UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, International Court of Justice President: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Indigenous Palestinian People.
MEE: First, can you talk us through the key findings of the Commission of Inquiry report in terms of the acts of genocide and the specific intent of genocide that have led you to conclude that Israel has committed this crime?
Navi Pillay: I’ve always said that when there is suspicion that a crime has been committed, where do the police begin? They begin by investigating the acts.
And so we do not begin with the label. We don’t think, “Oh, why don’t we call it genocide now?” No. It is the evidence that led us there.
First, the Commission analysed the underlying acts of genocide as they are set out in the Genocide Convention. The Commission found that four out of five of the underlying acts have been committed by the Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces from 7 October 2023 to 31 July 2025.
These acts are: killings of members of the group; causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group; imposing conditions of life calculated to destroy the group; and preventing births within the group.
We did not find any evidence of the fifth underlying act in the Convention, which is the transfer of children from one group to another.
Having found that the underlying acts have been committed, we then analysed whether the Israeli authorities had the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza through any of these four underlying acts.
We found that statements made by Israeli leaders were direct evidence of genocidal intent. As for the evidence we gathered, the Commission analysed whether the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the pattern of activities by the Israeli security forces in Gaza was that of genocidal intent.
