch concluded that “genocidal acts” had been committed.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s top expert on Palestine, authored two reports last year suggesting that genocide was taking place in Gaza.

Earlier this month, a renowned Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies called Israel’s war on Gaza an “inescapable” case of genocide, joining a chorus of prominent Israeli and Jewish scholars coming to the same conclusion.

Omer Bartov, a professor at Brown University and a former Israeli army soldier, wrote in The New York Times that after deliberating and examining Israel’s war, his “inescapable conclusion… [is] that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people”.

“Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could,” he wrote.

“But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognise one when I see one.”

Bartov is considered one of the world’s leading scholars of the WWII Holocaust and an expert on genocide. One of his most well-known books is Anatomy of a Genocide.

At least 59,800 Palestinians – mainly women and children – have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023. At least 144,851 others have been wounded during that time.

In June, a UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli air strikes, shelling, burning, and controlled demolitions had damaged or destroyed more than 90 percent of schools and university buildings across the Gaza Strip.

A study earlier this year found that 80 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure had been destroyed.

Israel’s blockade on food and aid supplies entering Gaza has led to at least 147 deaths due to starvation, including 88 children. Local officials say 40,000 infants are at risk of imminent death.

Trump says there are a ‘couple of alternatives’ for getting hostages out of Gaza

Trump is asked what alternatives he is looking at for getting the hostages out if there is no ceasefire, and he says there are a “couple of alternatives” and some are “pretty strong”.

He says the “most sensible” is “talk and negotiation”, but reiterates his earlier remark that Hamas uses them as a “shield”.

He says he previously said that “the number is going to be at a point where you’re not going to able to get them back unless you’re going to be very energetic, or to put it in a different way, unless you’re going to be very ruthless, violent”.

“It’s a bad situation to be in, very bad,” he says.

More than 100 charity and human rights groups say Israel’s blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing Palestinians in the…

More than 100 charity and human rights groups say Israel’s blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip toward starvation. Israeli strikes meanwhile killed another 21 people overnight and into Wednesday, according to local health officials.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected the groups’ criticism and accused them of “echoing Hamas’ propaganda.”

The Trump administration’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was set to meet with a senior Israeli official about ceasefire talks, a sign that lower-level negotiations that have dragged on for weeks could be approaching a breakthrough.

Israel’s war in Gaza, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Its count doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians, but the ministry says that more than half of the dead are women and children.

Here is the latest:

European diplomats say EU deal with Israel over Gaza aid is falling short

Israel is far behind on its commitments under the new deal with the European Union, frustrating many within the 27-nation bloc, three European diplomats said Wednesday. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive material.

Only 132 aid trucks and 80-120,000 liters of fuel have gotten into Gaza in the week since the deal was reached, two of the diplomats said.

Member states are urging the EU to pressure Israel to allow more aid. An internal EU report seen by The Associated Press highlighted concerns that “there is still no tangible increase, with important stocks of relief items stuck and piling up at the borders.”

Details of agreement remain murky, even to EU nations.

— By Sam McNeil in Jerusalem

Palestinian Authority says a teen is killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank

The Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry says a 14-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces near Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Ibrahim Hamran is the second teen to have been killed by Israeli forces in as many days. The ministry said Ibrahim Nasser, 16, was killed near Jenin on Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during the war in Gaza.

White House says Mideast envoy is headed to Europe

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Witkoff would meet with key leaders from the Middle East to discuss the ceasefire proposal and release of hostages.

“We want this ceasefire to happen as soon as possible and we want these hostages to be released,” Leavitt said.

UN says the agency helping Palestinian refugees known UNRWA will soon run out of money

Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told the U.N. Security Council that current forecasts show insufficient funds to sustain operations beyond 2025.

UNRWA was established in 1949 to aid Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The agency provides health and education services to around 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem, and helps 3 million more in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric urges donors to contribute, emphasizing the agency’s critical role.

UN defends humanitarian agency’s ‘professionalism and impartial work’ in Gaza

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric says Israel’s actions against the Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will only hinder efforts to held Palestinians facing hunger and displacement.

Earlier, Israel’s U.N. ambassador accused OCHA of bias and claimed some staff are linked to Hamas. He also demanded a retraction of the agency head’s statement allegedly accusing Israel of genocide.

Dujarric clarified that U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher never made such a statement, and said the U.N. would investigate any evidence Israel provides regarding alleged Hamas affiliations among U.N. staff.

Israeli strike in central Gaza kills at least 8 and wounds 57

Awda Hospital, which received the casualties, said the strike hit a densely populated part of the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp.

Greta Thunberg accuses Israel of genocide and starving Palestinians in Gaza

The climate campaigner spoke Wednesday at a small rally in the main square of Albania’s capital, Tirana.

“If watching children at being systematically starved, over two million people being systematically starved by Israel, is not enough to motivate you to get out of the couch, then what is it going to take?” Thunberg said.

