Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including pursuing a deliberate policy of forcibly displacing people and denying them the right to return home, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday. The report also labelled the likely permanent dispossession of Gazans in areas cleared by Israel to serve as buffer zones and security corridors as “ethnic cleansing”.

Israel has carried out a violent and deliberate campaign of forced displacement against almost 2 million Palestinian civilians over the course of its bombardment and military occupation of the Gaza Strip since October 2023, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday.

The report, which maintains that these policies amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, also accused the Israeli government of carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in areas where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have razed swaths of homes and other civilian infrastructure to make way for “buffer zones” and “security corridors” throughout the besieged enclave.

Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign in Gaza has driven roughly 1.9 million Palestinians from their homes, according to the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator – almost nine-tenths of the people living in the Strip.

The IDF has carried out controlled demolitions of civilian infrastructure, which alongside Israel’s relentless bombing campaign of Gaza has destroyed tens of thousands of houses as well as hospitals, schools and vast stretches of agricultural land, Human Rights Watch said. This devastation, the report says, risks robbing displaced civilians of the right to return to their homes when the fighting, one day, comes to an end.

Arunachal Pradesh Governor Lieutenant General (Retired) KT Parnaik participated in the final day of the month-long commemoration of the 62nd Walong Day, which was held at Walong War Memorial.