Gaza genocide

• 1. Introduction

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  By December 2025, at least 70,117 people in Gaza had been killed, and the Gaza genocide is the name now given to the war that produced that number. A United Nations special committee and a UN commission of inquiry have used the term. So have numerous genocide scholars, international law experts, human rights groups and some state governments. Israel and its supporters reject it completely. The allegation covers mass killing, deliberate starvation, serious bodily and mental harm, and the prevention of births. It also covers a blockade, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and health facilities, mass forced displacement, sexual violence, and attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites.

  Behind the figure sit hard questions. What does the law require before a campaign of killing counts as genocide, and why is that so difficult to prove? How do investigators count the dead when the institutions that record deaths are themselves in ruins? Which words and actions are offered as evidence of intent? And what have courts and scholars concluded so far, and where do they sharply disagree?

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• 2. Roots Of The War

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  Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip began in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In 2005 it withdrew its ground forces, in the context of the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada. The International Court of Justice later issued an advisory opinion that the occupation was still illegal despite the withdrawal, because Israel maintained a blockade of the territory.

  Hamas, an Islamist militant group, has governed Gaza since 2007, while the Palestinian Authority kept control of the West Bank. After the takeover, Israel intensified its blockade and cited security concerns. International rights groups have called the blockade a form of collective punishment. In 2023, UNRWA reported that 81% of Gazans lived below the poverty level, and 63% were food insecure and dependent on international assistance. Israel and Hamas, along with other Palestinian militias in Gaza, fought four wars, in 2008-2009, 2012-2014 and 2021.

  On the 7th of October 2023, Hamas led an attack from Gaza into Israel that killed at least 1,139 people, most of them civilians. The attack included grave violence, among it sexual violence. Palestinian militant groups also abducted 251 people from Israel into the Gaza Strip. Israel answered with a highly destructive bombing campaign, followed by a ground invasion on the 27th of October.

  Hamas officials called the attack a response to the occupation of the West Bank, the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the blockade, settler violence against Palestinians, and the detention of thousands of Palestinians. By taking Israeli hostages, Hamas sought to win those prisoners' release. Amnesty International, B'Tselem and Human Rights Watch have likened the Israeli occupation to apartheid, a comparison Israel's supporters dispute. A July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice affirmed that the occupation is illegal and violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

  Israeli government statements tie its military actions to the October 7 attacks. They say the aims were to destroy Hamas, end its rule over Gaza and free the hostages, and they deny that the operations amount to genocide. Several commentators argue that retaliation is part of the motive. Nimer Sultany argues that anti-Palestinianism is another. Whether any such motive meets the legal meaning of intent is a question the 1948 Genocide Convention frames in precise terms.

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• 3. The Test Of Intent

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  The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention supplies the legal test. It covers acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". The listed acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.

  The International Court of Justice has never held a state liable for genocide, and the threshold for proving genocidal intent remains a major barrier to prosecution. No minimum number of victims is required, and the complete destruction of the group is not required either. In the Rohingya genocide case, several states argued that the court should "adopt a balanced approach that recognizes the special gravity of the crime of genocide, without rendering the threshold for inferring genocidal intent so difficult to meet so as to make findings of genocide near-impossible."

  Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word, defined genocide more broadly than the Convention does, to include cultural and social destruction. Orthodox scholarly definitions instead stress acts that target a group's physical survival. Public perception of the word is wider than the legal definition. Some scholars advocate expanding the legal definition, while others want to hold to the Convention's original intent.

  A United Nations commission of inquiry and Amnesty International each documented a "pattern of conduct" by Israeli authorities. Each concluded that genocidal intent is the "only reasonable inference" from the evidence. A UN panel and Genocide Watch have also attributed genocidal intent to Israeli actions or statements. Omer Bartov, a scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies and an Israel Defense Forces veteran, says intent "has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders". He adds that it can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground.

