‘Unfit for human life’: UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese paints grim picture of Gaza

By Alireza Hashemi

A new report by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestinian territories, has joined the mountain of evidence exposing the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Albanese’s report, which has been submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, highlights the catastrophic humanitarian crisis resulting from the year-long Israeli genocidal war on the besieged Palestinian territory, which has killed nearly 43,200 people and destroyed critical infrastructure.

The UN rapporteur has called for intervention to halt the unfolding genocide against Palestinians.

Her exhaustive report extends beyond Gaza though, detailing a coordinated genocide that is not, as she writes, “happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term, intentional, systematic, state-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Over the years, Israel has invested in extensive propaganda to discredit voices supporting Palestinians. Albanese is barred from traveling to the occupied territories for her critical reports.

Albanese is not the only UN expert to highlight the genocidal war on Gaza. In the aftermath of the October 7, UN-linked courts, councils, and agencies have consistently condemned Israel’s genocidal actions, making it increasingly difficult for Israel to dismiss these findings.

According to experts, this explains Israel’s move against the United Nations itself, banning UN agency for Palestinian refugees from Israeli-occupied territories and barring the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from landing in the occupied territories.

Albanese’s latest report amplifies these revelations, showing that the regime may hardly escape what she describes as “the first live-streamed settler-colonial genocide.”

The roots of violence

Throughout its deadly genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel has consistently aimed to divert blame onto the Hamas resistance movement, branding it as a "terrorist organization."

Israeli propaganda suggests that, if only Hamas were eradicated, everything would be hunky-dory. This narrative extends to Hezbollah, the resistance movement formed in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Albanese, in her latest report, explains that the current genocide “is part of a century-long project of eliminatory settler-colonialism in Palestine, a stain on the international system and humanity, which must be ended, investigated and prosecuted.”

She argues that this violence aligns with a strategy for territorial expansion under the “Greater Israel” project, a vision openly lauded by the hate-mongering and fascist regime officials.

“Since its establishment, Israel has treated the occupied people as a hated encumbrance and threat to be eradicated, subjecting millions of Palestinians, for generations, to everyday indignities, mass killing, mass incarceration, forced displacement, racial segregation, and apartheid. Advancing its goal of ‘Greater Israel’ threatens to erase the Indigenous Palestinian population,” Albanese states.

Theorizing a genocide

After October 7, Israel quickly disseminated false claims accusing Palestinian resistance fighters of “raping women” and “beheading children” to justify mass atrocities.

The regime in Tel Aviv tried to portray October 7 as its 9/11, using it to sanction a large-scale massacre of Palestinians under the guise of “self-defense.”

However, Albanese says this so-called “self-defense” is merely a continuation of genocidal policies.

“Obscured by false Israeli narratives of a war waged in ‘self-defense,’ the genocidal conduct of Israel must be viewed within a broader context, as numerous actions (totality of conduct) jointly targeting the Palestinians as such (totality of a people) across the entire territory where they reside (totality of the land), in furtherance of the political ambitions of Israel for sovereignty over the whole of former Mandatory Palestine,” she states in her latest report.

The UN expert notes that the regime has “theorized the erasure of Gaza,” giving itself free rein to kill and maim Palestinians – both men and women, old and young.

“Statements and actions by Israeli leaders reflect a genocidal intent and conduct; they have often used the Biblical story of Amalek to justify the extermination of ‘the Gazans,’ erasing Gaza and violently displacing Palestinians, thereby casting Palestinians as a whole as legitimate targets,” she explains.

Since October 2023, Israel’s actions, including mass displacements, killings, and infrastructure destruction, appear as part of an orchestrated plan to target Palestinians collectively.

The report describes the devastation in Gaza, referring to mass cases of "domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide, and ecocide.”

It estimates that nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, now contaminate Gaza’s ecosystem.

"As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life," the report notes.

It also points to severe restrictions the occupying regime has imposed on resources essential for Palestinian survival, such as food, water, and medical supplies.

“Systematic attacks on Gaza food sovereignty indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation,” the report states, referencing August remarks by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who called starving Gaza “justified and moral.”

‘Devastation metastasizing to West Bank’

Albanese’s report expands on the rising violence in the occupied West Bank, including raids, settler attacks, and systemic detentions, which reveal a continuity of tactics from Gaza to the West Bank.

She reports that Israeli settler violence, backed by the Israeli military, mirrors the destruction in Gaza.

Notably, Palestinian children are frequently targeted, with at least 169 children killed since October 2023, nearly 80 percent shot in the head or torso.

“The devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” she warns in the report, noting that some Israeli officials, including war affairs minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have openly endorsed harsh treatments and mass arrests of Palestinians.

‘Only justice can heal wounds’

Albanese emphasizes that Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank contravene international humanitarian law, human rights law, and the Genocide Convention, suggesting that these transgressions demand immediate global intervention to prevent further atrocities.

However, like other rights advocates, she laments the lack of effective international response to the Israeli regime’s genocidal aggression against Palestinians.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza "is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel," she notes.

Albanese calls on all states to act independently or in unison to halt Israel’s assault on Palestinians, enforce a ceasefire, and compel Israel to withdraw fully from occupied Palestinian territories in line with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July.

“Member states must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history,” she urges.

Albanese warns that Israel’s genocidal project is far advanced, and only justice can reverse this course.

“As the world watches the first live-streamed settler-colonial genocide, only justice can heal the wounds that political expedience has allowed to fester. The devastation of so many lives is an outrage to humanity and all that international law stands for.”

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