WEST BANK (Dispatches) – There is abundant evidence pointing to the Israeli regime committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, says an academic and genocide scholar.
Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, made the remarks in an article published by the New York Times on Tuesday.
Bartov went on to say that Israel’s actions can be interpreted as a deliberate effort to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population. 
He added that the goal appears to be to compel the population to evacuate Gaza entirely or, given their lack of alternative options, to weaken the besieged enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of basic necessities such as food, clean water, sanitation, and medical assistance. 
“This strategy aims to make it exceedingly challenging for Palestinians in Gaza to sustain or rebuild their community as a cohesive group,” Bartov said.
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people … I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one,” he said.
“This is not just my conclusion,” Bartov said, adding that a growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have also concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. 
The academic further noted that the systematic destruction in Gaza reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the blockaded territory highly unlikely.
Today, the Israeli military is primarily engaged in an operation of demolition and ethnic cleansing, Bartov said, explaining that after Israel’s breach of the ceasefire on March 18, the Israeli military has been implementing a widely publicized plan to confine the entire Gazan population to a quarter of the territory, divided into three zones, including Gaza City, the central refugee camps, and the Mawasi coastline in the Strip’s southwestern edge.
Referring to the plan announced by Israeli minister of military affairs Israel Katz for the military to construct a “humanitarian city” in Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians from the Mawasi area on July 7, the academic said while some may view this initiative as ethnic cleansing rather than genocide, it’s important to understand the connection between the two crimes.  
When an ethnic group is continuously displaced, without a safe haven, and subjected to bombing and starvation, ethnic cleansing has the potential to evolve into genocide, he stressed.