New report from UN Special Rapporteur: Israel’s genocide in Gaza could be expanding to the West Bank
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese addresses the UN, October 2022
Jonathan Ofir reports in Mondoweiss on 30 October 2024:
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, has just issued her new report in conjunction with the 79th session of the General Assembly, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure.”
The report comes on the heels of her March report, “Anatomy of a genocide” in which Albanese concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met in Gaza. The current report, however, expands the analysis to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and shows how Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians throughout the entirety of the occupied territory that it controls.
Albanese writes:
“While the scale and nature of the ongoing Israeli assault against the Palestinians vary by area, the totality of the Israeli acts of destruction directed against the totality of the Palestinian people, with the aim of conquering the totality of the land of Palestine, is clearly identifiable. Patterns of violence against the group as a whole warrant the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in order to cease, prevent and punish genocide in the whole of the occupied Palestinian territory”. In total, this genocidal violence is being carried out in pursuit of the establishment of a “Greater Israel” under the expansionist Zionist goal of overtaking all of historical Palestine (and for some, beyond). In this effort, all Palestinians become a target.
Risk of genocide
In her new report, Albanese once again begins by establishing the case of genocide in Gaza. She says the situation has only gotten worse since her initial report and that Israel has ignored the International Court of Justice:
“Even when conservatively considered, these multiple torments constitute precisely the irreparable harm that ICJ has warned against since January 2024, and which Israel has intentionally inflicted on the Palestinians as a group”.
Albanese then continues to the West Bank: