\n
The raw statistics speak to the scale of the suffering in two places, separated by decades.<\/p>\n
Israel has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, many of them women and children, and injured more than 138,000.<\/p>\n
With constant bombardment, man-made famine, and tactics like declaring a safe zone and then bombing it, experts say what Israel is doing amounts to genocide.<\/p>\n
In the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed some 68,000 Bosniaks, rounding people up based on ethnicity.<\/p>\n
On July 11, 1995, Serb fighters rounded up and killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in a United Nations-declared \u201csafe zone\u201d in the town of Srebrenica.<\/p>\n
That was the only legally recognised genocide of the Bosnian War.<\/p>\n
On the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide and as Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza continues, Al Jazeera spoke to Iva Vukusic, assistant professor in international history at Utrecht University, and Nimer Sultany, Palestinian legal scholar at the University of London, about the parallels between the two<\/span>.<\/p>\nSafe zones that aren\u2019t<\/h2>\n Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said his country intends to round up some 600,000 people who are in what Israel once designated as a \u201csafe zone\u201d \u2013 and subsequently violated several times \u2013 and push them into a \u201cconcentration zone\u201d in Rafah.<\/p>\n
People would only be allowed to leave this \u201cconcentration zone\u201d if they were\u00a0\u201cvoluntarily emigrating\u201d from Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen \u2026 Israeli academics, legal scholars, really objecting to this plan and calling it a manifest example of a war crime,\u201d Vukusic explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a concentration camp. I am sorry,\u201d former Israeli Prime Minister said bluntly about the Katz announcement in an interview with the Guardian on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Implied in Israel\u2019s claim that it would secure this concentration zone from the outside, and that aid would be distributed within, is the idea that this zone will be yet another Israeli \u201csafe zone\u201d in its war on Gaza.<\/p>\n
A unilaterally declared safe zone, however, does not include the external controls and mechanisms that were part of the Srebrenica safe zone 30 years ago, Vukusic pointed out. These controls included international peacekeepers as well as UN Security Council Resolution 819, declaring Srebrenica a safe area.<\/p>\n
The UN declaration of the safe zone came after thousands of Bosnians streamed into Srebrenica, seeking safety from relentless attacks by Bosnian Serb fighters acting under \u201cDirective 7\u201d to cut Srebrenica off from any other areas.<\/p>\n\n\nPeople of Gaza have been displaced over and over, and are being starved by Israel, which blocks aid as it continues bombing the displaced. Here, hungry children line up for food aid at the Nuseirat refugee camp on July 13, 2025 [Hassan Jedi\/Anadolu]<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Hemmed in and starving, people were trapped.<\/p>\n
The external mechanisms monitoring it did not prevent the massacre of thousands of Bosniak boys and men, a failure of the international community\u2019s pledge to \u201cnever again\u201d allow mass atrocities. And, in Gaza, even the appearance of UN protection mechanisms is lacking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see that failure of \u2018never again\u2019 when it comes to Gaza, because Israel has systematically expelled and dismantled any kind of UN presence and prevented international organisations from performing their minimal humanitarian objectives,\u201d Sultany said.<\/p>\n
In Bosnia, as in Gaza, people were forced to flee for their lives in the face of relentless violence by the attacking forces.<\/p>\n
Israel has issued expulsion order after expulsion order, pushing people out of one part of Gaza into another, then back again. It declared certain areas as \u201csafe zones\u201d, then proceeded to bomb them as refugees slept in flimsy tents that Israeli bombs turned into infernos in seconds.<\/p>\n
Displacement and its physical and psychological toll on refugees have been studied in various contexts, with scientists finding that displaced people suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety disorders at much higher rates due to the uncertainty of displacement, the destruction of social support systems, and the inability to maintain a semblance of \u201cnormal life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Add to that the forced starvation Israel is imposing on Gaza, which takes a physical and mental toll, as people watch their loved ones die of malnutrition or from curable diseases that their bodies are too weak to fight.<\/p>\n
Sultany pointed out that \u201cforcible transfers, in which Palestinians are being forced into increasingly shrinking spaces with limited ability to survive and dire humanitarian conditions\u201d, have been a hallmark of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n
Therefore, while Katz\u2019s comments were a continuation\/extension of what was already being seen on the ground, this now resembles an official plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question of forcible transfer is part of the declared objectives of the so-called Gideon\u2019s Chariots military campaign in early May 2025 [and] it was also part of the so-called General\u2019s Plan in northern Gaza in October till December 2024,\u201d he clarified.<\/p>\n
How to make a society accept genocide<\/h2>\n Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza are widely documented, with daily accounts of unarmed Palestinians being shot by snipers or bombed from above.<\/p>\n\n\nPalestinians mourn a child killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza, at al-Shifa Hospital morgue in Gaza City on July 12, 2025 [Jehad Alshrafi\/AP Photo]<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Israel has been denounced for its indiscriminate killing of civilians, especially after investigations showed that its army had allowed itself a higher \u201cmargin of error\u201d when it came to killing civilians in this conflict, compared to its past wars on Gaza.<\/p>\n
Both experts argued that this is widely accepted within Israel because Palestinians have been dehumanised, much as Bosniaks were during the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Sultany said, in both Bosnia and Gaza today, civilians have been stripped of their civilian status, or innocence, through repeated messaging to society at large.<\/p>\n
Early examples include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framing the assault on Gaza and its civilians as a \u201choly war\u201d and using Biblical references to equate Palestinians to ancient foes to justify these actions by saying: \u201cYou must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most recently,\u00a0 far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in May that Gaza\u2019s population would soon be choked into a small strip of land to make them \u201ctotally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places\u201d.<\/p>\n
Documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia pointed to several instances of propaganda by Bosnian Serb leaders to dehumanise Bosniaks and brand them as \u201cforeigners\u201d, including claiming that Bosniaks were all assassins with \u201ckill lists\u201d of Bosnian Serbs.<\/p>\n
Such descriptors, Sultany said, give aggressors a \u201cjustification for the killing of civilians\u201d and make the killing more palatable to society.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see all of that now in Gaza in the last 21 months,\u201d Sultany added.<\/p>\n
Vukusic agreed, telling Al Jazeera that in both Bosnia and Gaza, there has been a \u201cdeep process of dehumanisation to allow for the societal acceptance of such acts where you see a people [who are] civilians as enemies\u201d.<\/p>\n
There becomes a \u201cbroad acceptance of acts committed by the government where only the suffering of yourself and your people [is seen] and it absolutely does not matter what the costs are for somebody else\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n
This shift is apparent in how freely and often Israeli officials have made openly genocidal statements.<\/p>\n
Serbian leaders, including Slobodan Milosevic (president of the Republic of Serbia from 1990 to 1997 and Serbia and Montenegro until 2000), were tried by the International Court of Justice for genocide and war crimes. Milosevic died before he was convicted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you compare what Slobodan Milosevic was saying to some of the things that Israeli ministers are saying, Slobodan Milosevic was never, ever that open and was never, ever that explicit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Because statements by Israeli officials are so explicit, \u201cthe determination of the genocidal intent would probably be much easier to make\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n
Inaction, politics and the international community<\/h2>\n Western nations were initially reluctant to involve themselves in the Bosnian War, but the horror of Srebrenica eventually moved them to action, with NATO conducting an air campaign against Bosnian Serb forces in August and September 1995, eventually leading to the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war.<\/p>\n\n\nSamah al-Nouri, whose daughter Sama was killed in an Israeli attack, comforts her son at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah on July 10, 2025 [Ramadan Abed\/Reuters]<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Yet many of the countries that led the defence of the Bosniaks after Srebrenica are some of Israel\u2019s biggest backers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many ways, this is a Western genocide,\u201d Sultany said. \u201cThere is a US-Israel genocide, a genocide that was backed from the beginning by major European and North American powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is fundamental to understanding the Western support for and justification for the genocide in Palestine,\u201d Sultany said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not only that the West was a reluctant observer, and they failed to prevent the genocide. They were actively from the beginning supporting it, shielding it diplomatically and politically and financing and arming it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elusive justice<\/h2>\n What did justice look like for the victims in Bosnia, and is that a model that could be followed in Gaza?<\/p>\n
In the case of Bosnia, there is no universal position on the question of justice among the victims.<\/p>\n
Vukusic said some were satisfied with the prison sentences given to high-level officials convicted of genocide, while others are disappointed because not all the hundreds of people who participated in war crimes or genocidal acts were held to account.<\/p>\n
Sultany, after a recent visit to Bosnia, is convinced that Bosnians have been failed by international justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe initial case was brought in 1993, [but] was delivered in 2007, almost 14 years later,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the wheels of justice grind very slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Srebrenica, a single massacre, was singled out among years of massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by Bosnian Serb forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who was killed before or after or [in] different areas is not considered a victim of genocide because of the detrimental effects of the legal delimitation of what is a genocide in the case of Bosnia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In Gaza, where attacks against Palestinians are ongoing, justice may be difficult to envision. While the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in November 2024, the international community has failed to follow through on them.<\/p>\n
Vukusic said expectations should be tempered when considering international justice, but that prosecutions are still important, allowing facts to be established in court, and messages sent about what the law does not allow.<\/p>\n\n\nThe constant destruction of the makeshift displacement camps that people are able to set up in Gaza adds to the feeling of helplessness and trauma; Khan Younis, July 11, 2025 [AFP]<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
For example, Vukusic said: \u201cYou cannot cut off a civilian population [from food and water], you cannot make them thirsty and hungry and without medicine, you cannot bomb universities, you cannot raze to the ground a whole area where two million people live.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose [messages] may be helpful, but nothing is going to restore what people have lost,\u201d she said. \u201cNothing is going to bring back dead family members.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn both cases [Bosnia and Palestine], there is a failure of prevention mechanisms,\u201d Sultany said. \u201cAnd the fact that it fails again \u2026 is a miscarriage of justice in itself that requires us to rethink the international legal order.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sultany added that the ongoing injustices against Palestinians are down to \u201clong-term impunity\u201d and \u201cthe fact that the Israelis have not been held to account by any meaningful legal mechanisms\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever again\u201d has not been put into practice when it comes to Palestinians, according to Sultany.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to go to the root cause of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide \u2026 to guarantee that \u2018never again\u2019 becomes an effective and practical possibility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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