UN rapporteur says Israel committing genocide in Gaza after 'decades of moral and political failure'
Francesca Albanese says Israel’s assault on Gaza is the result of long-standing international complicity and calls for full withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territory.
The UN's special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) Francesca Albanese has said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza after “decades of moral and political failure.”
She described on Tuesday the aggression as "the culmination of decades of moral and political failure" and condemned the complicity of countries that continue to arm and support Israel.
"On day 751 of the genocide in Gaza, I begin by honouring the victims and survivors of all genocides, past and present,” Albanese said in a virtual address to the UN General Assembly's Third Committee.
She said her report on the OPT reveals that "these horrors are not an aberration, but the culmination of decades of moral and political failure within a resilient colonial world order – sustained by a global system of complicity."
Noting that many countries enabled Israel's assault on Gaza, she said: "Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have armed, funded, and shielded Israel's militarised apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory, allowing its settler-colonial enterprise to metastasise into genocide, the ultimate crime against the Indigenous people of Palestine."
She said "over 240,000 (people have been) killed or injured, (with) thousands missing, buried under rubble or disappeared into Israeli dungeons," adding that Gaza "remains strangled, starved, and shattered."
US is complicit
Albanese also criticised the US for sanctioning her for her work.
"I deeply regret not being able to present this report in person, due to certain unlawful and spiteful sanctions imposed on me by the United States for fulfilling my UN mandate."
"These measures are an assault on the UN itself, on its independence, its integrity, it’s very soul," she added.
Calling on states to take concrete action, Albanese said: "States must secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, full Israeli withdrawal from every inch of the occupied Palestinian territory and dismantlement of the colonies."
She warned that if the UN Security Council remains deadlocked, "this assembly shall act under 'Uniting for Peace' in ways more robust than it has until now."