  Navi Pillay, who chairs the UN commission of inquiry, compared statements by Israeli politicians to the incitement during the Rwandan genocide. In September 2025 the commission found that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant had engaged in "direct and public incitement to commit genocide". Many critics, including South Africa, also point to repeated Israeli references to Amalek, the biblical enemy of the Israelites whose annihilation God commands. In the US case Defense for Children International - Palestine v. Biden, the historian Barry Trachtenberg said this rhetoric underlies the consensus among genocide historians.

  In the first 48 hours of the Israeli attack, IDF chief Herzi Halevi reported that the IDF struck 1,000 targets. According to his wife, he told her that "Gaza will be destroyed". Netanyahu reportedly then said he wanted 5,000 targets attacked, although the IDF had not confirmed 5,000 enemy targets. Artificial intelligence was used to generate a list of targets, often from unconfirmed or outdated intelligence. About 10,000 Palestinians were killed in a month, including entire families, which Shmuel Lederman called "as criminal as it gets".

  B'Tselem, South Africa's legal case and some scholars date the start of the genocide to the 7th of October 2023. B'Tselem says the shock, fear and humiliation of the attack drove "a shift in government policy toward the Palestinians". Martin Shaw and A. Dirk Moses argue that this "front-loaded violence" makes it harder to claim the genocide began later. On the 13th of October 2023, the historian Raz Segal called events a "textbook case of genocide", one of the first scholars to do so. Others argue that the war was initially legitimate and that genocide began in 2024 or 2025. In September 2024, a UN Special Committee concluded that "the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period i.e. October 2023 to July 2024 are consistent with the characteristics of genocide."

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• 4. Killing And Counting

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  During the first two months of bombing, Israel dropped 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip. Many of the bombs were unguided and fell in densely populated areas, obliterating entire neighbourhoods. Six Israeli intelligence officers said a major factor in the death toll was striking targets in their homes with families present, partly because automated systems made those homes easy to identify. Another officer said that for junior militants only unguided bombs were used, so as not to "waste expensive bombs on unimportant people". +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that the IDF authorised killing up to 15 to 20 civilians per low-ranking militant, and more than 100 for a senior one.

  In March 2024, Haaretz reported that some Israeli commanders had set up "kill zones" where soldiers were told to kill anyone on sight, even if unarmed. An Israeli officer said, "in practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate." Testimony given to the Knesset described soldiers in armoured bulldozers being ordered to "run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds". In June, the Associated Press found that the campaign was killing entire bloodlines of Palestinians to a "degree never seen before".

  A December 2023 UN report stated that Israeli soldiers allegedly shot civilians in front of their families. In January 2024, soldiers shot at civilians waving white flags and killed one. Doctors identified numerous children with single gunshot wounds to the head and chest, which they said was consistent with intentional targeting. In April 2024, mass graves containing over 300 bodies were found, allegedly including older people, women and wounded, and some with their hands tied. The IDF called accusations that it caused those deaths "baseless and unfounded". It said that near Nasser Hospital, while searching for hostages and missing persons, it examined bodies that Palestinians had buried and put back those that were not hostages.

  In May 2025, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said, "We're eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers", describing the targeting of Hamas's civilian rule. Killing civilian members of Hamas is in itself illegal. Soon after, in June 2025, IDF soldiers said they were ordered to open fire on crowds of Palestinians near aid distribution sites.

  On the 31st of July 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health had fully identified 60,199 of the dead by name. Of those, 28,728, or 48%, were women and children, 2,928 were elderly, and 28,543, or 47%, were men. A minimum of 18,457 children had been killed since October 2023. In November 2024, the ministry reported that 1,410 Gazan families had been completely erased from the civil registry.

  Counting has grown harder as infrastructure fell. The ministry now supplements hospital records with media reports, first responders and families, and widows must formally register their husbands' deaths to qualify for government assistance. On the 30th of April 2024, Professor Michael Spagat noted that the ministry's total of 34,535 did not match the 24,653 fully identified, and called for a transparent method of reconciling them. By August 2025, the gap had narrowed to about 62,000 against about 60,000. Israeli authorities contested the ministry's totals, while Israeli intelligence services, the UN and the World Health Organization accepted them as accurate.

