GAZA CITY: Amnesty International accused Israel on Tuesday of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Gazans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory.

Echoing global concern after more than 18 months of conflict, the United Nations’ rights chief Volker Turk meanwhile called on the international community to launch “concerted efforts” to end Israel’s total aid blockade on the Gaza Strip, in effect since early March.

Rights group Amnesty, in its annual report, said Israel was acting with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide”.

“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools”, Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said.

‘Extreme’ suffering

On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Tuesday killed at least seven people, four of whom in a tent encampment for displaced Palestinians in the territory’s south. Widad Fojo, who lost relatives in one of the strikes, said he was tired of the violence.

“I just want to lay my head on a pillow and sleep. We don’t want to be collecting remains” of the dead, he said. Amnesty said it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel” including attacks on civilians, and that Israel had “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”. The London-based rights group said 1.9 million people — about 90 per cent of Gaza’s population — had been forcibly displaced during the confict. The UN has cited similar figures.

Children starving

Turk, the UN rights chief, said the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza must be stopped. “There must be concerted international efforts to stop this humanitarian catastrophe from reaching a new unseen level,” he said in a statement.

“Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza”. The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said children and the sick were the most vulnerable.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2025