The accusation that Israel has incited or has carried out and/or is carrying out some kind of the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people has been made repeatedly during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This is sometimes related to the view that Israel is a settler colonial state. This characterization of events has been made in relation to the Nakba, as well as more recent developments in the conflict, including the Blockade of the Gaza Strip, the 2014 Gaza War and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. In the latter conflict in particular, numerous international law and genocide scholars have raised concerns about the clear incitement to commit genocide and use of dehumanizing language by Israeli officials. The characterization has been largely rejected by Israelis, as well as contested by a number of scholars.
History
Nakba
In 2010, historians Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov carried out a debate regarding whether the 1948 Nakba should be regarded as a genocide, with Shaw arguing that it could and with Bartov disagreeing. The former Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Daud Abdullah, has stated that "Given the declared intent of the Zionist leaders, this wholesale destruction and depopulation of Palestinian villages fit[s] easily with the definition of genocide as cited in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
Blockade of Gaza
In 2007, Israel imposed a blockade – supported by Egypt – on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappé has argued that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip". In an article written in 2023 in the International Journal of Human Rights, Mohammed Nijim voiced his belief “that Israeli policies that were enacted after the introduction of the Blockade of the Gaza Strip amount[ed] to slow-motion genocide".
2014 Gaza War
The 2014 Gaza War, also referred to as Operation Protective Edge, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip. Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights organization, concluded in a report that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. The organization, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Addameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court encouraging it to begin an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive. The crime of genocide was referenced as an Israeli crime by these groups. Additionally, dozens of Holocaust survivors, along with hundreds of descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims, accused Israel of “genocide” for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War.
2023 Israel–Hamas war
The 2023 Israel–Hamas war began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,400 Israelis, most of whom were civilians; this led to an Israeli counteroffensive. Israel formally declared war on Hamas a day later. Some Palestinians immediately expressed concern that this violence would be used to justify genocide by Israel against Palestinians. On 15 October, TWAILR published a statement signed by over 800 legal scholars expressing "alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip".
Forcible population transfer
Israel's evacuation order was characterized as a forcible population transfer by Jan Egeland, the Norwegian former diplomat involved with the Oslo Accord. A "forcible transfer" is the forced relocation of a civilian population as part of an organized offense against it and is considered a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court. In an interview with the BBC, Egeland stated, "There are hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their life — [that is] not something that should be called an evacuation. It is a forcible transfer of people from all of northern Gaza, which according to the Geneva convention is a war crime." UN Special rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned of a mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University, termed it a "textbook case of genocide." A leaked policy paper from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence suggested a permanent expulsion of the population of Gaza into Egypt, which has been described as an endorsement of ethnic cleansing.