Since the beginning of the Gaza war on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military and authorities committed numerous war crimes, such as the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, attacks on civilians in densely populated areas (including bombings of hospitals and medical facilities, refugee camps, schools and educational institutions, and municipal services); the torture and executions of civilians; sexual violence including rape; and genocide. Further war crime charges against Israel include forced evacuations, mistreatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners, and the destruction of cultural heritage. Humanitarian organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'tselem, and Oxfam, as well as human rights groups and experts, including the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and United Nations special rapporteurs, have documented these actions.
Israel has faced legal charges for its conduct in the war. At the International Court of Justice, Israel was charged with committing genocide in Gaza. In May 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a weapon of war.
While Israel has faced international condemnation for its alleged war crimes, it has also maintained continued support from the United States. In October 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated the Biden administration had no red lines for Israeli actions where it would stop military support. As Israel's largest supplier of weapons, the U.S. has been accused of complicity in Israel's war crimes.
Proportionality and distinction
Israel's adherence to the principles of distinction and proportionality, as required by the laws of war, has been questioned. The former principle requires armies to distinguish between legitimate military targets and protected civilians. The latter principle requires that when attacking a legitimate military target the expected harm caused to civilians or civilian objects must be proportionate and not excessive (disproportionate) in relation to the military advantage anticipated.
Human Rights Watch has stated that the overall civilian death toll, and Israel's use of powerful weapons in Gaza's densely populated neighbourhoods, raised "serious questions" about the legality of Israel's conduct. Human Rights Watch further argued that a higher proportion of casualties among women and children is indicative of a lack of proportionality, demonstrating what they describe as "a disregard toward Palestinian lives". Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes. In a report they published they analyzed five incidents between 7 and 12 October where the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) targeted residential areas in Gaza. It found that in several cases the IDF struck targets with no evidence of military activity and that these attacks were "indiscriminate" in nature. Anonymous IDF officials cited in a report by +972 Magazine indicated a "loosening of constraints" in the rules of engagement, and that in numerous cases the IDF struck targets despite no evidence of military activity. The report claims that the rationale behind such attacks was "to harm Palestinian civil society" and, according to one source cited by the report, to "lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas".
Experts cited by The Washington Post argue that certain Israeli airstrikes show that Israel has a tolerance for civilian casualties "orders of magnitude greater" than that of the US in its war against ISIS. United Nations (UN) officials and human rights groups have argued that Israel has not done enough to protect civilians. In March 2024, the UN said that more children were killed in Gaza in four months than in four years of all the wars around the world combined. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, declared: "This war is a war on children".
Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, an associate fellow at Chatham House, argued that, given the size and nature of the October 7 attacks, Israel has the right of self-defence that could include its stated military aim of destroying Hamas. She added that Hamas has threatened to repeat its assault and eradicate the state of Israel. According to The Economist, the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law grant Israel flexibility when it comes to taking military action against Hamas, but in its view, Israel's "definition of military targets is being stretched to breaking-point".
Amichai Cohen, an Israeli lawyer, alleges that Israel does not deliberately target civilians but that Hamas's tactics make it hard to take action without affecting civilians. Jill Goldenziel, an American law professor, argued that if Israel conducted every strike legally and with utmost precision, civilian casualties in war would still remain. She stated that the goal of a proportionality analysis is to decide whether attacks are excessive. Israeli security officials state that their proportionality criteria in this conflict are unchanged and that they receive legal advice in relation to strikes. Other Israeli officials, speaking anonymously, acknowledged that Israel has struck "private residences and public structures, like the Gaza Parliament and the Islamic University", which would not previously have been considered valuable enough to justify the risk to civilian life.
In April 2024, Human Rights Watch found that Israel violated international law by launching an airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza, killing 106 people, including 54 children, as there were no viable military targets in the area.
In June 2024, the UN Human Rights Office described possible violations of the rules of proportionality and distinction during the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre. Later the same month, the UN Human Rights Office released a report on six Israeli attacks in which the IDF may have "systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack". Following the Al-Tabaeen school attack, Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka suggested the attack violated the laws of proportionality. In response to an Israeli social media campaign that stated "there are no innocent civilians" in Gaza, Mark Kersten, a professor at University of the Fraser Valley, stated, "It is exactly what atrocity perpetrators say". In June 2024, a UN Commission of Inquiry found the scale of Israel's killing of Palestinians constituted a crime against humanity.
