The Hague: Amnesty International accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a report published on Thursday, an allegation Israeli leaders have repeatedly denied.

The London-based human rights group said it reached the conclusion after months of analysing incidents and statements of Israeli officials. Amnesty said the legal threshold for the crime had been met, in its first such determination during an active armed conflict.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

Israel has consistently rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas attack from Gaza on October  7, 2023, that precipitated the war.

Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Amnesty's report.

Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza's Health Ministry says that Israel's military campaign since then has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and injured many others.

Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times.

At hearings earlier this year before the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where Israel faces accusations of genocide brought by South Africa, lawyers for the country denied the charge. They argued that there was no genocidal intent and no genocide in Israel's conduct of the war, whose stated objective is the eradication of Hamas.

Presenting the report to journalists in The Hague, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the conclusion had not been taken "lightly, politically, or preferentially".

She told journalists after the presentation: "There is a genocide being committed. There is no doubt, not one doubt in our mind after six months of in-depth, focused research." 

Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group's physical destruction.

These acts were done with the intent required by the convention, according to Amnesty, which said it reviewed over 100 statements from Israeli officials.

Israel's military accuses Hamas of planting militants within populated neighbourhoods for operational cover, which Hamas denies, while accusing Israel of indiscriminate strikes.

Callamard said Amnesty had not set out to prove genocide but after reviewing the evidence and statements collectively, she said the only conclusion was that "Israel is intending and has intended to commit genocide". 

She added: "The assertion that Israel's war in Gaza aims solely to dismantle Hamas and not to physically destroy Palestinians as a national and ethnic group, that assertion simply does not stand up to scrutiny."

Amnesty urged the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza - charges they deny, to investigate alleged genocide.

The office of the prosecutor said in a statement that it is continuing investigations into alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and is unable to provide further comment.