The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, has just issued her new report in conjunction with the 79th session of the General Assembly, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure.”
The report comes on the heels of her March report, “Anatomy of a genocide” in which Albanese concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met in Gaza. The current report, however, expands the analysis to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and shows how Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians throughout the entirety of the occupied territory that it controls.
Albanese writes:
“While the scale and nature of the ongoing Israeli assault against the Palestinians vary by area, the totality of the Israeli acts of destruction directed against the totality of the Palestinian people, with the aim of conquering the totality of the land of Palestine, is clearly identifiable. Patterns of violence against the group as a whole warrant the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in order to cease, prevent and punish genocide in the whole of the occupied Palestinian territory”.
In total, this genocidal violence is being carried out in pursuit of the establishment of a “Greater Israel” under the expansionist Zionist goal of overtaking all of historical Palestine (and for some, beyond). In this effort, all Palestinians become a target.
Risk of genocide in the West Bank
In her new report, Albanese once again begins by establishing the case of genocide in Gaza. She says the situation has only gotten worse since her initial report and that Israel has ignored the International Court of Justice:
“Even when conservatively considered, these multiple torments constitute precisely the irreparable harm that ICJ has warned against since January 2024, and which Israel has intentionally inflicted on the Palestinians as a group”.
Albanese then continues to the West Bank:
“Risk of genocide in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem… The devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In December 2023, the Defence Minister of Israel, Yoav Gallant, predicted that “when what the IDF did in Gaza becomes clear, that will also be projected on Judea and Samaria [West Bank]”.”
The news from the West Bank over the past year would have been a massive story on its own, if not for Gaza overshadowing it with its scenes of complete destruction and death. Yet Albanese provides a comparative perspective:
“From 7 October 2023 to the end of September 2024, Israeli forces carried out more than 5,505 raids [in WB]. Violent settlers, supported by Israeli forces and officials, conducted 1,084 attacks, killing more than 692 Palestinians – 10 times the previous 14 years’ annual average of 69 fatalities – and injuring 5,199… The pattern of targeting children is shocking. Since 7 October, 169 Palestinian children have been killed, nearly 80 per cent of whom were shot in the head or torso. This represents a 250 per cent increase on the previous nine months, totalling more than 20 per cent of children killed in the West Bank since 2000”.
The report continues,
“the northern West Bank has been the subject of particularly severe military violence. Protracted sieges, relentless raids and a major escalation since August 2024, including aerial bombardment… On 27 August 2024, Israeli forces launched operation “Summer Camps” against Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas and Tulkarem, fulfilling the promise to treat the West Bank like Gaza. For days on end, thousands were placed under curfew, without food or water. Israeli forces targeted ambulances, blocked entrances to hospitals and laid siege to Jenin Hospital. Bulldozers destroyed streets and electricity and public health infrastructure. Hundreds lost their homes and property; more than 1,000 families in Jenin were displaced. Thirty-six were killed, including eight children. Targeted attacks on the health sector have been replicated in the West Bank. Medical workers and infrastructure were attacked 538 times, killing 23 people and injuring 100 and damaging 54 medical facilities, 20 mobile clinics and 374 ambulances, while critical medical care was impeded. Permits for Palestinians to access medical care outside the West Bank sharply declined”.
Under the fog of war and focus on Gaza, Israel has taken massive steps toward the annexation of the West Bank by way of changes in governance as well as land confiscation:
“On 29 May 2024, governance of the West Bank was officially transferred from military to civilian authorities – furthering de jure annexation – and placed under Bezalel Smotrich, a committed Eretz Yisrael politician. The largest single land appropriation in 30 years was then approved”.
Albanese summarizes the evaluation of genocidal intent and the failure to hold Israel to account (both externally and internally):
“The State of Israel is predicated on the goal of Palestinian erasure; its entire political system is directed towards this goal. State structures have historically architected the oppression of Palestinians; now its institutions, failing to function as a bulwark, are together advancing the course of the current catastrophe”.
In her conclusion, Albanese repeats the point from her earlier report that this is all “a tragedy foretold”:
“The Gaza genocide is a tragedy foretold, and one that risks expanding to other Palestinians under Israeli rule. 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”.
And the entire context needs to be understood in its “totality”:
“Obscured by false Israeli narratives of a war waged in “self-defence”, 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. Today, the genocide of the Palestinians appears to be the means to an end: the complete removal or eradication of Palestinians from the land so integral to their identity, and which is illegally and openly coveted by Israel”.
Urgency
Albanese’s report comes once again at a time of great urgency. While the report mentions Israel’s “unsubstantiated campaign against UNRWA, which jeopardized the fragile lifelines necessary for humanitarian assistance in Gaza”, the Israeli parliament has just overwhelmingly passed two laws this week to shut down UNRWA.
But there are forces working arduously to hold Israel to account. On Monday, South Africa delivered over 750 pages of text evidence to the ICJ, supported by exhibits and annexes of over 4,000 pages – “evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza”.
This is “the most transparent genocide in human history”, as Euro-Med chair Richard Falk (who is also Albanese’s erstwhile predecessor as Rapporteur 2008-14), says. However, great efforts must be made to deliver the evidence, the arguments and the cases, in order to provide Palestinians with but the minimal protection against their utter destruction, in whole or in part. Francesca Albanese’s report is a part of that effort.