She said the international community is complicit due to its silence regarding Israel’s wartime conduct, and called for continuing worldwide protests “for a free Palestine.”

The Israeli military detained Thunberg and 11 other activists last month on board Gaza-bound aid ship that aimed to break Israel’s blockade.

Muslim authority removes post accusing Israel of genocide Gaza

Egypt’s Al-Azhar, a leading authority in Sunni Islam, has deleted a lengthy online post in which it accused Israel of starving Gaza and committing a ’full-scale genocide.”

It said that it had “courageously” removed the post to avoid jeopardizing ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

Political and religious authorities across the Arab and Muslim world have condemned Israel’s wartime conduct.

Egypt, a close U.S. ally that made peace with Israel decades ago, has served as a mediator in long-running ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas.

A case has been brought before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide, and rights groups have lodged similar allegations. Israel vehemently rejects the accusation, calling it a “blood libel.”

UN says war in Gaza is ‘catastrophic’ for new mothers and babies

The United Nations agency for reproductive health says new data shows a major decline in births and a rise in maternal deaths in the Gaza Strip.

UNFPA says 17,000 births were recorded in the first half of this year, down 41% from the corresponding period in 2022. It also showed 220 stillbirths, more than 20 times the number recorded three years ago, before the Israel-Hamas war.

It says 33% of babies – around 5,560 – were born prematurely, underweight or required intensive care.

“The scale of suffering for new mothers and their babies in Gaza is beyond comprehension,” said Laila Baker, Regional Director for the Arab States at UNFPA.

The war has gutted Gaza’s health system, with several hospitals having shut down or reduced their operations because of Israeli raids and lack of medical supplies.

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This item has been corrected to show that the figure of 220 refers to stillbirths, not maternal deaths, after UNFPA corrected its statement.

Israel’s parliament backs symbolic motion to annex the West Bank

Knesset lawmakers voted 71-13 in favor of the measure, which calls for “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley,” the biblical terms for the area.

The motion, advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, is declarative and has no direct legal implications, although it could place the issue of annexation on the agenda of future debates in the parliament.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for a future state. Some 3 million Palestinians and over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank.

Annexation of the West Bank could make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, which is seen internationally as the only realistic way to resolve the conflict.

Last year, the Israeli parliament approved a similar symbolic motion declaring opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israel’s ambassador accuses UN humanitarian agency of ‘bias’

Israel has accused the United Nations’ humanitarian agency of “bias” and “defamation” in Gaza and announced new actions

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that hundreds of employees of the Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, are now undergoing security vetting.

He claimed Israel has uncovered “clear evidence of Hamas affiliations within OCHA’s ranks” and said “key employees” will not have their permits renewed, and international staff will have their visas cut to just one month.

Danon accused UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher of abandoning “his sacred responsibility to act without bias” and demanded that he retract his statement “that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” He said Jonathan Whittall, who heads OCHA in the Palestinian territories, must leave Israel by July 29 because of alleged bias against Israel.

OCHA spokeswoman Eri Kaneko said: “Any reduction of our own staff will stifle our already curtailed efforts to reach civilians across Gaza in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian aid.”

WHO warns Gaza nears starvation as malnutrition spikes

The head of the World Health Organization warned that over 2 million people in Gaza face starvation, citing a “deadly surge” in malnutrition and related diseases.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said acute malnutrition centers in Gaza are full of patients, but lack adequate supplies. He said that rates of acute malnutrition exceed 10% and that among pregnant and breastfeeding women, more than 20% are malnourished, often severely.

“The hunger crisis is being accelerated by the collapse of aid pipelines,” Tedros said, adding that 95% of households in Gaza face severe water shortages.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for Occupied Palestinian Territories, said there were more than 30,000 children under 5 with acute malnutrition in Gaza so far this year, and that there had been 21 deaths. He noted that many of the U.N. health agency’s supplies were destroyed after its main warehouse was destroyed during attacks in Deir al-Balah on Sunday.

Israel says Gaza starvation warnings are ‘propaganda’

Israel’s Foreign Ministry accused the groups of “echoing Hamas’ propaganda.” It said it has allowed around 4,500 aid trucks to enter Gaza since lifting a complete blockade in May, and that more than 700 are waiting to be picked up and distributed by the United Nations.

That’s an average of around 70 trucks a day, the lowest rate of the war and far below the 500-600 trucks a day the U.N. says are needed, and which entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year.

The U.N. says it has struggled to deliver aid inside Gaza because of Israeli military restrictions, ongoing fighting, and a breakdown of law and order.

In the letter issued Wednesday, 115 human rights and charity groups said they were watching their own colleagues, as well as the Palestinians they serve, “waste away.”

