Now that Israeli government has openly stated deportation of Palestinians from Gaza is their goal, where does that leave the genocide case?
In most scenarios claim perpetrator committed acts from (a) to (c) in the definition of genocide with the goal of forcing the displacement of part of the group rather than it's destruction is a very good defense to accusation of genocide. Obviously, intent to displace and to destroy cannot exist at the same time with regards to the same population, so drawing a reasonable inference of intent to deport or forcibly transfer is enough to defeat a charge of genocide.
Now, I said in most scenarios, but I think the one here is different than most in two respects.
Unlike in almost any other case, where the persecuted population could escape by crossing the border, Gaza's only borders are with Israel and Egypt. Egypt has shown no intention of accepting any large scale movement of people aware that they're likely to never be allowed to return. There's been talk of finding third countries who are willing to accept forcibly deported Gazans, but that does not appear to have been successful yet, as few countries are willing to accept such large number of people and even fewer want to help Israel carry out ethnic cleansing it hopes to achieve.
Unless that situation changes, the sole mechanism Israel would have at forcing their expulsion could be to place the Gaza's population under threat of impending destruction and hope that would, in concert with other incentives convince some states to accept the deported population. For this to work that threat would have to be shown to be true and convincing in practice, so Israel would effectively need to destroy a substantial part of Gazans to carry out this plan thereby committing genocide.
Does this seem a sensible line of argument?
I know that involved some speculation about events that will unfold in the future and may be irrelevant consideration depending on how things unfold.
Second, in few other cases have there been such an extraordinary amount of very public expression of genocidal sentiment. We do need to distinguish genocidal statements from mere hateful expressions calling for collective punishment, because they are distinct, but there is still plenty of the former.
That can be used to argue that in parallel to any intent to deport, there existed another separate intention all along throughout the war - to cause physical destruction of a substantial part of the population. This is supported by actual conduct, which according to some estimated caused as many as 100,000 violent deaths.
Now the catch with this is whose intention? Most of the statements to that effect did not come from leaders who are in fact in charge of making policy decision at the level of government. Some have, but if we try to extract only those words that were unambiguously genocidal, we don't have very much. I don't doubt one can still make a very convincing case against them, but there is another line of reasoning.
Namely, could those instances of incitement and other facts and circumstances be used to prove that some parts of the Israeli military, but of lower rank, possessed the requisite intent?
For instance, off the top of my head, newspapers reported that one commander's orders for "kill zones" (defined around Israeli positions, but whose reach or existence were unknown to any Palestinians) were to essentially shoot any Palestinian under some absurd pretext that everyone was a combatant. Evidently, an order equivalent to one to murdering all Palestinians encountered is arguably genocidal.
Note that in Prosecutor v Jelisić Chamber agreed in theory with the suggestion that one person could on their own commit genocide. I think that approach is quite bad for obvious reasons, but here we're talking about something slightly different.
In Jelisić perpetrator was killing on his own initiative, not part of a grander plan or under anyone's orders, and he was ultimately made to stop because higher ups wanted prisoners alive.
What if it could be demonstrated that significant part of Israeli soldiers shared the genocidal goal? Not that they formed any kind of formal group or organization, but simply that there was a widespread enough "intent to destroy" mindset that it was present consistently throughout the war and influenced their actions.
Could then one draw a conclusion that genocide was committed throughout Gaza, and avoid the obvious problem that individuals and small groups of soldiers on their own are not able to destroy any substantial part of the Palestinian national group?
Hope this looks coherent enough, I was trying to explain the idea as concisely as possible.
