Peace Prize: Gaza is a genocide

There is a genocide in Gaza. This, indirectly, is the verdict of the Norwegian Nobel committee.

Within minutes after the announcement newspapers all over the world, including the Israeli Haaretz, put Navi Pillay’s work on Gaza on the top of their webpages as the main thing to highlight with this year’s Nobel peace prize.

Pillay herself went out publicly pointing to her report on Gaza as the thing that made her a prize winner.

The UN report, written with Pillay as Chair, concluded that Israel was guilty of four types of genocidal acts in Gaza:

1. killing members of the group;
2. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

No mincing of words.

This, quite simply, is as clear as it gets.

The commission also concluded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had incited to genocide. This reinforces the arrest order issued by the ICC against the Israeli Prime Minister. The Norwegian Nobel committee underscored Pillay’s important contribution to international law through her previous work on incitement to violence as a crime in itself.

There are many things a Nobel prize can do. In this case perhaps the most important thing is to give the genocide accusation that last extra push from “Israel is currently being investigated for potential acts of genocide” to “Israel is guilty of genocide”. For the tens of thousands of dead Palestinians murdered during the last three years and their surviving families living in the rubble this will at least ensure that they are not forgotten.

For the ICC, the ICJ and all other existing institutions working to hold the powerful to account at a time when they are under severe attack this prize can provide a profoundly needed source of support.

• Jørgen Jensehaugen is a Research Professor at PRIO
• This Comment was published in Norwegian in Klassekampen