LONDON: In 1994, a month into the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda — the fastest killing of humans in the 20th century — a US defense official raised a concern about the language to be used about the slaughter.
“Be careful … genocide finding could commit (the US government) to actually ‘do something,’” he wrote in a document to be shared with other departments.
The skittishness of President Bill Clinton’s administration to use the accurate word to describe what was unfolding in Rwanda came amid an international failure to stop what was clearly a genocide.
Thirty years later, the same diplomatic dance around the “g-word,” as some US officials referred to it, has unfolded in Western capitals and global institutions over the war in Gaza.
Last month, the most significant and comprehensive report so far declaring that Israel has carried out acts of genocide in the conflict was published by a UN-appointed commission of inquiry.
Yet the US, most European countries, and the UN itself still refrained from describing Israeli actions in Gaza as a genocide.
Traditional alliances, including longstanding support for Israel, have become entangled in a reluctance by nations to shoulder the legal burdens of international law that they had signed up to.
The inertia of nations to accept that a genocide has taken place and to therefore act to try and stop it has infuriated Palestinians and the wider Arab and Islamic world. It begs the question: How many lives could have been saved if they had?
If the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas were to collapse and the fighting resumes, would countries like the UK and Germany then accept what international law experts say is happing — that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians?
The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide legally defines genocide as: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The convention, which has been ratified by 153 states, obliges nations to both prevent and punish genocide.
In other words, once governments acknowledge that acts of genocide are taking place, then they must “do something” to stop them. It is this step that cuts to the heart of why nations are so resistant to use the term “genocide.”
“States tend to be reluctant to refer to any atrocity situation as genocide because of the obligations they have under the genocide convention, to prevent and punish genocide,” Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, told Arab News.
“States, even though they voluntarily have joined the genocide convention, don’t actually want to refer to a situation as genocide and trigger those obligations, because then they will have a legal requirement to act.”
Soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, the spiraling death toll among Palestinian civilians sparked accusations of genocide.
As early as January 2024, the International Court of Justice said it was “plausible” Israel was violating the genocide convention, and ordered the country to “take all measures” to prevent genocidal acts.
The court is not expected to deliver a final judgement in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide until late 2027 at the earliest.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both published reports in December 2024 accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.
And in August, O’Brien’s IAGS, a body of 500 leading academics on the subject, passed a resolution stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide.
With the death toll soaring and an Israeli blockade earlier this year halting all aid supplies from reaching the territory, sparking famine in some areas, pressure grew for the international community to take tougher action.
Then came the report that Israel’s supporters were dreading.
On Sept. 16, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published a 72-page legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The report was unequivocal.
The three-member panel of experts found that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 convention: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the Palestinians; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
The incitement to carry out these acts came from the highest political and military figures of the Israeli state, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the report said.
In the days that followed its publication, the commission’s chair Navi Pillay, a former UN high commissioner for human rights who oversaw the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, told Arab News that the report had brought both legal clarity and moral urgency.
She said the report meant that if nations continued to remain silent on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, they would be complicit in the commission of genocide.
“The genocide convention is very clear,” she said. “You must take action.”
Despite the damning contents of the report, it was not a judicial finding and did not carry direct legal authority. As a result, nations continued to refrain from accepting a genocide was taking place.
The UK, for example, was unmoved. After members of the ruling Labour Party last month called on the government to do all it could to prevent genocide in Gaza, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy repeated the oft-used line that it was up to the ICJ “to determine the issue of genocide.”
It was the same reason given by senior UN officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for avoiding the “g-word.”
Even Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said it was up to the courts to decide “whether it’s genocide or not.”
This position of waiting for a ruling from the ICJ on whether genocide is taking place is deeply flawed, legal and human rights experts say.
Michael Lynk, the former UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, said that when a country puts its signature to the genocide convention or the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, which also defines genocide, “it’s not supposed to be a performative exercise.”
“It’s supposed to put these high responsibilities on you when there is something in the world, which may qualify as a genocide,” he told Arab News.
“To activate or trigger the genocide convention … you don’t need to have, three years from now, judicial proof that there was a genocide going on.
“It’s meant to prevent a genocide or genocide in the making. If there is credible but non-judicial evidence that a genocide is supposed to be going on, that’s supposed to be the starting point for you to begin to activate and fulfill your responsibility.”
O’Brien agrees. “A genocide happens whether or not a court makes a finding of genocide,” she said. “It is frustrating that there is still reluctance to refer to the situation in Gaza as genocide, when it so clearly is.”
Despite its significance, the commission of inquiry report did not immediately slow Israel’s military campaign, which to date has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
By failing to adopt the genocide label, critics say nations shirked their responsibility to bring pressure to bear on the Israeli government.
“The moment governments and institutions admit that it is a genocide, they would be bound by a series of legal obligations and duties to prevent the genocide,” Neve Gordon, an Israeli academic and professor of international law at Queen Mary University of London, told Arab News.
“For states this would include not only stopping arms trade with Israel but any other trade that might be construed as assisting the genocide.
“It would put on governments a duty to stop providing Israel with diplomatic support, as so many European governments continue to do.”
However, the report may have pushed governments to take other actions against Israel, or at the very least contributed to the groundswell of support for the ceasefire and its accompanying peace plan.
The UN conference on the two-state solution, hosted by and France in the days after the report’s publication, coincided with a raft of Western nations formally recognizing a Palestinian state.
The ceasefire itself came about after intense diplomacy involving the Donald Trump administration and several Arab and Islamic nations.
“Even to get to the spot where there is pressure by Trump to bring an end (to the war) and to be listening to this coalition of Arab and Muslim countries in part came because of the ripples, the wave actually created by the genocide report from the independent commission,” said Lynk.
Legally, the report will also resonate with the ongoing cases in international courts. Along with the ICJ case, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes, along with warrants for Hamas leaders.
“While the commission of inquiry carries no direct legal power, the report will serve to bolster the claims made by the South Africa appeal in the ICJ genocide case because the conclusions the UN commission of inquiry reached are similar to the allegations made in the appeal,” said Gordon.
“With respect to the ICC, the report could theoretically also influence the prosecutor to issue more arrest warrants against Israeli political and military leaders and add charges to the ones included in the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants.”
O’Brien said this could help ICC prosecutors argue an elevated case for genocide against certain individuals because it “provides a great deal of details as to the evidence on the ground for proving genocide.”
When it was released, Israel dismissed the report, claiming it relied “entirely on Hamas falsehoods.”
But the external pressure from international experts and the courts has continued. Last week, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion that Israel had a legal obligation to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza by the UN, including through the agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). Israel effectively banned UNRWA from operating in the territory at the start of the year.
A further report published last week from the current UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said primarily Western nations had “facilitated, legitimized and eventually normalized the genocidal campaign perpetrated by Israel.”
If the ceasefire holds and progress is made toward a lasting peace in the region, pressure will ease on the international community to use the “g-word” until there is a judicial finding under international law.
The lessons from history suggest that would be a short-sighted approach.
Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, later reflected that it was “shameful” that his administration refused to use the term “genocide” until six weeks into the Rwanda bloodshed.
“This is being repeated now in the foreign ministries of the Global North over the anxiety of coming to an acceptance of the g-word,” Lynk said.
