This is the accepted and ratified definition (criteria) used to identify genocide (the term coined by Rafael Lemkin):
DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE IN THE CONVENTION:
The current definition of Genocide is set out in Article II of the Genocide Convention: Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (c)
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The land and historical connection to a geographical region is woven into the cultural identity of some people groups (e.g. indigenous populations in North America, etc.). Forced displacement can easily fit b or c (and potentially d depending on how children may be assimilated into another people group). Much of what follows is written specfically with North American Indigenous populations in mind but I believe, historically, most Middle Eastern populations share many of the characteristics.
'Moreover such nonhuman actors are also potential participants in a group’s identity formation and therefore, in some cases, inseparable from the group itself. For example, the role of story in many Indigenous cultures is to connect identity to territory in a manner that makes any assault on the territory, or the stories that sustain the Indigenous group’s connection to territory, an assault upon the group itself" (Cruickshank, 1998).
Duncan Campbell Scott, in 1920 proclaimed, “Our objective is . . . to get rid of the Indian problem” (Titley, 1986). It's not a reach to recognize this same sentiment regarding Israel-Hamas "our objective is . . . to get rid of the Palestinian problem."
Similarly, Richard Henry Pratt (superintendent of an "Indian" School) said “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Again, this can easily be seen in the implied "kill the Palestinian in him, and save the man." This is social engineering at it's finest! As Bauman (1989) said "Modern genocide is an element of social engineering."
It's forced displacement and assimilation (ethnocide). The U.S. and Canada have our own histories with this and I see threads of this in how, politically at least, the horrors in Gaza are depicted and how the "solutions" are being crafted.
"Interestingly issues of territorial occupation and conquest were present in the very first formulation of genocide as provided by Raphael Lemkin." He "wrote that genocide involves “two phases”: first, the destruction of the targeted group’s “national pattern” and second, “the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor” on the territory of the former. This oft-quoted passage explicates that genocide may be deeply bound up with colonizing processes as a particular form of conquest and occupation" (Curthoys and Docker, 2008).
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups" (Lemkin, 1944).
"Lemkin equates genocide not with physical extermination but with the destruction of the collective life, the 'national pattern' of the group. This means that when he writes of the destruction of a group by genocide, he means the destruction of the sociocultural existence of the group, and not necessarily the physical destruction of its members."
TLDNR: Genocide can, and has been, defined in ways that extend beyond the systematic, physical mass murder of a people group. Forced displacement of Palestinians can, arguably, be considered another element demonstrating that what is happening in Gaza is indeed genocide.