By August 2024, data from Gaza indicated the war was one of the deadliest of the twenty-first century. Pope Francis suggested Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza were disproportionate.
Indiscriminate attacks
In the first two days of the war, the Israeli Air Force attacked 1,500 targets in Gaza. Ynet reported that Netanyahu then demanded to know why they hadn't hit 5,000, saying "I'm not interested in targets ... Take down houses, bomb with everything you have." In the first week of the war, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out 6,000 airstrikes across Gaza, killing over 3,300 civilians and injuring over 12,000 people. The strikes hit specifically protected locations, including hospitals, markets, refugee camps, mosques, educational facilities, and entire neighbourhoods. A group of UN special rapporteurs asserted that Israel's airstrikes are indiscriminate and amount to collective punishment. They stated that these airstrikes are "absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime".
During two airstrikes on 10 and 22 October 2023, the IDF used Joint Direct Attack Munitions in attacks described by Amnesty International as "either direct attacks on civilians" or "indiscriminate attacks". On 24 October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire, after stating Israel had committed "clear violations" of international humanitarian law. On 13 November 2023, Israel shelled the Gaza Reconstruction Committee, leading three Arab states to condemn the attack, with Jordan calling it "a heinous war crime to add to Israel's criminal record." On 12 January 2024, the spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights stated Israel's attacks were failing to account for distinction, proportionality and precautions, thus leaving Israel exposed to liability for war crimes.
In February 2024, the IDF bombed and destroyed the Belgium government's Gaza development office. In response, Belgium summoned the Israeli ambassador and condemned the "destruction of civilian infrastructure" as a violation of international law. On 6 February, the UN stated an Israeli assault on Rafah could lead to war crimes.
On 22 March 2024, Al Jazeera released a video retrieved from an Israeli drone showing four unarmed Palestinians in Khan Younis who were killed by Israeli air attacks. Two were killed instantly, and the others were killed while trying to stumble and crawl away. Al-Jazeera reported that "it is clear from the pictures that these Palestinians were unarmed and posed no threat to anything or anyone". This footage was described by the UN's special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as a part of the "colossal amount of evidence" of war crimes committed in Gaza by Israel. According to the IDF, they had encountered militants in civilian clothes retrieving previously hidden weapons in that area.
Amnesty International called Israel's indiscriminate attacks illegal and a violation of international law. Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnès Callamard said the 16-year-old "illegal blockade has made Gaza the world's biggest open-air prison", and the international community must now act to avert it from becoming a giant cemetery. Human Rights Watch reported that Israel has completely shut down communications and put lives at risk in Gaza by carrying out relentless airstrikes and damage to the main communications infrastructure, electricity cuts, fuel blockades, and deliberate shutdowns through technical measures. Deborah Brown, senior technology researcher at Human Rights Watch, said a deliberate shutdown, or restriction of Internet access, is a human rights violation and can be deadly during a crisis. A complete disruption of communications, such as that experienced in Gaza, can provide cover for crimes and impunity, while further undermining humanitarian efforts and putting lives at risk.
Following reports about Israel's use of automated systems for target selection, experts in international humanitarian law stated they were alarmed by accounts that the IDF authorized killing up to 20 uninvolved civilians for getting a single militant, even if they were low-ranking or had low military importance. In May 2024, Amnesty International called for war crimes investigations into three Israeli airstrikes that had killed 44 civilians. The same month, following the Al-Mawasi refugee camp attack, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen stated that the orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and international humanitarian law must be respected. In June 2024, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini termed the destruction of UNRWA's Gaza headquarters as "blatant disregard of international humanitarian law". In June 2024, Doctors Without Borders suggested Israel was violating international humanitarian law, stating, "We can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking 'all precautions'". The European Union warned Israel in August 2024 that "targeting critical life-saving infrastructure constitutes a war crime". The IDF stated it would investigate whether there was a breach of international law following an army commanders' order to destroy a water reservoir in Rafah.
Refugee camps