“Genocidal tools”
and
“ethnic cleansing”
.
The words were released this Monday by the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories.
In a new report on the situation in Gaza, it affirms that
“there are reasonable grounds”
to believe that Israel has committed several
“acts of genocide”
as part of its offensive carried out in the territory since October.
“The overwhelming nature and scale of the Israeli assault on Gaza and the destructive living conditions it has caused reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group
,” says Francesca Albanese.
The rapporteur, mandated by the Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the organization, must present her report on Tuesday before this UN forum in Geneva.
The report - titled
"Anatomy of Genocide"
- concludes
"that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that acts of genocide"
have been committed
"against Palestinians in Gaza has been reached
. "
“Bias against Israel”
In her conclusions, Francesca Albanese lists three acts of genocide:
“murder of members of the group;
serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group;
and intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence intended to bring about its total or partial physical destruction
.
These are three of the five acts of genocide included in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Israeli representation to the United Nations in Geneva
“totally rejected the report”
and affirmed in a statement that it is part
of “a campaign aimed at undermining the very establishment of the Jewish state”
.
“Israel's war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians
,” she added.
The United States also reacted to Francesca Albanese's report by saying it had
"no reason to believe that Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza
. "
“We reiterate our long-standing opposition to the mandate of this special rapporteur, who is biased against Israel
,” a US official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Anti-Semitic” comments
On February 12, Israel announced that it had banned this rapporteur from entering its territory after comments on the October 7 attack deemed
“anti-Semitic”
by the Israeli authorities.
In her report, Francesca Albanese claims that
"the patterns of civilian deaths who had evacuated to the south (of Gaza), combined with statements by some senior Israeli officials declaring their intention to forcibly move Palestinians out of Gaza and replace them with Israeli settlers, reasonably leads to the inference that evacuation orders and safe zones were used as genocidal tools to achieve ethnic cleansing
.
“The genocidal acts were approved and implemented following declarations of genocidal intent from senior military and government officials
,” the report charges.
It accuses Israel of having de facto treated
“an entire group”
and its infrastructure as
“terrorist”
or
“supporting terrorism
, ”
thereby “turning everything and everyone into a target or collateral damage
. ”
In her report, Francesca Albanese asserts that
“the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza is another step in a long process of erasure by settlers”
.
The war between Israel and Hamas follows the unprecedented attack on October 7 by commandos of the Islamist movement infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
Since then, Israel has carried out a land and air offensive in Gaza and several countries have accused it of committing a
“genocide”
of the Palestinians.
At the end of January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, seized by South Africa for alleged violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, called on Israel to
“take all measures in its power”
to prevent any act of genocide.