Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel have said that they had concluded the war in Gaza amounts to “genocide” against Palestinians, a first for Israeli NGOs.
Both organisations are frequent critics of Israeli government policies, but the language in their reports issued this morning was their most stark yet.
“Nothing prepares you for the realisation that you are part of a society committing genocide. This is a deeply painful moment for us,” B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak told a news conference unveiling the two reports.
“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,” she said.
“Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
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The International Court of Justice, in an interim ruling in early 2024 in a case lodged by South Africa, found it “plausible” that the Israeli offensive had violated the UN Genocide Convention.
The Israeli government, backed by the United States, fiercely denies the charge and says it is fighting to defeat Hamas and to bring back Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
The reports from B’Tselem – one of Israel’s best-known rights groups – and Physicians for Human Rights Israel argue that the war’s objectives go further.
B’Tselem’s report cites statements from senior politicians to illustrate that Israel “is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s report documents what the group says is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system”.
Israel’s war in Gaza for the past 21 months began in response to an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people with 250 taken hostage.
The Israeli assault has left much of Gaza, home to more than two million Palestinians, in ruins, and according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry has killed at least 59,821 people, most of them civilians.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 16 people were killed by Israeli fire this morning in the Palestinian territory.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the dead included five people killed in an overnight strike on a residential building in the southern Gaza district of Al-Mawasi.
A pregnant woman was among those killed, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, adding its teams saved the woman’s foetus by performing a Caesarean section in a field hospital.
Israel designated Al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of the southern city of Khan Younis, as a humanitarian zone in the early months of the war.
Despite that designation, it has continued to be hit by air strikes and now shelters a large share of Gaza’s displaced people.
All of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the start of the war, and the United Nations says 88% of the territory is now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli military zones.
The civil defence spokesman said five people were killed in another air strike in Khan Younis’ Japanese neighbourhood.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once since the war began
The Israeli military said it was looking into the Al-Mawasi and Khan Younis strikes.
Mr Bassal said six more people were killed in two separate strikes in Gaza City and central Gaza.
Central Gaza’s Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat camp said in a statement that one person was killed and nine wounded when Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for aid in central Gaza.
The health ministry of Gaza’s Hamas-run government said that five people had died of malnutrition in Gaza in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total death toll from malnutrition to 147 since the start of the war.
After talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down, Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza on 2 March, allowing nothing in until trucks were again permitted to enter at a trickle in late May.
Stocks accumulated during the ceasefire have depleted, leaving the territory’s inhabitants experiencing the worst shortages since the start of the war in October 2023.
‘A drop in the ocean’
Aid that is being air dropped into Gaza is a step in the right direction, but the level of aid getting into the territory in recent months is “a drop in the ocean” of what is needed, UN aid chief Tom Fletcher has said.
Peace talks in the Middle East came to a standstill last week after the US and Israel recalled negotiating teams from Qatar, with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff blaming Hamas for a “lack of desire” to reach an agreement.
Since then, Israel has promised military pauses in three populated areas of Gaza to allow designated UN convoys of aid to reach desperate Palestinians.
The UK, which is joining efforts to airdrop aid into the enclave and evacuate children in need of medical assistance, said that access to supplies must be “urgently” widened.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the UN’s Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-Ordinator said the situation in Gaza is “unrelentingly grim at the moment for civilians”.
“Gaza is starving. One in every three people has not eaten for days and days in a row,” Mr Fletcher said.
“So the needs are enormous, and we’re ready to go. You know, the aid that’s got in in recent months is a drop in the ocean of what’s needed.”
Israel has promised military pauses in three populated areas of Gaza to allow designated UN convoys of aid to reach Palestinians
Mr Fletcher said aid agencies were “ready to mobilise” and hoped that the routes were secured so food, water, medicine and shelter could be brought to desperate civilians.
In relation to how much aid will be allowed in, he said it is not clear.
During the last ceasefire, over 42 days, 600 to 700 trucks a day were getting into Gaza.
“That’s what we need right now”, he said. “That’s what the civilians in Gaza need. Yesterday, I think we got some somewhere around over 100 trucks in, nothing like enough.”
He said that all the border crossings need to be opened and all restrictions on visas and other “bureaucratic restraints” and “security restrictions” should be removed.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to raise the prospect of reviving ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas when he meets US President Donald Trump in Scotland.
‘We’re going to set up food centres’ – Trump
US President Donald Trump said many people were starving in Gaza and suggested Israel could do more on humanitarian access.
Describing starvation in Gaza as “real”, Mr Trump’s assessment put him at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said yesterday that “there is no starvation in Gaza” and vowed to fight on against the Palestinian militant group Hamas – a statement he reposted on X.
Mr Trump, speaking during a visit to Scotland, said Israel has a lot of responsibility for aid flows, and that a lot of people could be saved.
“You have a lot of starving people,” he said.
“We’re going to set up food centres, with no fences or boundaries to ease access,” Mr Trump said.
The US would work with other countries to provide more humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, including food and sanitation, he said.
Aid being air dropped into Gaza
‘Unrelentingly focused’
Mr Fletcher said that the UN agency is facing a tough time but remains “unrelentingly focused”.
“I’m talking to the teams on the ground last night, this morning. They themselves are hungry. They themselves have been going without food. Incredibly brave people and they’re driving these trucks facing enormous crowds of desperate, starving Palestinians.”
Gaza needed to be flooded with aid, he said.
“We can do that. We’ve got the aid. We could reach everyone in Gaza with food, with medical support, with shelter. But we’ve got to get going at much, much bigger scale.”
Germany to airlift aid into Gaza immediately
Germany will immediately launch an airlift to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza as it considers stepping up pressure on Israel over the “catastrophic” situation in the enclave, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.
Germany, together with the United States, has long remained one of Israel’s staunchest allies and largest arms suppliers.
The German security cabinet convened for more than two hours to discuss the situation, Mr Merz told a news conference in Berlin.
The German government said it would reassess the situation over the weekend
While it welcomed Israel’s announcement of a halt in military operations for ten hours a day in parts of Gaza as an “important first step”, it agreed more must follow.
Asked if the council discussed sanctions like suspending the EU pact governing relations with Israel, a move Germany has in the past rejected, Mr Merz said the council had discussed its options.
“We are keeping such steps on the table,” he said.
Before making any decisions, however, he said he would try to speak with Mr Netanyahu, while Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul would travel to the region on Thursday, possibly together with his British and French counterparts.
The German government would then reassess the situation over the weekend, it said.
In the meantime, Berlin would do what it could to help alleviate the humanitarian situation, launching an airlift in cooperation with Jordan to deliver aid into Gaza.
