The Crime of Genocide in Gaza from the Perspective of International Law

Abstract

has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people since 1948, sometimes through premeditated murdering and other times through the forced displacement of thousands of Palestinians from their land. The pace of these actions by Israel against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip has increased since the Israeli aggression against the Strip on October 7, 2023, until the inscription of this research in February 2026. Through this research, I aim to urge the world to pressure Israel to halt its aggression against the Gaza Strip and to hold Israel and its leaders accountable for this international crime against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

This will be achieved by clarifying the concept of the crime of genocide from the perspective of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, as well as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998, and by defining the elements of this international crime, especially the material and moral elements, according to the provisions of that Convention and that Statute. This crime, with its material and moral elements, is committed according to the provisions of the aforementioned Convention and Statute by committing any of the acts mentioned in Article 2 of the Convention, the content of which was reiterated in Article 6 of the Rome Statute of 1998, with the intent of exterminating, in whole or in part, a group (racial, national, ethnic, or religious).

The investigation has confirmed that Israel committed this crime, both in its material and moral aspects, through its aggression against the Gaza Strip, which necessitated holding Israel accountable as a state before the International Court of Justice through the lawsuit filed by the Republic of South Africa, which was joined by many countries of the world. Arrest warrants were also issued against Israeli leaders by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court, accusing both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister GALLANT of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The reason the arrest warrants did not explicitly mention the crime of genocide is the difficulty in proving the specific intent required for that crime.