  A February study in The Lancet estimated that life expectancy in Gaza fell by 34.9 years between October 2023 and September 2024, excluding indirect deaths. The same study tested the ministry's count against census and registration data and found no substantial errors. A 2025 paper estimated 64,260 deaths from traumatic injury between October 2023 and the 30th of June 2024, and concluded that the ministry had undercounted such deaths by 41%. In November 2025, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimated between 100,000 and 126,000 violent deaths, of which 27% were children under 15 and 24% were women. The Guardian reported that a classified IDF database registered 8,900 killed militants. Combined with ministry data, that implies a civilian death rate of 83%, higher than any conflict since 1989 except the Rwandan genocide, the Siege of Mariupol and the Siege of Srebrenica. The IDF said those figures were inaccurate and inconsistent with its own data.

  Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf estimated that total conflict-related deaths in Gaza would likely be four to 16 times the reported toll. Multiplying the reported deaths by five, they argued that "186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza". Spagat called that estimate implausible, yet said it was fair to point out that not all deaths would be direct and violent. Donald Bloxham argues that calling these deaths indirect is wrong, since the systematic obstruction of supplies into Gaza is an Israeli policy.

  Between the start of the ceasefire in October 2025 and February 2026, Israel killed 603 people, including over 100 children. Amnesty International and B'Tselem asserted that the genocide continued during the ceasefire, partly citing those killings.

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• 5. Hunger And Displacement

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  In December 2023, the World Food Programme and the United Nations reported that more than half of Gaza's population was "starving". Fewer than one in ten people were eating every day, and 48% suffered "extreme hunger". The programme had warned of dwindling supplies two months earlier, in October 2023. That December, Human Rights Watch found that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war by deliberately denying access to food and water. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki made a similar charge, and an Israeli official called it "blood-libellous" and "delusional".

  In January 2024, UN experts accused Israel of "destroying Gaza's food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people". Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, called Israel "culpable" of genocide, citing halted aid and the destruction of fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards. In February 2024, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich personally blocked US-funded shipments of flour, against promises Israel had made to the US government. After the ICJ's ruling of the 26th of January, the number of aid trucks Israel allowed into Gaza dropped by 40%. In March, the court noted a "lack of Israeli compliance" and "unprecedented levels of food insecurity". Twelve Israeli human rights organisations signed an open letter making the same accusation, and in April B'Tselem called the famine "the product of a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy".

  On the 6th of October 2024, Israel designated northern Gaza a combat zone and ordered civilians to evacuate. Israeli military analysts and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights alleged this was the first stage of the "Generals' Plan", proposed by the former general Giora Eiland. Israel had reportedly adopted a modified version of the plan. It called for everyone in the north to leave within a week, a full siege on water, food and fuel, and then the arrest or killing of anyone who remained. By mid-October, humanitarian aid had been blocked for almost two weeks. The UN Human Rights Office said Israel may have caused the "destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza's northernmost governorate through death and displacement."

  On the 21st of November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, asserting that they "bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare". During the first stage of the January 2025 ceasefire, Israel lifted aid restrictions and displaced people returned to northern Gaza. On the 2nd of March, Israel announced that all humanitarian aid would be blocked indefinitely unless Hamas altered the ceasefire terms, which Hamas refused to do. Within four days, food supplies had rapidly depleted and prices had more than doubled. Bushra Khalidi of Oxfam predicted "the total collapse of systems that sustain life". After the ceasefire broke down in March 2025, displacement orders resumed.

