Introduction
Israel quickly exploited the opportunity presented by “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023, to launch a genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Its ostensible goals in the war were to eliminate Hamas rule and the group’s military presence in the territory. However, Israel has concurrently sought to achieve another goal: to expel Gaza’s Palestinians, or at least the vast majority of them, into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and to other countries in the region and around the world.
To this end, the Israeli army has comprehensively destroyed Palestinian cities, camps, and towns in the Gaza Strip. It has destroyed residential buildings and infrastructure intended to provide vital services to civilians such as electricity and water, and flattened facilities such as schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, churches, United Nations installations, economic and industrial facilities, transportation routes, agricultural areas and so on. As of mid-March 2024, more than 31,500 Palestinians had been killed, most of them women and children, while a further 7,000 were missing and more than 72,000 wounded – again, mainly women and children.
The Israeli army’s war crimes and the crimes against humanity it has committed against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are not only designed to achieve military objectives or to satisfy Israel’s desire for revenge. They are also – indeed, primarily – intended to transform the Gaza Strip into an area unfit for human habitation, in order to force the Palestinians there to leave.