Israeli official to meet US envoy in Rome

An official familiar with ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas said a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ron Dermer, was traveling to Rome to meet U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff on Thursday to discuss the state of the talks.

The official spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

U.S. officials said Witkoff planned to head to Europe this week. The U.S. State Department spokesperson said he was headed to the Middle East in a sign that momentum may be building toward a deal.

— By Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel

Israeli military says Gaza church was struck accidentally

The Holy Family Church in Gaza City was struck last week by an Israeli shell, an attack that killed three, wounded 10 and damaged the church’s compound.

The military said an internal inquiry found the church was hit after an “unintentional deviation of munitions.”

The strike drew condemnation from Pope Leo XIV and U.S. President Donald Trump, and prompted statements of regret from Israel.

Holy Family is the only Catholic church in Gaza. Top church leaders from the Holy Land visited the site a day after the incident and said they encountered a Gaza “almost totally destroyed.”

Houthi attacks on Red Sea vessels are war crimes, rights group says

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked two ships, the Magic Seas and the Eternity C, on July 6 and 9, killing some of their crew and detaining others, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The rebels have been launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

HRW, however, said the Houthis’ attacks on the two vessels “violates the laws of war applicable to the armed conflict between the Houthis and Israel.”

“The Houthis have sought to justify unlawful attacks by pointing to Israeli violations against Palestinians,” said Niku Jafarnia, HRW’s Yemen and Bahrain researcher.

Jafarnia called for the rebels to end all attacks on ships that don’t take part in the Israeli-Hamas war and immediately release detained crew members.

Detention of a senior Gaza health official is extended

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, acting director of Gaza’s field hospitals and the Health Ministry’s spokesman, was detained by Israeli soldiers earlier this week in the Palestinian territory.

Alaa al-Sakafi, head of Addameer, a Palestinian rights group, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that lawyers have not been allowed to see al-Hams. His detention in a southern Israel prison was extended until the end of the month, al-Sakafi said.

He said al-Hams suffered from a gunshot wound in his leg, which he sustained during his detention in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on Monday.

Israel has not commented on al-Hams’ detention.

Israeli forces ‘deepening’ activity in Gaza City

The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday that forces were operating in Gaza City, as well as in northern Gaza.

It said without elaborating that in Jabaliya, an area hard-hit in multiple rounds of fighting, an air strike killed “a number of” Hamas militants.

Troops struck roughly 120 targets throughout Gaza over the past day, including militant cells, tunnels and booby-trapped structures, among others, the military said.

Overnight strikes kill at least 21

More than half of those killed were women and children, health authorities said.

One Israeli strike hit a house Tuesday in the northwestern side of Gaza City, killing at least 12 people, according to the Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties.

The dead included six children and two women, according to the Health Ministry’s casualty list.

Another strike hit an apartment in the Tal al-Hawa area in northern Gaza, killing at least six people. Among the dead were three children and two women, including one who was pregnant. Eight others were wounded, the ministry said.

A third strike hit a tent in the Naser neighborhood in Gaza City late Tuesday and killed three children, Shifa Hospital said.

The Israeli military said it struck an Islamic Jihad militant in the strike that killed 12, saying the incident was under review because of reports of civilian casualties. It had no immediate comment about the other strikes.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants operate from populated areas.

Human rights groups and charities demand more Gaza aid

In the letter issued Wednesday, 115 human rights and charity groups warned of a dire situation pushing more people toward starvation. They said they were watching their own colleagues, as well as the Palestinians they serve, “waste away.”

The letter slammed Israel for what it said were restrictions on aid into the war-ravaged territory. It lamented “massacres” at food distribution points, which have seen chaos and violence in recent weeks as desperation has risen.

“The government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death,” the letter said.

The letter called for aid to be scaled up as well as for a ceasefire. `

Israel says that it has allowed the entry of thousands of trucks since May and blames aid groups for not consistently delivering goods.

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Researchers arrived at the estimate based on an analysis of morgue records, an online survey and social media obituaries.

According to the study, figures produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza are an accurate minimum estimate of the death toll — but are still likely to be underreported. Officials in Gaza tallied 37,877 deaths as of June 30 last year.

POLITICO has reached out to the Israeli government for a response.

The figures come as a growing number of legal experts and NGOs accuse Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as “false and outrageous.”

Human Rights Watch said last month Israel had deliberately cut off water from Palestinians, leading to thousands of deaths from dehydration and disease.

Also last month, Amnesty International accused Israel of treating Palestinians as a “subhuman group” and warned that countries supplying arms to Israel, including the United States and Germany, were failing in their obligation to prevent genocide.

Israel has been waging a military offensive in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 in retaliation for a violent attack by Hamas militants in Israel that killed more than 1,100 Israelis. It has crippled the leadership of Hamas, killing top commanders in the militant group, while leaving a swath of destruction across the coastal enclave.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November, accusing them of complicity in crimes against humanity in Gaza.