Gaza war in the context of War crimes in the Gaza war

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Gaza City, often simply called Gaza, is a city in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, and the capital of the Gaza Governorate. Located on the Mediterranean coast, 76.6 kilometres (47.6 mi) southwest of Jerusalem, it was home to Palestine's only port. With a population of 590,481 people as of 2017, Gaza City was the most populous city in Palestine until the Gaza war caused most of the population to be displaced.

During the Gaza war, the Israel Defense Forces ordered mass evacuations in Gaza, which the IDF said were to minimize civilian casualties in its war against Hamas, resulting in one of the largest displacements of Palestinians since 1948. On 13 October 2023, just one week after Hamas' attack on Israel, Israel instructed 1.1 million Gazans north of the Wadi Gaza, including those in Gaza City, to evacuate within 24 hours. This evacuation triggered a humanitarian crisis, which Palestinians (and some Israelis) have compared to the Nakba of 1948.

Israel's ground invasion of Gaza began on 27 October 2023. By early November 2024, around 800,000 to 1 million Gazans had relocated to the southern part of the Strip, while 350,000 to 400,000 remained in the north. Evacuees described the perilous journey as filled with fear and insecurity, citing attacks by the Israeli military and the sight of corpses along the evacuation routes. Even after reaching the south, evacuees faced continued bombings, leaving no truly safe place in Gaza.

2025 (MMXXV) is the current year, and is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2025th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 25th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 6th year of the 2020s decade.

So far, the year has seen an escalation of major armed conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began peace negotiations involving Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The Gaza war, including a famine and humanitarian crisis, as well as the Sudanese civil war, also continued throughout the year. Internal crises in Armenia, Bangladesh, Ecuador, France, Georgia, Germany, Haiti, Peru, Somalia, and South Korea continued into this year, with the latter leading to President Yoon Suk Yeol's arrest and removal from office. The year has also seen a wave of protests predominantly led by Generation Z, with some, like those in Nepal and Madagascar, resulting in the overthrow of governments. Several brief conflicts out of longstanding tensions emerged mid-year—India–Pakistan in May, Iran–Israel in June, and Cambodia–Thailand in July, in which a leaked phone call involving Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Cambodian senate president Hun Sen resulted in the removal of the former.

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Rafah (Arabic: رفح Rafaḥ [rafaħ]) is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine, and the capital of the Rafah Governorate. It is located 30 kilometers (19 mi) south-west of Gaza City. In 2017, Rafah had a population of 171,889. Due to the Gaza war, about 1.4 million people from Gaza City and Khan Yunis, about 70% of Gaza's population, were displaced to Rafah, as of February 2024. By April 2025, most of the city was destroyed by means of systematic razing by the Israeli military. The remnants of the city are currently under Israeli control.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (an acronym from the Arabic: حركة المقاومة الإسلامية, romanized: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian nationalist political organisation with a military wing known as the al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.

The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas secured a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council by campaigning on promises of a corruption-free government and advocating for resistance as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. In the 2007 Battle of Gaza, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from rival Palestinian faction Fatah. It has since governed the territory separately from the Palestinian National Authority, and has been criticized for human rights violations. After Hamas's takeover, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip. Egypt also began its blockade of Gaza at this time. This was followed by multiple wars with Israel, including those in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and an ongoing one since 2023, which began with the October 7 attacks.

Hamas began governing the Gaza Strip in June 2007 when it took over the territory from the rival Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA). The Hamas administration was first led by Ismail Haniyeh from June 2007 until February 2017; then by Yahya Sinwar until his killing in October 2024; then by Mohammed Sinwar until his assassination in May 2025; and since then by Izz al-Din al-Haddad. During the Gaza war (2023–present), the group lost control over most of the Gaza Strip to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and as a result of the Gaza peace plan, agreed in October 2025, the IDF currently controls approximately 53% of the territory. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted on 17 November 2025, contains provisions to effectively place the Gaza Strip under international administration.

After Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections on 25 January 2006, Ismail Haniyeh was nominated as the prime minister of the PA, establishing a national unity government with Fatah. This government effectively collapsed with the outbreak of the violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah. After the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas on 14 June 2007, PA president Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister. Though the new Palestinian government's authority was claimed to extend to both the Palestinian territories, in effect it became limited to the West Bank, as Hamas did not recognize the dismissal and continued to rule the Gaza Strip as an effectively separate administration from the PA. There have been reconciliation attempts between Fatah and Hamas since the 2007 split; a brief Palestinian unity government in 2014 failed to organize elections and reunify the Palestinian territories. A third government was formed by Hamas in October 2016.

