Israel rejects HRW accusations of ‘forcible transfer,’ ‘ethnic cleansing’ in north Gaza

Israel on Thursday denied allegations by Human Rights Watch that the IDF had forcibly displaced Gazans and that its actions in more than a year of war amount to “crimes against humanity.”

“Time and again, Human Rights Watch’s rhetoric regarding Israel’s conduct in Gaza is completely false and detached from reality,” foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said in a statement.

In a report published on Thursday, the New York-based rights group said it had “amassed evidence that Israeli officials are… committing the war crime of forcible transfer”.

“Statements by senior officials with command responsibility show that forced displacement is intentional and forms part of Israeli state policy and therefore amount to a crime against humanity,” Human Rights Watch added. “Israel’s actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing” in the areas where Palestinians will not be able to return, HRW said.

HRW said the 172-page report’s findings were based on interviews with displaced Gazans, satellite imagery, and public reporting conducted until August 2024.

“Contrary to claims in HRW’s report, Israel’s efforts are directed solely at dismantling Hamas’s terror capabilities and not at the people of Gaza,” said Marmorstein.

He also charged that the Hamas terror group “uses civilians as human shields and embeds terror infrastructure within residential areas.”

“Israel will continue to operate in accordance with the law of armed conflict,” the spokesman added.

Responding to the HRW claims late Thursday, the IDF said the report followed the NGO’s “long-standing pattern of anti-Israel bias and factual distortion.”

The report, the IDF said in an English-language statement, “selectively presents information in a manner that obscures context, as well as makes certain blatant misrepresentations.” The Israeli military said that the report “relies heavily on Hamas-controlled sources” and also, “most egregiously,” omits mention of Hamas’s longstanding policy of embedding itself in civilian areas “in an effort to maximize civilian harm.”

The IDF said the HRW report was “deeply misleading” in portraying the military’s “efforts to minimize civilian harm as tools for forcible displacement.”

“The IDF’s warnings to members of the civilian population to temporarily distance themselves from areas expected to be exposed to intense warfare are made in accordance with the obligation under international law to take feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm by providing advance warnings prior to attacks,” it said. “The IDF only operates in areas in which there is known to be a military presence, and is still at this time working to dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure in various parts throughout the Gaza Strip.”

The military has denied seeking to create permanent buffer zones, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Monday that Palestinians displaced from their homes in northern Gaza would be allowed to return at the end of the war.

The law of armed conflict forbids the forcible displacement of civilian populations from territory deemed “occupied,” unless necessary for the security of civilians or imperative military reasons.

Israel launched its military operation after Hamas-led terrorists massacred around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern communities and took 251 hostages to Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Israel says the war is aimed at dismantling Hamas’s military and governance capabilities, ensuring that it doesn’t have the ability to carry out another cross-border onslaught, finding and returning 101 hostages still held by terrorists in Gaza — not all alive — and safely returning tens of thousands of Israelis displaced for over a year back to their homes in ravaged Gaza border communities.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 43,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Although Israel says the evacuation orders are justified for civilians’ safety and to allow the military to operate, HRW researcher Nadia Hardman said that “Israel cannot simply rely on the presence of armed groups to justify the displacement of civilians.”

“Israel would have to demonstrate in every instance that displacement of civilians was the only option,” to fully comply with international humanitarian law, she claimed.

According to the United Nations, 1.9 million Palestinians were displaced in Gaza as of October 2024. Before the start of the war on October 7, 2023, the official population figure for the territory was 2.4 million inhabitants.

“Systematically rendering large parts of Gaza uninhabitable… in some cases permanently… amounts to ethnic cleansing,” Ahmed Benchemsi, spokesman for HRW’s Middle East division, said in a press briefing.

The HRW report pointed in particular to the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors — running along the Egyptian border and cutting Gaza along its east-west axis, respectively — which have been “razed, extended and cleared” by Israel’s army to create buffer zones and security corridors.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Israeli forces must retain long-term control over the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the Egyptian-Gaza border in order to prevent weapons smuggling to terror groups.

Hardman said Israeli forces have turned the central Netzarim Corridor, between Gaza City and Wadi Gaza, into a buffer zone four kilometers (2.5 miles) wide mostly cleared of buildings.

‘Wipe out the north’

The report excludes developments in the war since August 2024, particularly an intense Israeli offensive in northern Gaza since early October 2024.

For the past month, Israeli troops have moved tens of thousands of people from areas in the north of the enclave as they have sought to destroy Hamas terrorists the military says have been regrouping around Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.

The operation has forced the displacement of at least 100,000 people from the territory’s far north to Gaza City and surrounding areas, UN Palestinian refugee agency spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told AFP.

Ragheb al-Rubaiya, a 63-year-old Palestinian from north Gaza’s Jabalia Camp, said to AFP that he had been driven from his home after “bombing started from the air and the tanks, and they drove us out against our will.”

“They’re destroying everything in Jabalia, and the goal is clear even to the blind: to wipe out the north and cut it off from Gaza,” he added.

HRW’s report argued that “the actions of the Israeli authorities in Gaza are the actions of one ethnic or religious group to remove Palestinians, another ethnic or religious group, from areas within Gaza by violent means.”

It alleged the nature of the displacement was organized, and that the intention of Israeli forces is to ensure affected areas will “remain permanently emptied and cleansed of Palestinians.”