Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza

Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the “war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment” over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza’s border with Israel.

“Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques,” the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza’s eastern border.

“In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background,” the report states.

The Israeli military’s campaign to significantly expand a “buffer zone” along the eastern perimeter of #Gaza should be investigated as the war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment.

Read @Amnesty’s new investigation here: https://t.co/RNB6e6hpWj pic.twitter.com/5U71BCd65p

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) September 5, 2024

Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza’a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza’a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that “around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left.”

“I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now,” he added. “Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home – where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son – was completely destroyed.”

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable.”

“Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area,” she continued. “These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

“The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” Guevara-Rosas added. “Israel’s measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.”

Other experts – including United Nations officials and scholars – have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip’s 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

“International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict,” Amnesty explained Thursday.

The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is a war crime.

Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that “no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.