Israel's Gaza/West Bank campaign is a humanitarian catastrophe / apartheid

Israel's campaign in Gaza and the West Bank is the subject of this position, which holds that it is a humanitarian catastrophe amounting to apartheid and collective punishment. Its advocates speak of siege, famine, displacement, illegal occupation and settler violence, and some use the word genocide; they cite proceedings at the ICJ and ICC and point to what they call double standards and impunity.

The position appears in the disputes over the Gaza war, West Bank settlements, Israel in regional confrontation and the antagonism between Turkey and Israel. Outlets from the Gulf and Arab states, Turkey and other countries voice it, from three to sixteen per dispute.

It is answered by the position that Israel's campaigns are a necessary act of existential self-defence after the attacks of October 7. The sides part on whether the campaign is self-defence or collective punishment. Recent events show a US-backed plan for disarming Hamas that Hamas accepted and Israel rejected, continued Israeli strikes in Gaza with deaths reported by Palestinian health officials, and Israel's insistence that it will not withdraw until Hamas disarms.