International report - podcast
UN rapporteur says Israel's war in Gaza is 'emptying the land completely'
Issued on: 01/11/2024
A year of war in Gaza has undermined international law and threatens to make the strip uninhabitable, according to the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. She tells RFI why she is making the case for Israel's offensive to be classified a genocide.
More than 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing extremely critical levels of hunger, according to the UN. Seventy percent of crop fields and livelihoods have been destroyed during the Israeli military offensive.
The war, which has claimed 42,000 lives in Gaza and left hundreds of thousands wounded, has also spread to the West Bank and Lebanon. Civilians as well as UN peacekeepers have been targeted by Israel's forces.
"I used the word 'catastrophe' for the first time back in October 2023," Albanese told RFI, "when Israel had killed 8,000, 6,000 people in the first weeks of the conflict and destroyed entire neighbourhoods, bakeries, churches, and targeted UN buildings and universities. "This is not the way wars are conducted."
For more and to listen: https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/international-report/20241101-un-rapporteur-says-israel-s-war-in-gaza-is-emptying-the-land-completely
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Albanese was speaking as she prepared to launch her latest report on the situation in Gaza and the other Palestinian territories, which she presented to the UN General Assembly earlier this week.
In it, she takes a long view of the current conflict, arguing that Israel's military actions form part of a systematic attempt to displace Palestinians that goes back decades – and which she calls a genocide.
"Israel occupies that land, according to the International Court of Justice, unlawfully," Albanese said.
"So Israel unlawfully occupies a territory, oppressing its people, who of course retaliate. Then they wage a war against them. It doesn't work that way."
Washington and others argue that Israel has the right to defend itself – though Albanese questions whether its military operations are truly making it safer.
"Is it protection?" she asked. "How is what Israel is doing going to make its citizens protected? This is the question. And the blindness at the political level is mind-blowing."
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