  In May 2025, after two and a half months of blocking all food, medicine and fuel, Netanyahu announced that Israel would allow "minimal humanitarian aid" because of international pressure. The US created the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to deliver aid through private companies in the south of Gaza only, saying this would stop Hamas from stealing or looting it. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said the plan "forces further displacement" and "makes aid conditional on political and military aims". Amnesty International alleged that Israel was restricting aid to starve and inflict genocide upon Palestinians. Starting in June 2025, soldiers said they were ordered to shoot at crowds near the foundation's aid sites, killing over 1,000 people.

  In August 2025, about 641,000 people faced catastrophic levels of food insecurity, and the IPC confirmed famine in the Gaza Governorate. It was reported that month that Israel planned to cut all aid to Gaza City to force residents to leave before taking over the city. The 2025 Gaza City offensive led to evacuation orders for 1.2 million people.

  Across the war, Israeli evacuation orders displaced 1.9 million people, nearly Gaza's entire population, often through unclear directives issued during bombing. About 100,000 people fled the Gaza Strip by the end of 2025. Combined with deaths, this produced a 6% decline in the territory's population. As of the 25th of August 2024, the UN estimated that most of Gaza's 2.2 million people were confined to roughly 15 square miles. Human Rights Watch reported that the systematic forced displacement amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  Two weeks after the October 2025 ceasefire took effect, dozens of NGOs, including the Norwegian Refugee Council and Doctors Without Borders, said Israel was arbitrarily blocking their aid shipments. World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "there is no dent in hunger because there is not enough food". By December 2025, famine and catastrophic food insecurity had ended, yet 27% of the population still faced emergency-level food insecurity and another 50% faced crisis-level. Israel's expulsion of Doctors Without Borders and other organisations at the turn of the year raised fears that children with severe acute malnutrition would go untreated. In February 2026, after the outbreak of the 2026 Iran war, Israel closed multiple aid crossings and suspended UN humanitarian movements, returns to Gaza and medical evacuations.

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• 6. Ruins And Lost Care

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  In October 2024, Forensic Architecture concluded that Israel's military campaign in Gaza is "organised, systematic, and intended to destroy conditions of life and life-sustaining infrastructure". Mark Levene and Elyse Semerdjian trace the destruction to the Dahiya doctrine, applied against Gaza since 2006, and Levene calls it urbicide. In July 2025, The Guardian reported that about 70% of the structures in Gaza were completely destroyed or severely damaged. Israel was reportedly paying contractors up to 5,000 shekels per building demolished.

  In February 2025 it was reported that at least 15 children had died of hypothermia over the winter, after the destruction of housing and power facilities. In May 2025, Netanyahu said, "we are destroying more and more homes, and Gazans have nowhere to return to." Rafah has been razed, mostly by bulldozing and controlled demolitions rather than aerial bombardment. In July 2025, the BBC reported that the controlled demolitions of civilian infrastructure were potentially in violation of the Geneva Convention. An IDF spokesperson said Hamas conceals military assets in densely populated civilian areas. In November 2025, the BBC reported that over 1,500 more buildings had been demolished since the ceasefire, behind the Yellow Line, in the 53% of Gaza under Israeli military control.

  Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity, and later partially restored the water. A December 2024 Human Rights Watch report accused Israel of committing acts of genocide by targeting water and sanitation. It alleged that solar panels powering treatment plants, a reservoir and warehouses were deliberately damaged, while repair materials and fuel for generators were blocked. B'Tselem says Israel destroyed 84% of Gaza's water facilities. A report by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations put the share of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities destroyed or damaged at 89%. UN Special Rapporteur Pedro Arrojo-Agudo called these attacks "an important part of a genocidal strategy". The UN and environmental groups also report damage consistent with "ecocide", citing massive debris, untreated sewage and toxic pollution that have triggered disease outbreaks and respiratory illnesses.

