Israeli authorities have deliberately caused the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the enclave, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Thursday.
The report comes amid mounting international alarm over the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in Gaza, huge swaths of which have been reduced to uninhabitable rubble by the massive offensive the Israeli military has been waging there since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel.
The rights group said Israel’s conduct during the hostilities — during which 1.9mn of Gaza’s 2.2mn people have been displaced, according to the UN — amounted to “forced displacement” and that these acts had been “widespread and systematic”.