This article, which features insights from Associate Professor Melanie O'Brien from the Law School at The University of Western Australia, was published in The Conversation on 7 August 2025.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a provisional ruling in a case brought by South Africa against Israel, alleging genocide in Gaza. The court found Palestinians have a “plausible” right to protection from genocide in Gaza and that Israel must take all measures to prevent a genocide from occurring.

Since then, United Nations experts and human rights groups have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. In recent weeks, others have done the same, including leading genocide scholars and two Israeli human rights groups.

While the ICJ case may take years to play out, we asked five Australian experts in international law and genocide studies what constitutes a genocide, what the legal standard is, and whether the evidence, in their view, shows one is occurring.

Melanie O'Brien

Genocide is defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention as a list of five crimes committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

To determine if genocide is happening, we must walk through the different parts of this definition.

Do Palestinians fall within one of the listed groups?

Yes, Palestinians could fall within any or all of these groups; for example, they are nationally Palestinian.

Is there an "intent to destroy" the Palestinians?

This is known as the "special intent" (the legal Latin term is dolus specialis). It's the most difficult part of genocide to prove.

This special intent may be shown through statements made by military or civilian leaders. Since October 2023, Israeli leaders, as well as prominent community members, journalists and soldiers, have made statements about the intention to deny Palestinians necessities of life, forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza, and "destroy" and "erase" the Gaza Strip.

Dehumanising statements have also been made, such as referring to Palestinians as "human animals" or "monsters".

Intent may also be inferred from a pattern of conduct. For this, we must look at the actions on the ground against the target group.

In Gaza, this includes direct killings through indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas, the denial of health care, and imposing conditions that have clearly led to starvation, famine, dehydration and death due to malnutrition and disease.

All these actions indicate an intent to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza.

Are the specific genocide crimes being committed?

The first genocide crime is killing members of the group.

The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 60,000 people, more than half of whom are women and children.

Palestinians have been killed in attacks on medical facilities, open firings on those trying to access food, and the bombings of civilian areas, including refugee camps and schools.

The second genocide crime is causing serious bodily or mental harm.

More than 146,000 people have been wounded in Gaza. There are also credible reports from UN experts, human rights groups and media outlets of the detention and torture of Palestinians, including sexual violence.

Causing mental harm is the constant fear of injury or death, the loss of loved ones, a general denial of human rights, and living in conditions of deprivation and dehumanisation, with no ability to escape.

The third genocide crime is deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.

International courts and tribunals have previously said this includes:

• the systematic expulsions of people from their homes

• the denial of medical services

• deprivation of food

• forced displacement

• creating circumstances that would lead to a slow death (such as a lack of proper housing, clothing or hygiene).

All of these acts are occurring in Gaza.

The fourth genocide crime is imposing measures intended to prevent births.

There has been significant harm to the reproductive capacity of girls and women due to starvation and a lack of access to water and sanitation.

Human rights groups say girls and women have suffered miscarriages and other childbirth complications, due to a lack of healthcare professionals and facilities.

Direct attacks have also taken place on sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, including maternity wards and a fertility clinic holding 4,000 embryos, which UN experts alleged was intended to prevent births.

Genocide is a process, not a single event. Taken together, all of these actions serve as evidence that the crime of genocide is being committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza.

To see what other experts had to say, including Associate Professor Shannon Bosch from Edith Cowan University, Professor Ben Saul and Dr Eyal Mayroz from the University of Sydney, and Professor Paul James from Western Sydney University, read the full article here.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.