  Hospitals began shutting down by the 23rd of October 2023 as they ran out of fuel, and when power failed, several premature babies in neonatal units died. By May 2024-84% of Gaza's health centres had been destroyed or damaged, and the Gaza Health Ministry said the system had "totally collapsed". As of February 2025, at least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza were believed to be detained by Israel, with another 24 missing after being taken from hospitals. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa hospital, was detained for seven months and released without charges. He said that in Israeli prisons "no day passes without torture". Physicians for Human Rights Israel said the killing and detention of over 1,800 healthcare workers is a deliberate strategy, and Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, called it "medicide".

  In March 2025, a UN investigation concluded that Israel had committed genocidal acts by systematically destroying reproductive healthcare facilities while blocking medications for deliveries, pregnancies and neonatal care. The commission found that Israeli forces intentionally destroyed the Al-Basma IVF Centre, Gaza's main in-vitro fertility clinic, which served 2,000 to 3,000 patients monthly. About 4,000 embryos and 1,000 specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs were destroyed, and no evidence was found of military use of the building. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, as reported by Physicians for Human Rights, the birth rate in May and June 2025 had fallen 41% from the same months in 2022.

  More than 171,000 people have been injured, and Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world. By March 2024, an estimated 17,000 children were classed as "wounded child, no surviving family", a new medical term. A UN committee reported that the war had disabled more than 21,000 children as of September 2025.

  In August 2024, the UN human rights office reported testimony from Palestinians held at the Sde Teiman detention camp about rape and sexual assault. The Lemkin Institute considers such reports indicative of sexual violence used to destroy a group. Prisoners said they were threatened with mutilation, death, arson and rape. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry said gender-based and sexual violence were committed "to dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part." Francesca Albanese's report called torture "a structural feature of the ongoing genocide and broader settler-colonial apartheid".

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• 7. Classrooms, Newsrooms, Heritage

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  On the 18th of April 2024, UN experts in Geneva condemned Israel for "scholasticide", finding that it had destroyed more than 80% of Gaza's schools and killed 5,000 students, 261 teachers and dozens of professors. By June 2025, UN experts reported that over 90% of educational buildings had been destroyed, and all 12 of Gaza's universities had been hit. South Africa's filing at the International Court of Justice cited four destroyed universities and the killing of leading academics. They included Sufian Tayeh, president of the Islamic University, and Refaat Alareer, poet and professor of comparative literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. Researchers at Birzeit University called the killing of educators "deliberate and systematic" and said 94 professors had been targeted and killed.

  The International Association of Genocide Scholars, in its 2025 resolution, wrote that Israel "has destroyed schools, universities, libraries, museums, and archives, all of them essential to the continued existence of Palestinian collective well-being and identity". Amnesty International notes that destroying heritage is not a prohibited act under the Genocide Convention, but that the ICJ has said such destruction can evidence intent when done deliberately. Amnesty identified at least four cases with "no imperative military necessity". They were the Al-Mughraqa campus of Al-Azhar University, the Al-Zahra campus of Israa University, the Al-Dhilal mosque with Bani Suheila cemetery, and the Al-Istiqlal mosque, the last three in Khan Younis.

  As of January 2025, Israel had destroyed 815 mosques and 19 cemeteries during the war. Amnesty also noted the destruction of Gaza's central archives. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention says that destroying cemeteries enacts the "erasure of a people's...historical presence". In June 2025, UN experts reported that Israel had committed the crime against humanity of extermination by killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites.

  The International Federation of Journalists reported that 56 media professionals were killed in 2025 alone. South Africa cited Palestinian journalists being killed at a rate significantly higher than in any conflict in the past 100 years. Al Jazeera reported that 278 journalists and 706 family members of Palestinian journalists had been killed since October 2023. A Brown University study found that Israel had killed more journalists in Gaza than died in the US Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav wars and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined. The Committee to Protect Journalists called it the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists it has ever documented. It also noted a pattern of journalists receiving threats and then having family members killed.

