The Hamas resistance movement has hailed a resolution issued by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), confirming that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Hamas said in a statement yesterday that the resolution affirms that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas described the resolution as a new legal document, which has been added to previous international reports and testimonies documenting the Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza.
The group also condemned the international community’s failure to act against Israel and its war criminal prime minister, calling it a stain of shame and an unjustifiable failure to protect humanity.
Hamas urged the UN and all other relevant parties to take urgent steps to stop the crimes of genocide, displacement, and ethnic cleansing that Israeli forces are committing in Gaza, and to hold the regime’s terrorist leaders accountable.
Eighty-six per cent of voting members of the 500-strong IAGS supported the resolution, which stated that ‘Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).’
The IAGS said the ‘deliberate destruction of agricultural fields, food warehouses, and bakeries and other violence that prevents food production, in conjunction with denial and restriction of humanitarian aid, indicate the intentional infliction of unlivable conditions resulting in starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.’
This comes as Israel’s actions in Gaza have drawn condemnation from human rights groups and governments worldwide.
Last week, Palestine’s leading human rights group presented further evidence of genocide in Gaza, accusing Israel of seeking to annihilate Palestinians in the besieged strip.
In a 204-page report titled Voices of the Genocide, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) concluded that Israel had committed four of the five acts prohibited under the 1948 Genocide Convention, with the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group.
The PCHR has previously labelled Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide, but Thursday’s report is the culmination of the organisation’s documentation of genocidal evidence over the past 22 months.
At least 340 Palestinians, including 124 children, have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.
The Israeli regime continues its campaign of destruction, with Gaza City bearing the brunt of intensified attacks in recent days.
Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman of Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, says Israel has yet to respond to the latest ceasefire proposal for Gaza, which had been accepted by Hamas, and has called on the Netanyahu government to engage in negotiations to end the war.
‘There has been no Israeli response yet,’ he said, adding that there have been ongoing contacts with ‘mediators and the US, but so far there has been no progress on the framework’.
‘There must be an Israeli response and engagement in negotiations, but there is nothing new so far,’ he added.
He said Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza ‘poses a threat to everyone’, including Israeli captives in Gaza, and that a ‘unified international position must be formed to stop Israel’.
‘There is no point in waiting for the peace process while no Israeli party wants this process,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Prevot announced on Tuesday that the Western European country will recognise the State of Palestine at the forthcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) later this month and impose sanctions on Israel.
‘Palestine will be recognised by Belgium at the UN session! And firm sanctions will be imposed against Israel,’ Prevot, who is also the deputy prime minister, said on Tuesday.
Prevot added that Belgium will impose a round of 12 ‘firm’ sanctions against Israel, including a ban on the import of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and ‘a review of public procurement policies with Israeli companies’.
He noted that the move is ‘in light of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Palestine, particularly in Gaza’.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates welcomed Belgium’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood in the upcoming UN meeting.
In a statement, the ministry said it considered the move ‘to be in line with international law and United Nations resolutions’, protective of the state of Palestine, and ‘supportive of achieving peace’.
It called on other countries to ‘quickly’ follow suit, ‘to intensify practical efforts to stop the crimes of genocide, displacement, starvation, and annexation, and to open a real political path to resolve the conflict’.
Australia, Canada, France, and Britain have announced plans to recognise Palestine during the UN General Assembly meeting later this month, joining nearly 150 countries that already have.
The United States said last Friday that it would bar Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from travelling to New York for the UN General Assembly.
- A group of Israeli reservists is speaking out in opposition to the government’s plan to seize Gaza City, saying they will not report for duty if called up to fight.
Israeli media has reported that 365 soldiers so far have announced that they will not report for duty when called again.
‘We refuse to take part in Netanyahu’s illegal war, and we see it as a patriotic duty to refuse and demand accountability from our leaders,’ Sergeant First Class Max Kresch told a Tel Aviv press conference, according to The Times of Israel.
Israel is advancing a large-scale mobilisation of reservists to expand ground operations in Gaza City.
Reservists who have spoken against expanding the war cited concern for the well-being of Israeli captives still held in Gaza and the lack of ‘logic’ to the decision of seizing Gaza City, which many view as the first step to re-establishing Israeli military presence in the entire Strip.
- Palestinian fighters from Mujahideen Brigades have claimed to have targeted and hit a group of Israeli soldiers in the Barasi area, south of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.
In a statement, the fighters said they achieved ‘precise hits’ using mortar shells.
Zeitoun has been the site of a mass-scale demolition campaign by the Israeli army in recent weeks, with hundreds of units of housing being destroyed as the Israeli army presses its Gaza City seizure plan.
- Hamas has linked the arrest of Hebron’s mayor to Israeli plans to annex the West Bank.
The Palestinian group has issued a statement condemning Israel’s arrest of the mayor of Hebron, saying it has occurred in the context of Israel’s ‘dangerous targeting of the city’ and its ‘plans to annex the occupied West Bank lands’.
Israeli forces arrested Tayseer Abu Sneineh during a dawn raid on the city on Tuesday, searching and ransacking his home before detaining him.
Hamas called the raid – which it said was carried out using ‘a large military force’ and caused ‘extensive damage’ to his home – ‘a continuation of the occupation’s brutal and aggressive approach and its targeting of all components of our people’.
The statement called on the people of Hebron ‘to be the protective fence of the national project and to stand as an impregnable barrier against all the occupation’s plans targeting the city’.
