The Crime of Genocide Is Continuing in Gaza Despite the Ceasefire

Thousands of Sydneysiders turned up on Gadigal land in Hyde Park North in the CBD last Sunday afternoon, 7 December 2025, not only to oppose the Israeli-perpetrated genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza, but to further raise awareness to the fact that despite a 10 October brokered ceasefire, the killing in the Strip continues and the offence of genocide is still pursued.

As the procession marched through the Sydney CBD streets last Sunday, the crowd of ardent pro-Palestinians paused beside Sydney Town Hall, and Palestine Action Group organiser Damien Ridgewell reminded the crowd that it’s a tenuous ceasefire that is underway in Gaza, as the Israeli Defence Forces, or the IDF, have broken it more than 590 times, and they’ve killed 360 Palestinians.

The ongoing murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza via the use of military force is the most common understanding of the crime of genocide. However, the offence is more complex in terms of the various forms it can take, which means that even if Israel abided by the ceasefire – an unlikely scenario based on the past – genocide would be progressing in the Strip regardless.

The campaign to end the US-backed, Israeli-perpetrated genocide in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank where circumstances are escalating, is at a complex point at the moment, as Trump’s Gaza peace plan is underway, and it appears this may be a convoluted plot to progress the ongoing genocide and an attempt to clear the Strip of Palestinians entirely.

“Renormalising Israel”

“The world leaders, who have felt so much pressure for the past two years by this mass movement, by the millions of us who have protested around the world, are all now trying to wash their hands of it, and say, ‘Oh the war is over. It’s over now. There is nothing to see here. Let’s try to renormalise Israel in our society,’” Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees warned the Sunday protest crowd.

“We see that at every level. The Australian government, which never stopped funding and arming Israel, has just signed another contract with Elbit Systems for $20 million,” the activist continued.

“Now, we see it at the cultural level with Eurovision – Israel will still perform. A number of governments are now boycotting because of it, but Australia is not on that list.”

The UN Security Council voted to progress the Trump Gaza peace plan on 17 November. The plan has been described by the US as a “lifeline” for the region, when it appears to portend the achievement of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultimate goal of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population, allowing for the establishment of ‘Greater Israel’.

Along with an International Stabilisation Force, ‘the Board of Peace’ will be established in Gaza. It will comprise of a transitional administration to coordinate the redevelopment of Gaza. US president Donald Trump is set to head this body. And the suggestion has been made that none of the Palestinians will be forced to leave, but the concern is that this is exactly what’s going to happen.

“At every level this is on display,” Lees added in respect of the current campaign to renormalise the Israeli state, after it has perpetrated a wholesale slaughter and starvation program in Gaza for 25 months now.

“The entire world stands against Donald Trump, against Israel and against the genocide, and we stand with the Palestinians.”

The offence of genocide

The second article of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Those acts comprise of killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to them, deliberate infliction of conditions designed to bring about destruction of the group, preventing births and the forcible removal of children from the group.

The different forms of genocide reveal that the offence itself doesn’t have to involve the direct military-style killing of people, rather the Palestinians of Gaza now continue to live in an area that has been flattened by artillery means Israel is still genociding the Palestinians. Indeed, despite aid flowing into the Strip, it is inadequate, so the act of genocide via starvation is still being progressed.

As Australia ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2002, it was required to enact the multiple forms of the three broad atrocity crimes then set out in the international document in local federal law. Those atrocity offences are war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

These offences sit under division 268 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). Genocide by killing is contained in section 268.3. Genocide by causing serious harm is under section 268.4. Section 268.5 of the Code contains genocide by inflicting destructive life conditions. Genocide by preventing births is under section 268.6, while genocide by forcible transfer of children is under section 268.7.

The international atrocity crimes enacted under division 268 of the Code differ from normal offences as they carry universal jurisdiction and can be used to prosecute anyone acting anywhere on Earth.

However, at the same time as enacting these crimes, the then Howard government also enacted a mechanism to block genocide or any other atrocity crime prosecutions. Section 268.121 of the Code contains the attorney general’s fiat, which means if a genocide prosecution is to get up in court, it must not only have attorney general approval, but the chief lawmaker must bring it in their name.

The renormalisation of Israel, as Lees puts it, can in part be progressed because the commonplace misunderstanding that genocide solely comprises of mass killing or slaughter of a distinct population. However, when the other forms of genocide are considered in respect of the Gaza Strip, it is rather easy to understand that the Palestinian population continues to face genocide.

Subtle forms of genocide

“Let’s talk about genocide,” said Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe in the chamber on 24 November. “Genocide is considered the crime of all crimes – ‘genos’ meaning ‘tribe’ and ‘cide’ meaning ‘killing’. As Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who first defined genocide, understood it, genocide began long before World War II or the drafting of the genocide convention.”

“Lemkin saw genocide across the colonies as the destruction of Indigenous peoples everywhere for private and imperial gain. Lemkin’s definition of genocide held that cultural destruction was an essential part of any attempt to destroy a racial, ethnic, religious or minority group,” said the politician of Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung heritage.

Thorpe lists the ways in which Aboriginal people on this continent are continuing to face the genocide that commenced on 1788 British invasion, in more subtle ways than mass killing. This includes destroying cultural items, banning cultural practices and the forced assimilation into European ways of being.

The senator explains that these forms of cultural genocide are not being captured under the terms of the offences of genocide at present, and she adds that the leaving out of these more subtle forms of the complex crime is allowing settler colonial nations, like Australia, to continue their long-term crimes against Indigenous peoples.

The progression of the Gaza peace plan is another form of genocide. The imposition of the colonial Board of Peace is directly against the progression of Palestinian self-determination.

The concern of those mobilising on behalf of Palestine in Hyde Park last Sunday, is that the subtle progression of the Gaza genocide will continue and this will too be harder to prevent, as the official idea is that the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians of Gaza is over.

“The destruction of rock art at Murujuga is cultural genocide. Fifty thousand years of cultural history is under threat for gas,” Thorpe continued on, in respect of genocidal practices on this continent.

“Exempting damage caused by gas emissions in the very document that gives it World Heritage status trivialises that very process. It is impossible to ignore that this colony is still committing genocide.”