Top Palestinian rights group says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights joins global organisations that accuse Israel of waging genocide in Gaza

Palestinian woman Soha Tafesh carries the body of her granddaughter Sarah Abu Daf, who was killed in an early morning Israeli strike on a house at a cemetery in Gaza City, 13 August 13, 2025(Reuters/Dawoud Abu Alkas)

Palestinian woman Soha Tafesh carries the body of her granddaughter Sarah Abu Daf, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza City, 13 August 2025 (Reuters/Dawoud Abu Alkas)

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Palestine’s leading human rights group on Thursday declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

In a 204-page report titled Voices of the Genocide, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) concluded that Israel has committed four of the five acts prohibited under the 1948 Genocide Convention, with the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group.

The report, released on Thursday, follows others by Israeli and major international rights groups which also characterise Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, and call for action to stop the most serious crime under international law.

Leading experts in international law and the Holocaust have also told Middle East Eye that Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 22 months of war meet the legal threshold for genocide.

The report comes a week after the UN’s starvation monitor declared that an Israeli-imposed famine has taken place in Gaza as a result of the siege and the ban on humanitarian aid.

“From the very first moment of the Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, the intent to commit genocide was evident,” said Raji Sourani, the PCHR's director.

“This intent was not only expressed directly by Israel's top officials, commanders, and decision-makers in their public statements, but was also made clear through the policies and actions of the state and their deliberate immediate and long-term impacts,” he added in a foreword to the report.

Worse than the Nakba

“The mass killing and attacks on civilians, the widespread destruction, the infliction of unbearable harm, and the obliteration of livelihoods, have created a reality in which the very survival of Palestinians as a national group has become impossible.”

Sourani said that the suffering of the Palestinian people during the Gaza genocide is the worst since the creation of Israel.

“Not even the 1948 Nakba, with its brutal killings, forced displacement, and uprooting, nor the 1956 war and the 1967 Israeli occupation of the rest of its territory, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, can compare to the magnitude of destruction and bloodshed that Gaza is experiencing today,” he said.

Sourani also accused the US and western states of complicity in Israel’s actions.

Israel’s war on Gaza: Why do legal experts say it’s genocide?

Sourani, who is one of Gaza's most prominent human rights defenders and represents Palestine at international courts, told Middle East Eye the report came at a high cost.

“This report is built on hard evidence and testimonies collected from people on the ground, evidence that cost the lives of our own staff," he said.

The PCHR is Gaza's oldest human rights organisation. A UN report last year said that several of the group's staff and their families have been killed since October 2023, and that the PCHR's offices have been severely damaged.

In early 2024, Sourani narrowly survived an Israeli air strike in Gaza which blew up his two-storey home. In late February that year, he crossed into Egypt with his family.

Since 2015, Sourani has led the legal team representing Gaza victims at the International Criminal Court.

'We will never be good victims, and we will never give up'

- Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

And in the past year, he has been working with South Africa's legal team in its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

South Africa brought the case in December 2023, accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention.

A ruling by the ICJ, which is the UN's principal judicial body, is expected to take several years. But reports by PCHR and others contribute to the body of evidence that will be examined by the court.

The Gaza genocide has so far killed over 62,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children. Most of the enclave has been destroyed and almost all the population forcibly displaced several times over the past 22 months of conflict.

"Gaza should not, and will not, become the graveyard of international law," Sourani told MEE. "Shame on the international community for enabling genocidaires, for choosing immorality, for endorsing the law of the jungle.

"We will never be good victims, and we will never give up."

Four genocidal acts

Genocide is widely recognised as “the crime of crimes”. It is legally defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, as well as the Rome Statute, which is the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court and imposes on states a duty to prevent and punish genocide.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as five acts committed "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". They are:

- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

According to the PHCR’s investigations, which covered the first 15 months of Israel’s onslaught, the first four acts have been committed in Gaza.

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In regards to the act of killing members of the group, the rights group said that most of the documented civilian deaths occurred when people were struck inside their homes or shelters, often without prior warning or any chance to flee.

The findings, the PCHR said, indicate that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilian areas and populations, and in some cases unarmed individuals were directly shot or executed by soldiers, snipers, drones or quadcopters. These incidents took place in hospitals, houses, shelters and public streets, even when civilians signalled surrender with white flags or were simply searching for food.

The PCHR’s investigation also found that Israeli forces used weapons intended to inflict maximum harm on civilians, including munitions that scatter widespread shrapnel and phosphorus gas, methods that breach international law and cause lasting health and environmental damage.

The organisation recorded severe wounds among Gaza’s population, such as amputations, crushed bones, damage to internal organs and extensive burns, with women and children particularly affected. Many also sustained facial and eye wounds leading to disfigurement or blindness, as well as paralysis from spinal damage requiring specialised treatment that is largely unavailable.

'Shame on the international community for enabling genocidaires, for choosing immorality, for endorsing the law of the jungle'

– Raji Sourani, PCHR

The PCHR further documented that the deliberate targeting of hospitals and medical infrastructure has deprived already vulnerable communities of access to essential care, resulting in untreated injuries, worsening conditions, and in some cases preventable deaths.

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has imposed conditions on Palestinians in Gaza aimed at their destruction, the PCHR said.

It identified five methods: mass displacement of nearly two million people; the use of starvation and denial of essentials; the large-scale devastation of housing, infrastructure and services; unprecedented environmental damage; and the deliberate creation of a health crisis, with disease spreading rapidly amid collapsed sanitation, overcrowding and a crippled healthcare system. Together, these measures strip Palestinians of the means to survive and impose lasting, generational harm.

The PCHR also concludes that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to measures intended to prevent births within the Palestinian population, as defined under the Genocide Convention.

It said that attacks have disproportionately harmed pregnant women and infants, causing sharp rises in miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births, maternal and neonatal deaths, and even forced hysterectomies due to lack of medical resources.

The destruction of healthcare services, exposure to toxic weapons, malnutrition, displacement, and the deliberate targeting of fertility centres, including the loss of over 4,000 embryos, further undermined reproductive capacity.

Genocidal intent

Proving a special intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group is what distinguishes genocide from other international crimes, such as crimes against humanity or war crimes.

The PCHR argued that while genocidal intent is often difficult to establish, in the case of Gaza the evidence is unusually clear.

It identified 15 factors that, taken together, demonstrate a consistent pattern of conduct aimed at the destruction of the Palestinian people. These include the ideological foundations of political Zionism, repeated dehumanising statements by Israeli leaders, the systematic killing of civilians and erasure of families, and the disproportionate scale of deaths and wounds.

How Amnesty International concluded that Israel has genocidal intent in Gaza

They also include the deliberate targeting of women, children and key societal groups, the large-scale destruction of infrastructure and livelihoods, forced displacement, weaponised starvation and engineered health crises, mass detention and torture, cultural erasure, persistent impunity and failure to abide by ICJ orders, and conduct after declared ceasefires, including renewed sieges and attacks.

In the PCHR’s assessment, the only reasonable conclusion from this body of evidence is the presence of genocidal intent.

The PCHR’s report echoes conclusions by leading human rights organisations that have investigated Israel’s campaign in Gaza since October 2023.

In December 2024, Amnesty International became the first to conclude that Israel had committed genocide during its war on Gaza, while Human Rights Watch concluded that genocidal acts had been committed.