UN human rights rapporteur for Palestinian people in Brussels: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

Brussels – The European Parliament, in front of the very harsh report by Francesca Albanese on the genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel in Gaza: the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, invited to Brussels by Manu Pineda, Spanish MEP and President of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Palestine, summed up five months of data, analysis, and studies on Tel Aviv’s offensive: with the conclusion that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been reached.”

In drafting the report, Albanese relied on the work of organizations on the ground, international case law, investigative reports, and consultations with affected people, authorities, civil society, and experts because Israel has denied her entry into Gaza. Israel perpetrated three of the five specific acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such,” which constitute the crime of genocide under the 1948 International Convention: “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part.”

The data supporting Albanese’s thesis are chilling. In five months of military operations, Israel dropped 25 thousand tons of explosives, the equivalent of two nuclear bombs, on Gaza. More than 30 thousand Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13 thousand minors. More than 12 thousand presumed dead and 71 thousand wounded, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. “The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come,” writes the UN Rapporteur.

According to Albanese, “genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials.” The accusations are heavy-handed: the state of Israel and the senior ranks of the IDF have “tried to conceal their eliminationist conduct,” distorting the rules of international humanitarian law and treating an entire protected group and its vital infrastructure as “terrorists” or “supporters of terrorism,” turning “everything and everyone into a target or collateral damage.”

The jurist and lecturer specializing in human rights also traces the root causes, going far beyond the heinous Hamas attack on Oct. 7. “Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure. For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically – seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources,” Albanese added.

In light of the evidence listed in the report, the U.N. Rapporteur appeals to all Member States to “immediately implement an arms embargo against Israel.” The Jewish state and countries “that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide
must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death, and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people.” Albanese also calls on the international community to support South Africa, which has appealed to the United Nations Security Council following Israel’s failure to comply with measures imposed by the International Court of Justice to prevent the crime of genocide.