Ramallah: Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS strongly condemned the Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip. The Center affirms that the systematic targeting of the Gaza Strip, by the Israeli army, is an act described as a war crime and genocide crimes against humanity, according to International law and the international rules that organize armed conflicts, especially the Geneva Fourth Convention and Hague Law. The Center added that the Israeli occupation is proceeding with the crimes of murder, destruction, and ethnic cleansing while the world is watching silently. Through the aggression and the crimes, the Israeli occupation is working on drawing a new demographic and geographic map of the Gaza Strip, which means a new Nakba of Palestinians through forcibly displacing.
The continuous systematic targeting of civilians and both public and private establishments is a clear indication of the Israeli plan to forcibly displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The requests of the Israeli army to evacuate the houses and ahead south are a clear violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
Palestinians are forced to flee their houses, cities, towns, and refugee camps under threat of destruction and killing. Moreover, the Israeli army demanded the UNRWA evacuate at least 5 schools, which are used as temporary shelters for displaced persons, in clear violation of international law. International law affirms protecting civilians under armed conflicts and ensuring that they are not targeted by military operations. The displacement of individuals and groups is a clear violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Fourth Convention (1949), which prohibits individual and collective displacement of citizens regardless of the reasons and claims. Any party involved in displacing people should be presented to the appropriate litigation channels as forcibly displacement is among the acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The Rome statute of the International Criminal Court- 1998, emphasized that the forced displacement of civilians is a crime against humanity (Article 7). A wide attack against civilians and pushing them out of their residential localities or displacing them to other places are crimes against humanity. Article 8 of the statute affirms that ordering civilians to evacuate their residential places during military operations is also a war crime.
The continuous shelling of the Palestinian civil establishments since October 7 by the Israeli occupation resulted in the entire demolition of houses and residential compounds over the heads of civilians. The result was that a million persons from those whose houses were demolished and became homeless were forced to flee their places and seek shelters in the UNZRWA’s schools. The worst case was the demand of the Israeli army to the Palestinians from Gaza and North Gaza Governorates (1,250,000 persons), to evacuate the area and head toward the southern part of the Gaza Strip and Gaza Valley, within 24 hours. Such orders indicate clearly the tendency of the Israeli occupation to displace Palestinians in order to empty the Gaza Strip from people.
In addition to that, the diplomatic activeness of the American State Secretary in the Middle East, and demanding the opening of a human corridor to enable civilians to move out of the Gaza Strip, indicate that there is a systematic tendency of the Israeli occupation, supported by the USA, to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The displacement of Palestinians by the Israeli forces is a war crime and a crime against humanity. The crime takes place in front of the world, which stands hands-cuffed and does not condemn the Israeli crimes that violate, clearly, International Law and International Humanitarian law. The states parties of the Geneva Fourth Convention and the International Criminal Court should initiate immediately to press on the Occupation State to stop its crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip taking into consideration that the crimes of the Israeli occupation are among those under the specialization of the ICC.