Gaza, Three Years On: Preserving the Evidence, Breaking the Cycle of Impunity

An aerial view showing the level of destruction in Rafah, January 2025 -- Ashraf Amra, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons

By Shawan Jabarin

On 13 October 2023, Al-Haq was among the first to warn states to intervene to stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The continuum of decades of dehumanisation of Palestinians, a population subjected to refugeehood, denial of return, killings, torture, property appropriations, and pillage – fragmented and subjugated by Israel’s violent settler-colonial apartheid regime – has resulted in an ongoing Nakba, an ongoing colonial erasure, and escalating destruction of the Palestinian people.

Israel’s systematic destruction and annihilation of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, has destroyed all semblance of Palestinian life, leaving Gaza in ruins: Palestinian residences, commercial properties, cemeteries, industries, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, cultural property, roads, landmarks, and infrastructure have been destroyed, levelled to a barren rubble wasteland. Israel has radically altered the territory of Gaza, constructing military roads, corridors, fortifications and earth berms, appropriating over 70 percent of Palestinian territory within the so-called Yellow Line, an ever-expanding demarcation line that the Israel Occupying Forces (IOF) have claimed as a ‘new border’ in their de facto annexation. Israel imposes a shoot-to-kill policy to prevent Palestinians from returning to their destroyed homes and properties within the Yellow Line, with members of Israel’s security cabinet urging the indiscriminate killing of those approaching the Yellow Line, even ‘children’. Israeli government plans continue for the construction of Israeli settlements in Gaza and the mass forced transfer of the entire population of Gaza out of the territory, euphemistically termed ‘voluntary emigration’.

Over 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and live in makeshift tents, condensed into encampments in Al-Mawasi, along the seashore, and under the eaves of ruined tower-blocks, denied basic infrastructure necessary for human survival. Despite a so-called ceasefire and the institution of the so-called Board of Peace, Israel has continued to deny the entry of lifesaving reconstruction and humanitarian aid at scale into Gaza. Instead, Palestinians are exposed to the dangers of collapsed buildings, and the entire territory is littered with unexploded ordnance – in Gaza ‘one person is killed or injured by explosive ordnance each day… nearly half of the victims being children’. Israel continues to carry out lethal attacks, including on Palestinians in tents in humanitarian zones, bringing the total fatalities since the so-called ceasefire of October 2025 to 1,445 Palestinians killed and 5,072 Palestinians injured, while 74,228 Palestinians have been killed and 175,118 Palestinians injured in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – acts which the UN Commission of Inquiry has determined to be genocide.

It is impossible for forensic teams and investigators to enter Gaza to investigate the genocide and international crimes. Israel controls all access points into Gaza, including the Rafah Crossing, defying the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Provisional Measures Orders in South Africa v. Israel, to end all military operations in Rafah. Israel’s continued military presence as occupying power in Gaza further breaches an ICJ Advisory Opinion from July 2024, requiring that Israel immediately withdraw its unlawful military presence from the Palestinian territory. Evidence collection is severely hampered under the ongoing blockade that defies the orders of the International Court of Justice.

Israel is unlawfully occupying the entire Palestinian territory, including Gaza, and is continuing to breach the orders of the ICJ by failing to ‘take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the [Genocide] Convention’. This includes taking effective measures ‘to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide’.

To block the collection of evidence, Israel has targeted journalists in a pattern of attacks, killing at least 260 journalists since October 2023, erasing the documentation of its crimes in Gaza, while smearing the deceased with fabricated accusations of militant involvement. Only military embeds chaperoned and censored by the IOF are granted access to Gaza. As UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan reports, ‘Gaza has become the deadliest conflict ever for journalists’. Israel’s killings and international crimes in Gaza are self-investigated by Israel’s Military Advocate General, who systematically shields the Israeli military from punishments, including by dropping charges against five Israeli soldiers filmed gang-raping a Palestinian detainee – the details of which informed the UN Secretary General’s reported decision to include Israel among the countries blacklisted on the conflict-related sexual violence register.

Al-Haq’s engagement has used accountability to force states and companies to curtail their supply of armaments to Israel and to recognise that genocide is taking place in Gaza as defined by international conventions.

Within this context, for human rights organisations, such as Al-Haq, whose work supports ongoing criminal investigations at the International Criminal Court, presence in Gaza is more crucial than ever. Al-Haq monitors and documents violations, investigating patterns of attacks, with an expanded field team that takes testimonies and collects documentation on the ground in Gaza. This includes the testimonies of Palestinian detainees released from Israel’s torture prison Sde Teiman and other detention camps. This documentation has been used in submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory to inform her report on Torture, and the UN Committee Against Torture, who found a ‘troubling… State policy of organised and widespread torture and ill-treatment’.

