Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups breached the fences separating Gaza and Israel and attacked surrounding Israeli communities, infiltrated homes, apparently shot civilians en masse, and took scores of Israeli civilians as hostages into Gaza. They reportedly launched more than 3,000 indiscriminate rockets towards Israeli population centers. “The unlawful attacks and systematic repression that have mired the region for decades will continue, so long as human rights and accountability are disregarded.”
Israeli authorities have systematically repressed Palestinians for decades and since 2007 have imposed a crushing closure on Gaza’s population. On October 7, Israel’s Energy Minister announced that Israeli authorities would no longer provide electricity to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents.
Palestinian armed group’s apparent deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attacks, and taking of civilians as hostages amount to war crimes under international humanitarian law. Israeli authorities’ cutting off electricity to Gaza and other punitive measures against Gaza’s civilian population would amount to unlawful collective punishment, which is a war crime. The laws of war apply to all parties to a conflict, irrespective of the lawfulness of their going to war or imbalances of power between the parties.
Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) have recently faced perhaps unprecedented repression. During the first nine months of 2023, Israeli authorities killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023 than in any year since the United Nations began systematically recording fatalities in 2005. As of October, the number of Palestinians being held in administrative detention without charges or trial based on secret information reached a 30-year-high. Israel’s unlawful closure of Gaza, including its generalized ban on the travel of Palestinian residents who live in this 40-by-11 kilometer (25-by-7 mile) strip of land, with few exceptions, recently entered its 17th year.
During prior rounds of hostilities, Human Rights Watch documented serious violations of the laws of war by Israeli forces and by Palestinian armed groups. Israel has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate airstrikes that killed scores of civilians – wiping out entire families – and strikes that targeted civilians or civilian infrastructure, including destroying high-rise Gaza towers full of homes and businesses, with no evident military targets in the vicinity.
Palestinian armed groups have launched thousands of indiscriminate rockets that violate the laws of war and amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch has for years called for Palestinian armed groups to cease these unlawful attacks, including in a recent exchange of letters with Hamas authorities.
In 2021, the then-International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, opened a formal investigation in 2021 into serious crimes committed in Palestine, which is a party to the court’s Rome Statute. “If we’ve learned anything through prior escalations, it is that so long as there is impunity for serious abuses, we will continue to see more repression and shedding of civilian blood,” Shakir said.