Israel's 'Evacuation Orders' Leads to Displacement, Attack Against Palestinians in Gaza: Report
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14 March 2024 19:53 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A report published by the research group Forensic Architecture has called into question Israel’s argument at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it had introduced measures to safeguard civilian life in Gaza.
The supposed measures have been part of Israel’s defense against charges of genocide leveled against it by South Africa at the ICJ for its conduct during its war on Gaza.
Forensic Architecture, which is based at London’s Goldsmith’s University, also suggested in its Wednesday report, that what Israel characterizes as humanitarian evacuations of Gaza residents may amount to their forced displacement, which is a war crime.
The research group has previously won recognition for its multi-disciplinary open-source research on conflict and state violence. It has presented evidence to the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, and the European Court of Human Rights, among others.
Genocide Defence
In its defense against charges of genocide at the ICJ on January 12, Israel cited the existence of its Civilian Harm Mitigation Unit as evidence of the efforts its military made to avoid civilian casualties.
Lawyers representing Israel pointed to the efforts of the unit to provide advance notice to civilians in targeted areas, including leafleting, radio broadcasts, and telephone calls, as well as providing maps detailing corridors to places it designated as safe.
But according to the study, Israel’s “evacuation orders” have “produced mass displacement and forced transfer, and contributed to the killings of civilians throughout Gaza”.
Since the war escalated in October, approximately two million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from the north to the south. Of these, the report notes, an overwhelming body of research, including its own, “documented Palestinian civilians being bombed, shot at, executed, arrested, tortured, treated in a degrading manner, and forcibly disappeared by the Israeli military along roads, corridors, and zones declared ‘safe’”.
The outcome, Forensic Architecture noted, has been the deaths of more than 30,000 people in Gaza, more than 70 percent of whom are women and children, with thousands more missing, and tens of thousands more wounded.
Rather than serve as humanitarian measures intended to protect life, the study alleged that Israel’s evacuation orders have facilitated “displacement, fatalities, and genocidal acts” against Palestinians in Gaza.