  The IDF has been accused of directly targeting journalists despite clear markings and protective measures. In a case filed with the International Criminal Court, Reporters Without Borders accused the IDF of targeting seven journalists between the 22nd of October and the 15th of December 2023. They were Asem Al-Barsh, Bilal Jadallah, Montaser Al-Sawaf, Rushdi Al Siraj, Hassouna Salim, Sari Mansour and Al Jazeera's Abudaqa. Targeting journalists is a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute.

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• 8. Courts And Scholars

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  In December 2023, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention. South African president Cyril Ramaphosa compared Israel's actions to apartheid. South Africa argued that the actions "are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group". Israel decided on the 2nd of January 2024 to appear in court, despite a history of ignoring international tribunals. Government spokesman Eylon Levy rejected the allegations "with disgust" and called them "blood libel". On the 13th of January, Netanyahu said, "No one will stop us. Not The Hague, not the Axis of Evil, no one."

  On the 26th of January 2024, the court found the rights asserted by South Africa "plausible" and ordered Israel to take all measures in its power to prevent acts of genocide, to prevent and punish incitement, and to allow basic humanitarian services into Gaza. Judge ad hoc Aharon Barak dissented from the view that the rights were plausible, writing that South Africa had not demonstrated genocidal intent. Vice President Julia Sebutinde voted against all the measures, and wrote that Israel had taken concrete actions to facilitate humanitarian aid. In May, the court issued an order some experts called ambiguous, but which was widely understood to require a halt to the Rafah offensive. Israel rejected that interpretation and continued the offensive.

  In May 2024, ICC prosecutor Khan applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The list did not include genocide, which is legally distinct from extermination. In December 2024, Amnesty International urged the court to consider genocide in its investigation. That same month, the Israeli law professor Omer Shatz filed a complaint naming eight Israeli political and media figures for incitement to genocide. The US and Israel have politically pressured and sanctioned the ICC over its positions during the war.

  In November 2023, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin. A federal judge dismissed the case in January 2024 because the US Constitution barred his court from deciding foreign policy. He wrote, though, that "as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel's conduct amounts to genocide". In February 2024, lawyers for Palestinians in Germany filed a criminal complaint against Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other ministers for aiding and abetting genocide, which prosecutors dismissed. In March 2024, Nicaragua began proceedings against Germany at the ICJ over its support for Israel.

  On the 31st of August 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world's largest academic association of genocide scholars, passed a resolution saying Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy criticised its sourcing and noted it passed with the support of only one-fifth of the membership. In May 2025, a report described leading scholars in genocide studies as "surprisingly unanimous". Holocaust scholars Norman J. W. Goda and Jeffrey Herf have said Israel is not committing genocide. Brookings Institution surveys of 758 Middle East scholars indicated a growing consensus that the campaign was genocide. In July 2025, Le Monde reported that legal experts remained divided. John Spencer of the Modern War Institute argued that evidence of Israel preserving infrastructure and services shows a lack of genocidal intent.

  Amnesty International published a report in December 2024 accusing Israel of genocide, and Human Rights Watch then said Israel had committed "genocidal acts". William Schabas, an expert in international criminal law, called South Africa's case the strongest of all recent genocide cases at the ICJ. In August 2024, the lawyer Eli Rosenbaum argued that Israel's actions were not genocidal because it was aiming to "prevent genocide" by Hamas. In July 2025, 1,300 professionals and academics in public health and the social sciences signed a letter acknowledging the Gaza genocide.

  Palestinians stress that the Gaza genocide continues the Nakba, the 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians upon Israel's founding. B'Tselem places it within more than 75 years of settler colonial violence. Some scholars call it the latest stage of a "slow-motion genocide".

  In March 2026, several states filed declarations of intervention in the ICJ case, bringing the total to 18. The Netherlands, Iceland and Namibia supported the case, while the United States, Hungary and Fiji supported Israel. Germany withdrew its earlier plan to intervene on Israel's behalf. Israel filed its Counter-Memorial on the 12th of March 2026, after two extensions from the original date of the 28th of July 2025. South Africa said it would evaluate whether to request further written submissions or proceed to the oral phase.

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