Al-Haq has always engaged to preserve the evidence of Palestinian erasure and the documentation of Israel’s settler colonial crimes. Its paper records date back to 1979, and the institution is in the process of digitising this massive record for posterity. Today, its work continues both within and outside Palestine. The team is collecting testimonies from Palestinians who have left Gaza, those who managed to escape to Egypt prior to the attacks on Rafah in April 2024, and medics who have borne witness to the genocide in hospitals and health facilities. To adapt to the conditions of denied entry and the scale and magnitude of the destruction of Gaza, Al-Haq’s Forensic Architecture Unit compiles digital investigations, reconstructing the attacks on Al-Tabaeen school, and the Indonesian Hospital, using open-source information and satellite imagery, mapping, and 3D modelling and drawing from a large databank of carefully collected video and open-source evidence, along with a registry of genocidal statements.

In the last three years, Al-Haq has prioritised accountability, entering partnerships and coalitions with civil society organisations in third states. The aim is to pursue individual, corporate, and state perpetrators of international crimes and international wrongful acts that contribute to the maintenance of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonial apartheid regime in denial of the inalienable rights of self-determination and return for Palestinians.

Since 7 October 2023, Al-Haq has taken on more than 30 cases in 13 jurisdictions. These include arms cases against Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, the UK, and the United States. While a number of these cases were deferred back to national governments pending separation of powers restrictions, there have also been very significant victories in Australia, Canada, and the UK, resulting in the disclosure of important state documentation that details the extent of the arms export trade. Combined litigation and advocacy pressures have also resulted in the curtailment of arms exports from Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK to Israel that are in breach of international humanitarian law. Further, cases in the United States and the Netherlands have resulted in important recognitions of plausible genocide and genocide taking place in Gaza. While these cases are mostly judicial reviews to halt the supply of arms to Israel, they are important emergency actions that should be seen as a pressure point, along with advocacy and campaigning to force state action.

Al-Haq, along with partners in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, has also pursued individuals that include Israel’s President Herzog and Israel’s Minister of Economy Nir Barkat for international crimes, with Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich cancelling his planned trip to France following Al-Haq’s submission of a case file to the War Crimes Unit there. Coordinating with partners and war crimes units in Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy, Al-Haq has submitted files of evidence against dual Israeli nationals for their part as snipers in Israel’s Ghost Unit in Gaza, killing Palestinians in genocidal attacks. The Dutch company ‘The Four Winds’, which supplies attack dogs to the IOF that used these in the brutalisation, torture, and rape of Palestinian detainees, announced its ceasing of activities following Al-Haq’s joint legal action in the Netherlands. In France, the Paris Judicial Court issued a summons against French Israeli dual national Nili Kupfer-Naouri, president of the Zionist settler organization ‘Israel Is Forever’, for complicity in genocide. We will continue to relentlessly pursue the perpetrators of atrocities in Gaza and against the Palestinian people.

These cases are just a drop in the ocean. Given the scale of the killings, and other genocidal acts and the clear state intent to destroy the Palestinian people, the severity and magnitude of these crimes requires recourse to the international courts: the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice. Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have engaged the ICC since the first preliminary examination in 2009, and since 2015 have submitted and continue to submit files of evidence to the prosecutor, for investigation into the Situation in Palestine. On 21 November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence Gallant for international crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, including the crime against humanity of murder. There may be many more applications for arrest warrants against senior Israeli politicians and military leaders before the court. However, following a decision of the court in April 2025, to no longer publish the prosecutors’ requests in the Situation in Palestine, this information is no longerblic – with serious consequences for deterrence.

The prosecutor has since been removed by the Assembly of States Parties in disciplinary proceedings directly exploited by Israel in a targeted smear campaign, leaving the court fragile and vulnerable to political interference and attack. In September 2025, the US sanctioned Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and PCHR for their work in supporting the ICC, along with its sanctioning of ICC judges, prosecutors, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the oPT. The United States has further sanctioned Palestinian prisoners’ rights NGO Addameer, along with representatives of the PLO and PA, to crush international accountability work on Palestine, cripple Palestinian institutions, and destroy the International Criminal Court. Despite these attempts, our work perseveres, and the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant remain active.

Beyond criminal proceedings, the International Court of Justice holds the key to addressing root causes. Already, the ICJ has ruled on ending Israel’s presence in the oPT, finding Israel’s occupation in breach of peremptory norms of international law. The Nicaragua v. Germany case is possibly the most important case currently pertaining to state responsibility before the ICJ. The case concerns Germany’s responsibility for supplying arms to maintain Israel’s unlawful presence and apartheid in Palestine, and Germany’s complicity and failure to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. Should the case proceed to the Merits, it will have a deep imprint on regulating and constraining the acts of all Third States in Palestine. Finally, although not until 2031, the ICJ will hear the Merits in South Africa v. Israel, one of the most important cases to ever come before the ICJ, with the possibility of awarding restitution and reparations to South Africa for the benefit of the Palestinian people and cementing for the historical record Israel’s responsibility for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Shawan Jabarin is the general director of Al-Haq. He was Amnesty International’s first Palestinian Prisoner of Conscience, having been held in an Israeli prison for eight years over a number of years. He has worked for years promoting human rights in the face of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.