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Estimates of Israel's stockpile range from 90 to 400 warheads, and the country is believed to possess a nuclear triad of delivery options: by F-15 and F-16 fighters, by Dolphin-class submarine-launched cruise missiles, and by the Jericho series of medium to intercontinental range ballistic missiles. Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is estimated to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967, which would make it the sixth of nine nuclear-armed countries.

Israel maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity, neither formally denying nor admitting to having nuclear weapons, instead repeating over the years that "Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East". Israel interprets "introduce" to mean it will not test or formally acknowledge its nuclear arsenal. Western governments, including the United States, similarly do not acknowledge the Israeli capacity. Israeli officials, including prime ministers, have made statements that seemed to imply that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, including discussions of use in the Gaza war.

The October 7 attacks were a series of coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, carried out by Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups in 2023, during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. The attacks were the first large-scale invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In response, Israel launched a large-scale military operation in Gaza, beginning the ongoing Gaza war.

The attacks began with a barrage of at least 4,300 rockets launched into Israel and vehicle-transported and powered paraglider incursions into Israel. Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, and Alumim. According to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report that revised the estimate on the number of attackers, 6,000 Gazans breached the border in 119 locations into Israel, including 3,800 from the elite Nukhba forces and 2,200 civilians and other militants. Additionally, the IDF report estimated 1,000 Gazans fired rockets from the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of participants on Hamas's side to 7,000.

The Gaza Strip is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as a result of the Gaza war and genocide. The crisis includes both an ongoing famine and a healthcare collapse. At the start of the war, Israel tightened its blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in significant shortages of fuel, food, medication, water, and essential medical supplies. This siege resulted in a 90% drop in electricity availability, impacting hospital power supplies, sewage plants, and shutting down the desalination plants that provide drinking water. Doctors warned of disease outbreaks spreading due to overcrowded hospitals. According to a United Nations special committee, Amnesty International, and other experts and human rights organisations, Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people during its ongoing invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Heavy bombardment by Israeli airstrikes caused catastrophic damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, further deepening the crisis. The Gaza Health Ministry reported over 4,000 children killed in the war's first month. UN Secretary General António Guterres stated Gaza had "become a graveyard for children." In May 2024, the USAID head Samantha Power stated that conditions in Gaza were "worse than ever before".

The Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip is a major part of the Gaza war. Starting on 7 October 2023, immediately after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, Israel began bombing the Gaza Strip. On 13 October, Israel began ground operations in the Gaza Strip, and on 27 October, a full-scale invasion was launched. Israel's campaign has four stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Hamas no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel. More than a year after the invasion, fighting in the Gaza Strip halted for two months with the implementation of a ceasefire on 19 January 2025. Another ceasefire went into effect in October 2025, as phase 1 of a multi-phase peace plan.

By April 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health had reported that at least 50,500 people in the Gaza Strip had died—1 out of every 44 people—averaging 93 deaths per day. Most of the victims are civilians, of whom at least half are women and children. In October 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health stated that more than 68,500 people have been killed since the war began. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands of more dead bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in The Lancet estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injuries by June 2024, while noting a larger potential death toll when "indirect" deaths are included. As of January 2025, a comparable estimate for traumatic injury deaths would be around 80,000. The number of injured is greater than 100,000; Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world. On 22 October 2025, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report stating that in the Gaza strip "more than 270,000 people, around 12 per cent of the population, have been killed, injured, or detained since 7 October 2023".

Since October 2023, multiple attacks during the Gaza war hit Palestinians attempting to leave northern Gaza City. On 13 October, an airstrike occurred after an evacuation directive from Israel, urging more than a million residents from northern Gaza to move to the southern part of the territory. The airstrike killed 70 people, mostly women and children, and injured 200.

Attacks on protected zones and civilians in Gaza during the Gaza war have led to the killing of over 30,000 Palestinians and the displacement of over 2 million people, as well as the collapse of the education system and the destruction of most homes and hospitals in Gaza. Israel has faced accusations of war crimes from South Africa, the UN Human Rights Council, and Amnesty International, among others, due to the number of civilian casualties and the percentage of civilian infrastructure destroyed, including Palestinian refugee camps, schools, mosques, churches, and more. As early as December 2023, analysis of satellite data showed that 80% of buildings in northern Gaza had been damaged or ruined. As of January 2024, researchers from Oregon State University and the City University of New York estimated that 50 to 62 percent of all buildings in the Gaza Strip were damaged or destroyed.

