Factsheet: Israel’s genocide in Gaza

What is happening in Gaza?

Since October 2023, Israel has carried out a genocidal military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. This is not a “conflict” or a “crisis.” It is the deliberate destruction of a civilian population, with genocidal intent.

• More than 70,000 Palestinians have been verified to have been killed (however, credible estimates point to between 136,000 to 680,000 actual deaths), with thousands more trapped under rubble, presumed dead.
• More than 20,000 children have been killed during Israel’s genocide.
• Israeli forces have deliberately targeted aid workers, journalists, health workers and civil service workers.
  • 578 aid workers killed
  • 256 journalists killed
  • More than 1,700 health workers killed
• At least 171,000 Palestinian’s reported injured.
  • Approximately 4,000 children have lost one or more limbs.
• Hospitals have been damaged and destroyed: only 14 out of 36 hospitals are partially functional and only 81 out of 190 primary health care facilities are functional.
• At least 16,500 critical patients are in need of medical evacuation abroad.
• Entire neighbourhoods, hospitals, and refugee camps have been levelled.
• 93% of school buildings (526 out of 564) will require full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be functional again. have been damaged, and 85 schools fully destroyed.
• More than 63 university buildings have been completely destroyed.
• The entire under-five population of Gaza (320,000 children) is at risk of acute malnutrition.
• 97% of tree crops, 95% of shrub land and 82% of annual crops destroyed (only 1.5% of Gaza’s cropland remains accessible and suitable for agricultural cultivation)
• Over 90% of homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, leaving 1.9 million Palestinians without a permanent and safe place to live.

Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza is one of the most heinous crimes against humanity witnessed in modern history.

Despite the mass outcry from communities around the continent and its legal obligations under international law, Australia has continued to endorse Israel as an ally and provide direct and indirect support to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Since Israel’s violent creation in 1948, the zionist regime has created the legal, social, and political conditions that have allowed Israel’s repressive and discriminatory regime to turn genocidal.

The Israeli regime has been waging an ongoing war on the Palestinian people for more than 77 years. From the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 (al-Nakba) and denial of their right of return, the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967, the Israeli apartheid regime, the complete blockade of Gaza since 2007, the relentless theft of Palestinian land to establish Jewish only settlements in Palestine, to the current ongoing genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.

Genocide: What the law says

The Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. These acts include:

• Killing members of the group.
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
• Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group in whole or in part.
• Imposing measurers intended to prevent births within the group.

Under the Genocide Convention, punishable acts include: committing genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, and crucially in the Australian context, complicity in genocide.

Key Facts:

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled, in January 2024, that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, ordering it to cease actions that violate the Genocide Convention, and demanding that third states take concrete action to prevent and punish this genocide.

• On September 16 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

• Law For Palestine has amassed a database of hundred of statements of genocidal intent, made by Israeli politicians, army personnel, journalists, and other influential personalities.

Australia’s obligations

Australia is a signatory to the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Convention and the Arms Trade Treaty.

The Genocide Convention obliges contracting parties to prevent and punish genocide. The ICJ, in its interim ruling of 26 January 2024, invoked this obligation, stating, “States parties to the Convention have a common interest to ensure the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide, by committing themselves to fulfilling the obligations contained in the Convention”.

International law obliges Australia to use all means reasonably available to it to prevent and punish genocide.

This must include:

• Imposing country-level sanctions on Israel and sanctions on Israeli officials and entities complicit in genocide.
• Imposing a two-way arms embargo, ending the direct and indirect import and export of weapons and components.
• Cutting off economic, industry, trade, diplomatic and military relationships between Australia and Israel.
• Proactively supporting the ICJ and ICC investigations into genocide and war crimes.
• Prohibiting investment from Australian institutions into companies complicit in Israel’s occupation and genocide.
• Rejecting any framework that conditions Palestinian self-determination on Israeli security.

Instead, Australia has:

• Used its recognition of the State of Palestine as a political fig leaf to deflect from Australia’s urgent legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide.
• Failed to impose meaningful sanctions on Israeli figures, officials, entities, or organisations for their involvement in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
  • This is in stark contrast to the more than 1,400 sanctions it has imposed on Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
• Supported the 20-point “Trump Peace Plan”, a plan that conditions Palestinian self-determination on Israeli ‘security’ and entrenches Israel’s apartheid regime and illegal occupation.
• Continued to export military goods and components to Israel, including via the US.
• Continued to invest in companies identified by the UN’s OHCHR as complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid. Australia’s Future Fund holds more than $102m in shares in such companies.
• Continued to enter into contracts with Israeli arms companies complicit in Israel’s genocide, including a $917 million contract with Elbit Systems.
• Abstained from critical UN votes that would have advanced legal consequences for Israel’s illegal occupation, and demanded that Israel uphold its obligations to protect civilians.

Palestinians are demanding action in a unified voice

Palestinian civil society, both in Palestine and in the diaspora, has long spoken with clarity about what justice requires: dismantling Israel’s apartheid and settler-colonial regime, realising the right to return, self-determination and reparations, and enforcing accountability for Israel’s crimes.

Their statement regarding the October 2025 “Peace Plan” underlines the urgency of a permanent ceasefire and an end to the ongoing genocide. The statement addresses the inadequacy of the 20-point “Trump Peace Plan”, pointing out the absence of Palestinian experts in creating the proposal that leaves Palestinian civil society unable to trust the plan as anything more than a continuation of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid policies. The statement demands that third states, including Australia, impose urgent sanctions on Israel, and break from failed “peace building” frameworks that entrench Israeli impunity.

What can you do?