Olivier De Schutter recalls that serious violations of international humanitarian law call for a reaction of all UN member States, and that crimes against humanity and war crimes are committed on a daily basis in Gaza – requiring that the international community reacts to uphold international law.
While expressing his conviction that we are witnessing the unfolding of genocide in this context, De Schutter notes that the question of legal qualification is not decisive in this regard, and should not constitute a distraction: while disagreements may persist concerning whether Israel is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” (as according to the definition of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), at the very least, the ethnic cleansing that is taking place and the forcible transfer of the Palestinian population from the Gaza strip cannot be tolerated further.