UN expert accuses Israel of several acts of ‘genocide’ in Gaza

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Palestinians walk past destroyed houses, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip February 22, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 26 March 2024
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UN expert accuses Israel of several acts of ‘genocide’ in Gaza

  • Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has since killed more than 32,300 people, mainly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory
  • In Albanese’s report, which she is due to present to the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, she maintained that Israel’s “genocidal acts” followed “statements of genocidal intent”

GENEVA: A UN rights expert on Monday said there were “reasonable grounds” to determine that Israel has committed several acts of “genocide” in its war in Gaza, also evoking “ethnic cleansing.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said there were clear indications that Israel had violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.
“The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group,” she said in a report, which was immediately rejected by Israel as an “obscene inversion of reality.”
Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said she had found “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of... acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met.”
The report, entitled “Anatomy of a Genocide,” listed those acts as: “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’s members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the country “utterly rejects the report,” describing it as “simply an extension of a campaign seeking to undermine the very establishment of the Jewish State.”
“Israel’s war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians,” it said in a statement, slamming Albanese’s “outrageous accusations.”
Israel has long been harshly critical of Albanese and her mandate.
Last month it slapped a visa ban on her after she made comments denying that Hamas’s October 7 attack, which sparked the war in Gaza, was anti-Semitic.
That attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes around 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 presumed dead.
Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has since killed more than 32,300 people, mainly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
South Africa has already filed a complaint against Israel before the International Court of Justice, alleging its assault on Gaza amounts to a violation of the genocide convention.
The court has yet to rule on the underlying issue, but earlier this year ordered Israel to do everything it could to prevent genocidal acts during its campaign and also to allow in humanitarian aid.

In Albanese’s report, which she is due to present to the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, she maintained that Israel’s “genocidal acts” followed “statements of genocidal intent.”
Statements by some senior Israeli officials spelling out an intent to forcibly displace Palestinians and replace them with Israeli settlers, she said, indicated that “evacuation orders and safe zones have been used as genocidal tools to achieve ethnic cleansing.”
The report also found that Israel was treating all Palestinians and their infrastructure “as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage.”
“In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition,” it said.
“This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
The report also stressed that Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians had not begun on October 7.
“Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a longstanding settler colonial process of erasure,” it said.
 

 


Flights to and from Yemen’s Sanaa airport suspended following Israeli attack, director says

Updated 07 May 2025
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Flights to and from Yemen’s Sanaa airport suspended following Israeli attack, director says

 All flights to and from Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport have been suspended until further notice due to extensive damage following Israeli strike, the airport’s general director said on Wednesday in a post on X.
The Israeli military carried out an airstrike on Yemen’s main airport in Sanaa on Tuesday, its second attack in two days on Iran-aligned Houthis after a surge in tensions between the group and Israel. 


Gaza rescuers say 31 killed in Israeli strikes on school sheltering displaced

Updated 07 May 2025
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Gaza rescuers say 31 killed in Israeli strikes on school sheltering displaced

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Wednesday that Israeli strikes on a school sheltering displaced people in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory killed 31 people and wounded dozens, with Israel saying it had targeted Hamas militants.
Gaza civil defense media officer Ahmad Radwan told AFP that a total of 31 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli strikes “on a school sheltering displaced persons” in the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military meanwhile said in a statement that its forces had struck a “Hamas command and control center in the central Gaza Strip” which was used “to store weapons.”
The strikes came as Israel drew international condemnation on Tuesday over its plans for an expanded Gaza offensive, as the country’s far-right finance minister called for the Palestinian territory to be “destroyed.”
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
On Tuesday, Hamas dismissed as pointless ceasefire talks with Israel, accusing it of waging a “hunger war” on Gaza.
Israel’s military resumed its offensive on the Gaza Strip in March, ending a two-month truce that saw a surge in aid into the territory and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.


Gaza aid dries up as Israeli blockade enters a third month

Updated 07 May 2025
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Gaza aid dries up as Israeli blockade enters a third month

  • The current blockade has lasted longer than any previous Israeli halt in aid to Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began

JERUSALEM: Israel has blockaded all entrances to the Gaza Strip since March.
While pummeling the strip with airstrikes, it has banned any food, water, shelter or medication from being trucked into the Palestinian territory, where the UN says the vast majority of the population is reliant on humanitarian aid to survive. Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. Of the 59 captives remaining in Gaza, 21 are believed to still be alive, US President Donald Trump said Tuesday, revealing that three had died.
Here’s a look at the humanitarian crisis spiraling in Gaza, through key statistics and charts:
The current blockade has lasted longer than any previous Israeli halt in aid to Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and Israel froze aid to Gaza for two weeks.
Now, Gaza is entering its third month without supplies. Thousands of trucks queue along the border of the territory, waiting to be let in. Community kitchens are closing down and bakeries are running out of fuel. Families spend hours waiting in line for small portions of rice.
In their desperation, Palestinians have begun scavenging warehouses and stores for anything left. Aid groups report a rise in looting incidents over the last week. At least some have been looted by armed groups.
Meanwhile, Israel is moving forward with plans to seize all of Gaza and to stay in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time. It says it will expand operations there, defying calls for an immediate renewal of a ceasefire from families whose relatives are still held hostage in Gaza.
Israel’s offensive has displaced more than 90 percent of Gaza’s population and, Palestinian health officials say, killed more than 52,000 people, many of them women and children. Palestinian officials do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their count.


UAE mediates deal for release of further 410 Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war

Updated 06 May 2025
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UAE mediates deal for release of further 410 Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war

  • It is the 15th in a series of UAE-mediated prisoner-swap agreements that have resulted in the release of 4,181 captives in total

LONDON: The UAE has mediated the 15th in a series of agreements between Russia and Ukraine for the release of prisoners of war, as part of its ongoing diplomatic efforts to help resolve the conflict.

Under the latest prisoner-swap deal, 205 Ukrainians and 205 Russians were freed on Tuesday, the Emirates News Agency reported. The Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs said a total of 4,181 Russian and Ukrainian captives have now been released as a result of its mediation efforts, the continuing success of which reflects the level of trust Kyiv and Moscow have in the UAE.

The UAE remains determined to find a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, and to help ease the humanitarian suffering it has caused, the ministry added.


Lebanon says one killed in Israeli strike on south

Updated 06 May 2025
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Lebanon says one killed in Israeli strike on south

  • The ministry said in a statement that the “Israeli enemy” strike on Kfar Rumman killed one person and wounded three others
  • Israel has continued to launch regular strikes in Lebanon despite the November 27 truce

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike Tuesday on a car in the country’s south killed one person, the latest attack despite a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah militants and Israel.
The ministry said in a statement that the “Israeli enemy” strike on Kfar Rumman killed one person and wounded three others.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the car was hit with a “guided missile” on the road linking the town of Kfar Rumman with the nearby city of Nabatieh.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has continued to launch regular strikes in Lebanon despite the November 27 truce which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah including two months of all-out war, with a heavy Israeli bombing campaign and ground incursion.
Under the deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters north of Lebanon’s Litani River, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure to its south.
Israel was to withdraw all its forces from south Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five positions that it deems “strategic.”
A Lebanese security source told AFP that Hezbollah had withdrawn fighters from south of the Litani and dismantled most of its military infrastructure in that area.
Lebanon says it has respected its commitments and has called on the international community to pressure Israel to end its attacks and withdraw from the five border positions.