Israeli tanks advance in Gaza City as scholars’ association says Israel is committing genocide

Israel pushed tanks deeper into Gaza City and detonated explosives-laden vehicles in one suburb as airstrikes killed at least 19 people on Monday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

The reports came as the president of the world’s leading genocide scholars’ association said it had passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Eighty-six per cent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza” had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the statement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that accuses it of genocide.

Israel is pushing ahead with a plan to take full control of the whole Gaza Strip, starting with Gaza City. Its stated goals are destroying Hamas and rescuing the remaining 48 hostages after nearly two years of war, even though the majority of hostages recovered have been through ceasefire exchanges and not military means. 

Residents said Israeli forces sent old armoured vehicles into the eastern parts of the overcrowded Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, then blew them up remotely, destroying several houses and forcing more families to flee.

In leaflets dropped over Gaza City, Israel’s military told residents to head south immediately, saying the army intended to expand its offensive westward.

“People are confused, stay and die, or leave toward nowhere,” Sheikh Radwan resident Mohammad Abu Abdallah told Reuters.

“It was a night of horror; explosions never stopped and the drones never stopped hovering over the area. Many people quit their homes fearing for their lives, while others have no idea where to go,” the 55-year-old said over a chat app.

Israel has previously been documented hitting regions it had designated as “safe” evacuation zones with airstrikes, leaving Palestinians with few options for safety amid evacuation orders. 

Legal criteria met for genocide

Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials, and taking 251 hostage.

Since then, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 63,000 people, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials, and it has plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis and left much of it in ruins.

The three-page resolution from the International Association of Genocide Scholars calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.” That includes starvation, deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians and depriving the population of humanitarian aid.

It also states that the Hamas attack on Israel that precipitated the war constituted international crimes.

“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, told Reuters. O’Brien is also a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and specializes in genocide.

“There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence.”

Deaths, starvation reported across Gaza

The Israeli military issued a statement saying its forces were fighting Hamas across the enclave and over the past day had struck several military structures and outposts that had been used to stage attacks on its troops.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 98 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave in the past 24 hours.

It added that nine more people, including three children, have died of malnutrition and starvation over the past day, raising deaths from such causes to at least 348, including 127 children.

Israel disputes the hunger fatality figures given by Gaza’s government, which is run by Hamas, arguing that the deaths were due to other medical causes.

Local health authorities said the 19 people, including women and children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on houses in Gaza City. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on those reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet late on Sunday to discuss a new offensive to seize Gaza City, which he has described as the bastion of Hamas.

Israel’s military has warned its political leaders that the planned Gaza City offensive could endanger hostages still being held by Hamas. Protests in Israel calling for an end to the war to ensure the safe release of the hostages have intensified in past weeks. Twenty of the remaining 48 hostages are believed to still be alive.

Ceasefire talks ended in July in deadlock and efforts to revive them have so far failed.

As violations of international law pile up, calls have increased for Israel’s campaign in Gaza to be described as a genocide. 

On Thursday, hundreds of staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk signed a letter asking the chief to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide. Some human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have already described Israel’s actions in Gaza as such.