In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege.” Israel is slaughtering civilians, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.

Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.

“Complete siege” is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It “explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza,” Raz Segal wrote in Jewish Currents.

Israel has turned its incremental genocide of the Palestinian people into full-fledged genocide — with the unconditional support of the U.S. government.

“There is a plausible and credible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, as a significant part of the overall Palestinian population, as a protected group,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in its October 18 emergency legal briefing paper titled “Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide.”

Israel has turned its incremental genocide of the Palestinian people into full-fledged genocide — with the unconditional support of the U.S. government.

“There is a plausible and credible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, as a significant part of the overall Palestinian population, as a protected group,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in its October 18 emergency legal briefing paper titled “Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide.”

Israeli Major Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, said that Israel intended to destroy Palestinian life in Gaza: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

Reservist Major Gen. Giora Eiland wrote in an op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, that “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal,” adding that, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

In the face of Israel’s killing, starvation and forced displacement of the Palestinians in Gaza, Netanyahu said this is “only the beginning.” He warned that Gazans would pay an “immense price,” and that Israel will reduce some of Gaza’s urban centers to “rubble.”

“Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings,” an unnamed Israeli defense official was quoted as saying.

Ariel Kallner, a member of the Israeli parliament for Netanyahu’s Likud party, proclaimed, “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948.”

U.S. Leaders Are Aiding and Abetting Israeli Genocide

The Rome Statute provides that an individual can be convicted of genocide in the ICC if he or she “aids, abets or otherwise assists” in the commission or attempted commission of genocide,” which includes “providing the means for its commission.”

In addition to the $3.8 billion a year the U.S. furnishes Israel for military assistance, the Biden administration is sending overwhelming firepower and providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s war on the Palestinian people.

One U.S. aircraft carrier with a strike group is already in the Eastern Mediterranean, and a second one is headed there now. Three Marine warships carrying thousands of Marines are en route to the area. U.S. special operations forces are helping the Israeli military with planning and intelligence.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered 2,000 U.S. forces, which will likely include Air Force and Army personnel, to prepare for deployment.

President Joe Biden called Hamas’s October 7 attack “an act of sheer evil.” But he has never condemned Israel’s indiscriminate killing, starvation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been attempting to shore up U.S. allies in the Middle East to support Israel. After the blast at the al-Ahli Hospital, the U.S.-Arab meeting in Amman, Jordan — set for October 18 with representatives of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority — was canceled.

On October 18, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for a ceasefire and urged Israel to rescind its order to 1.1 million Gazans to leave their homes and move to southern Gaza.

Netanyahu, Gallant and other Israeli leaders should be charged with genocide in national courts and the ICC. Biden, Blinken, Austin and other U.S. leaders should be charged with complicity in genocide.

I joined more than 800 scholars and practitioners of international law in signing a public statement warning of potential genocide in Gaza. Referring to the “complete siege” of Gaza, we note, “This terminology itself indicates an intensification of an already illegal, potentially genocidal siege to an outright destructive assault.”

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