Rimal or Remal (Arabic: حي الرمال, lit. 'sands') is a neighborhood in Gaza City located three kilometers (two miles) from the city center. Situated along the coastline, it was considered the most prosperous neighborhood of Gaza. The main street that runs through Gaza, Omar Mukhtar Street, runs northwest–southeast in the district and the main coastal road, Ahmad Orabi/Rasheed Street, northeast-southwest. Rimal is divided into the city districts of southern Rimal and northern Rimal. The neighborhood is the site of multiple government ministries and has been severely damaged during the ongoing Gaza war.

The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when about 200,000 of the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes settled in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel and Palestinian militant groups have fought 15 wars in the Gaza Strip. The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza war (ongoing since 2023) (70,000+) is higher than the combined death toll of all other wars in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Israel fought three wars in the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip: 1948 Palestine War, the first occupation of Gaza during the Suez Crisis, and the capture of Gaza in 1967. During the first occupation, 1% of Gaza Strip's population was either killed, tortured or imprisoned by Israel. Following two periods of low-level insurgencies, a major conflict between Israelis and Palestinians erupted in the First Intifada. The 1993 Oslo Accords brought a period of calm. But, in 2000 the Second Intifada erupted. Towards the end of the Second Intifada, Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, Hamas won the 2006 election and seized control of Gaza in 2007.

In the wake of the October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups abducted 251 people from Israel to the Gaza Strip, including children, women, and elderly people. Almost half of the hostages were foreign nationals or had multiple citizenships, and some hostages were Negev Bedouins. The hostages were held in different locations in the Gaza Strip.

168 hostages were returned alive to Israel, with 105 released in the 2023 Gaza war ceasefire, five released by Hamas outside the framework of any ceasefire agreement, eight rescued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 30 released during the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire, and 20 released under the Gaza peace plan. The bodies of 84 hostages were repatriated to Israel, with three of the hostages killed by friendly fire after escaping captivity and being mistaken for enemy fighters by IDF troops, the bodies of 47 other hostages repatriated through military operations, eight returned in the January 2025 ceasefire deal, and 27 returned under the Gaza peace plan. According to Israel, 84 hostages were killed on 7 October 2023 or in Hamas captivity. The body of one hostage is still being held in the Gaza Strip, as of 3 December 2025.

As of 19 November 2025, over 72,500 people (70,525 Palestinians and 2,109 Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 248 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA. Scholars have estimated 80% of Palestinians killed are civilians. A study by OHCHR, which verified fatalities from three independent sources, found that 70% of the Palestinians killed in residential buildings or similar housing were women and children.

The majority of casualties have been in the Gaza Strip. The GHM total casualty count is the number of deaths directly caused by the war. The demographic breakdown is a subset of those individually identified. On 17 September 2024, the GHM published the names, gender and birth date of 34,344 individual Palestinians whose identities were confirmed and continues to attempt to identify all casualties. The GHM count does not include those who have died from "preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war". An analysis by the Gaza Health Projections Working Group predicted thousands of excess deaths from disease and birth complications.

The ongoing Gaza war has been marked by widespread violence against both Israeli and Palestinian women, including reports of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women by Hamas and affiliated militants during the October 7 attacks, and reports of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). At the same time, women have taken on roles as combatants, leadership partners, and participants in informational campaigns.

Following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, there were testimonies and videos indicating that Hamas employed methods of severe torture, including violence and sexual violence against Israeli women and children. Close to 100 Israeli women were taken hostage and held in the Gaza Strip, leading to efforts by Israeli women and organizations to raise awareness and promote their release. The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and UN Women condemned the gender-based violence against Israeli women during the attacks.

The Gaza war has disproportionately affected children in the Gaza Strip, where they make up about 40% of the population. From the start of the war, large numbers of children were killed. Early in the war, UN secretary general António Guterres warned that "Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day." As the war continued, the toll increased steadily, and by 3 September 2025 at least 19,424 children had been reported killed.

Within the first month of the war, about 700,000 children in Gaza had been displaced. In May 2025, it was estimated that at least 1.9 million people, roughly 90% of Gaza’s population, had been displaced by the war. Many had been uprooted repeatedly, in some cases more than ten times. The collapse of essential services created a humanitarian crisis, as families struggled to access food, clean water, and medical care. The ongoing crisis also impacted routine vaccinations, leaving thousands of children at risk of preventable disease. Additional hardships included inadequate shelter, a lack of adequate winter clothing, and the continuing psychological toll on children's mental health.