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Israel’s overall policy of Gaza war has genocidal character: Academic

Sunday, 14 July 2024 6:02 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 14 July 2024 6:57 PM ]

A man walks past a car carcass at the site of Israeli bombardment a day earlier on the al-Mawasi displacement camp of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

Israel’s overall policy of the war on the Gaza Strip has a “genocidal character,” says an academic, as the occupying regime escalates attacks on the defenseless people in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer in the law of armed conflict at Nottingham Trent University, made the remarks on Sunday.

The comments came following the “horrific massacre” committed by Israel in the al-Mawasi refugee camp near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Saturday.

“When war is conducted so lawlessly against civilians, it means policies accepting the elimination of a protected group under the Genocide Convention, as if it was an incidental cost of warfare,” Daniele said.

“Israel has for a long time tried to devise a distortion of the laws of war concept of proportionality, progressively de-humanizing hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed in each attack as ‘collateral damage’. This has no legal basis.”

Palestinian resistance movements condemn Israel’s ‘horrific massacre’ in Mawasi

The Palestinian resistance movement condemned the “horrific massacre” committed by Israel in the al-Mawasi refugee camp.

“This is per se a war crime of disproportionate attacks,” the academic said, stressing that the fact that these crimes have been committed in the hundreds means the overall policy of the war has a genocidal character.

Daniele also stated that after the latest massacre in Gaza, prosecutors at the International Court of Justice will be compiling evidence for their ongoing genocide case against Israel.

On Saturday, a series of airstrikes were conducted by Israel’s F16 warplanes that targeted the al-Mawasi area designated by the regime as a so-called “safe” zone. The attacks, which took place around 10:30 a.m., left at least 90 Palestinians dead and more than 300 others wounded.

Many were still missing and rescue teams continued to retrieve dozens of casualties from the sites of the bombings.

Also earlier in the day, Israeli forces targeted a UN-run school for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing 15 people and wounding 80 others.

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