Gaza: Escalating Genocide and the Collapse of the Humanitarian System Amid Killing, Starvation, Forced Displacement, Expanding Military Control, and the Transformation of Geography into Uninhabitable Areas
Date: May 31, 2026
Press Release
Gaza: Escalating Genocide and the Collapse of the Humanitarian System Amid Killing, Starvation, Forced Displacement, Expanding Military Control, and the Transformation of Geography into Uninhabitable Areas
The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) is following with grave concern and strong condemnation the ongoing and escalating Israeli crimes committed against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. These crimes have taken on a systematic and intensifying character that amounts to a continuing genocide through large-scale mass killings, the targeting of civilians, residential neighborhoods, and displacement tents, the widespread destruction of infrastructure, siege and starvation policies, and the imposition of forced displacement, reflecting an integrated policy aimed at the very existence of Palestinians and the possibility of their survival in the Gaza Strip.
ICSPR points to the continued loss of civilian lives and injuries resulting from airstrikes, artillery shelling, and demolition operations targeting homes and residential blocks across various areas of the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shuja’iyya, Al-Zaytoun, Al-Shati Camp, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Jabalia, in addition to attacks on displacement tents, civilian gatherings, food warehouses, and areas surrounding hospitals. These attacks resulted in the killing of 29 Palestinians during the days of Eid al-Adha and left dozens injured, alongside the obstruction of humanitarian aid entry, which has caused further collapse of the humanitarian, health, and relief systems and has left humanitarian teams unable to respond effectively due to severe shortages of resources and capacities.
ICSPR affirms that the repeated targeting of civilians, displacement tents, and medical and food facilities cannot be regarded as isolated incidents or military errors. Rather, it represents a consistent and systematic pattern aimed at destroying the foundations of human survival in the Gaza Strip by targeting the essential elements of life, including shelter, food, medicine, and healthcare services, thereby creating catastrophic living conditions that force residents toward continued displacement or slow death under siege and destruction.
ICSPR expresses deep concern regarding official Israeli statements referring to expanding military control over approximately 70% of the Gaza Strip, accompanied by field policies based on forcibly reshaping demographic geography through widespread destruction of urban, health, and service infrastructure and the imposition of new realities on the ground that confine residents to remaining areas lacking even the most basic conditions for life. This effectively constitutes a gateway to large-scale forced displacement under the pressure of killing, starvation, and the absence of humanitarian security.
ICSPR considers the confinement of more than two million Palestinians within less than 30% of the Gaza Strip’s territory, following extensive destruction of infrastructure, homes, hospitals, schools, and water and electricity sources, to be creating overcrowded and uninhabitable population enclaves characterized by the collapse of essential services, the spread of disease, food insecurity, and the absence of healthcare, rendering dignified human life nearly impossible and entrenching a reality of impoverishment, starvation, and forced social disintegration.
ICSPR warns that Israeli policies based on military expansion and redrawing control maps inside the Gaza Strip, alongside the systematic destruction of residential neighborhoods, constitute a form of deliberate environmental and urban destruction closely linked to the crime of forced displacement. These policies transform vast areas of the Strip into zones that are unsustainable for human life, compelling residents toward displacement or migration under unbearable coercive conditions.
ICSPR is closely monitoring with serious concern testimonies and reports indicating that contact zones and military control lines have been transformed into open killing fields where civilians are targeted under vague rules of engagement lacking legal oversight. This suggests the possibility of a pattern of extrajudicial field executions and the conversion of geography itself into a direct instrument of killing, constituting a grave violation of the principles of distinction and protection under international humanitarian law and amounting to serious war crimes if proven to be systematic in nature.
ICSPR stresses that the continued targeting of hospitals and medical facilities, particularly Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which faces gradual collapse due to electricity outages, generator failures, and shortages of fuel and spare parts, constitutes a direct threat to the rights to life and health and places the healthcare system at the stage of total collapse. Operating rooms, intensive care units, neonatal incubators, and dialysis services have been halted or severely damaged while hundreds of thousands of residents depend on medical facilities on the verge of going out of service.
ICSPR further affirms that the deliberate disruption of healthcare facilities through preventing or restricting the entry of fuel, medical equipment, and spare parts constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and qualifies as a form of prohibited collective punishment. It reflects a systematic policy aimed at exhausting the means of civilian survival and driving the healthcare system toward total collapse, thereby intensifying the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
ICSPR welcomes the positions issued by the United Nations affirming that the Gaza Strip must belong entirely to the Palestinian people and rejecting any attempts to impose permanent realities through military force or alter its legal or geographic status. ICSPR considers these positions a reaffirmation of the illegitimacy of policies of control, partial annexation, or the forcible re-engineering of demographic geography.
ICSPR refers to repeated United Nations warnings regarding the continued killing of civilians during holidays and public occasions, alongside the worsening crisis of mass displacement and the concentration of residents in increasingly shrinking spaces amid the comprehensive collapse of health and service infrastructure. This reflects an unprecedented danger to civilian lives and exposes the international community’s failure to provide effective protection.
ICSPR affirms that the totality of these violations, including mass killings, targeting civilians, starvation, siege, widespread destruction, forced displacement, attacks on medical and humanitarian facilities, and the creation of inhumane living conditions, collectively constitute acts that may amount to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
ICSPR warns that continued international silence and failure to impose binding measures to stop these crimes seriously undermine the international legal order, encourage ongoing impunity, and consolidate a catastrophic humanitarian reality that renders the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and threatens international peace and security.
ICSPR calls upon the international community, the United Nations, and the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to take immediate action to halt the genocide, provide international protection for civilians, launch international investigations into the crimes committed, ensure unrestricted access for humanitarian aid and fuel, hold perpetrators accountable before the International Criminal Court, halt forced displacement policies and the forcible re-engineering of demographic geography, and adopt deterrent measures capable of ending these ongoing crimes.
ICSPR emphasizes that what is taking place in the Gaza Strip constitutes a comprehensive and systematic process of destruction targeting people, land, and life itself, requiring urgent and effective international intervention before it is too late, in order to preserve what remains of the international justice and human rights system.
