Press Releases

BADIL releases the brief version of its more extensive working paper Forced Displacement and Trannsfer as an Act of Genocide in the Gaza Strip, which makes the case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip via various means, including its policy of forced displacement and transfer. This paper provides a summarized version of the legal framework on forced displacement under international law, and includes testimonies from internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Gaza Strip.

Forced displacement and transfer, which has been a pillar of the Israeli regime, alongside colonization and apartheid, has been central to Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Indeed, since the start of the genocide, 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forcibly displaced, some up to 10 times. Israel’s “evacuation orders” over the majority of the Gaza Strip have crammed Palestinians into small slivers of the Strip, facing conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group, constituting an act of genocide under the Genocide Convention.

The summary is accompanied by a short description of the acts accompanying the mass forcible displacement being carried out by the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime in the Gaza Strip, namely the denial of adequate shelter, the infliction of deadly health conditions, the obstruction of humanitarian aid and starvation, the separation of families, and the destruction of homes. Each of these descriptions come with testimonies from internally displaced Palestinians in Gaza, which provide insight into the devastating impact these acts and policies have on individuals and their families and communities.