Genocide in Gaza–The Clearest Case of Intent in Modern International Law

Genocide is defined under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group through acts such as killing, inflicting serious harm, or creating conditions intended to bring about the group’s destruction. Crucially, genocide is not defined only by the scale of violence, but by the intent behind it. That intent—dolus specialis—has historically been the hardest element to prove.

In most genocide prosecutions, establishing intent requires a detailed analysis of indirect evidence: coded communications, military orders, statistical patterns, and inferred motives. In the case of the Rwandan genocide, this included radio broadcasts and internal planning documents. In the Bosnian genocide, it was mass executions at Srebrenica. In both cases, the courts had to work backward from the results—mass killings—to reconstruct the intent. But in Gaza, the situation is radically different: the intent has been publicly and repeatedly declared.

In an unprecedented break from historic precedent, senior Israeli officials have made repeated, public statements advocating for collective punishment, displacement, and the destruction of Gaza’s population and infrastructure. These are not stray remarks but part of a consistent and systemic pattern of rhetoric and action.

• In October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated: “We are fighting human animals,” while announcing a total siege on Gaza—cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to over two million people (BBC).
• In January 2024, Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu suggested that using a nuclear weapon on Gaza was a valid policy option—rhetoric that, disturbingly, was not repudiated by the wider government (AP).
• Israeli ministers including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have publicly called for the mass displacement of Palestinians, portraying it as a necessary component of Israel’s long-term security plan.

The clearest articulation of genocidal intent came in May 2025, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to other countries. Speaking in Jerusalem, Netanyahu described the plan as “brilliant” and stated that its implementation would be a precondition for ending the war in Gaza (Times of Israel). In effect, Israel’s Prime Minister is now conditioning peace on the forced depopulation of Gaza.

This is a defining moment: the head of government of a state engaged in military occupation has tied the end of hostilities to the ethnic cleansing of an entire territory. Trump himself stated in April 2025 that Palestinians should be moved to other countries to create a “freedom zone”—language that echoes colonial rationales for population transfer and is explicitly prohibited under international law.

Independent observers agree. Amnesty International concluded in late 2024 that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, citing deliberate deprivation of food and humanitarian aid, the targeting of civilians, and calls for displacement as evidence of intent (Amnesty). Human Rights Watch similarly reported systematic forced displacement and starvation as war tactics (HRW).

In nearly every genocide trial of the last 75 years, prosecutors have struggled to prove intent. In Gaza, the situation is reversed: intent is the most documented and explicit element. Israeli officials have announced, justified, and defended policies that meet nearly every criterion under the Genocide Convention. The ongoing campaign is not only military—it is ideological, demographic, and political. And it is being justified in real time before the world. The international community has a legal and moral obligation to recognize that this is not a complex, ambiguous tragedy—it is a clear, ongoing genocide, unfolding with open declarations of purpose from those in power. What is at stake is not merely justice for Gaza, but the credibility of international law itself.