(Beirut) – The Israeli government’s plan to demolish what remains of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and concentrate the Palestinian population into a tiny area would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongoing crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and acts of genocide, Human Rights Watch said today.

In early May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved a plan dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” which it says could start as soon as US President Donald Trump’s visit to the region concludes on May 16. The plan involves forcibly displacing much of the Palestinian population of Gaza while seizing and occupying the territory. “There will be no in-and-out,” Netanyahu announced on May 5. Israel is “finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry and sits on the security cabinet. Smotrich, who has said that Gaza will be “completely destroyed” and its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries,” also suggests these plans should not be adjusted, even if hostages are released.

“Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s 2 million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington,” said Federico Borello, interim executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Israel’s blockade has transcended military tactics to become a tool of extermination.”

The Genocide Convention obligates states parties to “employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible.” States that are party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany, risk legal liability for failing to act to prevent genocide in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2007 found that the obligation applied extraterritorially “to a State wherever it may be acting or may be able to act in ways appropriate to meeting the obligation.” The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, which have strong ties with or influence over the Israeli government, have a heightened responsibility to act.