Midway through Francesca Albanese’s recent lecture at SOAS University of London, the young man sitting next to me in the audience quietly began to cry. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories had been speaking about the role of international law at a time of genocide, but the man was no longer paying attention.
I asked him if he was okay and handed him a tissue. He told me that he’s a doctor from Gaza, and that he left the Strip with his wife (also a doctor) in the early months of the war.
Then I learned the reason for his tears. In December 2023, when the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of his neighborhood in northern Gaza, his family gathered their belongings and boarded a truck to escape. But while they did so, he ran to his in-laws’ house to collect his wife, whom he had recently married.
“Everyone got on the truck except me — my father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and their children,” he told me. “Before I got back, they were all killed in a single airstrike. I survived by chance. Everyone died. I have no one.”
I stopped listening to the distinguished speaker and the irritating questions from disgruntled audience members and continued speaking with the doctor, whose name, he told me, was Abdallah. “My mother was your age,” he said. “You look like her. She was so proud that I finished medical school.” He cried again, and I cried with him.
Abdallah and his wife left Gaza through Egypt. She received a PhD scholarship; he will begin his residency in the UK. It took him two years to receive permission to work here as a doctor. Ahead of them, I hope, is a new life.
“You have to go and speak to her,” I told him when Albanese finished her lecture. He refused. “She’s probably heard many stories like mine. She even wrote a book about it.” “It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “You have to tell her your story. You are the person she’s talking about to people here in London.”
From that moment, the young man lost control of his body. I dragged him up the stairs, pushing through the crowd surrounding Albanese. “You have to meet Abdallah, this young man from Gaza,” I said loudly, as if we were childhood friends.
Abdallah shook her hand, visibly shaken, and spoke. She listened, hugged him, and said: “Don’t be silent. You must tell your story everywhere. This is your mission because no one will do it for Palestinians, not even me. Speaking and sharing helps you heal your wounds and cope with grief, and it helps the world understand and not forget.”
Now in her second term in the role of Special Rapporteur, Albanese has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its longstanding regime of occupation and apartheid — for which she has been barred from entering Israel and, last summer, hit with sanctions by the Trump administration. Yet she refuses to stop advocating and campaigning for justice.
In an interview with +972 Magazine after her visit to London, she discusses the current crisis of international law, why October 7 and the Gaza genocide must be a point of no return, and why Israel’s impunity will not last forever.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
After two years of live-streamed genocide and now a so-called “ceasefire,” it feels as though the world has stopped talking about Gaza. How do you see the situation today?
We’ve entered a new phase of the genocide — away from the eyes and ears of most of the international community. I think this is not just because of the illusion of “peace,” but also because so many journalists there have been killed. With all the difficulties that the people of Gaza are experiencing, it’s very hard to cover all the massacres that are still happening.
This is why I think it’s so easy to continue the genocide, while the world carries on with business as usual. The same thing happened with the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia — we knew that something horrible was happening. And frankly, as a European, it is necessary to remember that this is how it was with the genocide of the Jewish people, and the Roma and Sinti, and what we would call today the queer community a century ago [in the Holocaust]. This happened inside Europe: People were taken out of their homes and from the street. People knew.
This is not the first atrocity to have happened in world history, but it is the first to be fully televised. I would like to ask the people in Israel: Do you see what is being done in your name? There have been reports from B’Tselem and other human rights groups, there are soldiers who have broken the silence, and some have even committed suicide. Israelis know what is happening to the Palestinian people, but they seem not to care.
After the Sabra and Shatila massacre [in 1982], there was an upheaval, including in Israel. When the Israeli army’s brutality [in suppressing Palestinian protests] during the First Intifada came to be known, there was a popular reaction. But today, they’re even celebrating the rape of [Palestinian prisoners].
I have huge respect for those Israelis who have managed to open their eyes and wake up to what they are part of. It’s important that as many Israelis as possible join the struggle against apartheid, because this is also something that holds them captive. You cannot commit crimes and atrocities and brutalize another people without losing your humanity in return.
I often told myself when I was growing up: If I had been alive during the Holocaust, I would have done something. This is why I remain, despite the challenges, so committed to accurately documenting and reporting what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, as the UN Human Rights Council has mandated me. Because “never again” is every day.
I can relate to that. People sometimes ask me why I write in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. It’s for the same reason I visited Gaza just weeks before the war started: If my grandchildren ask, I want to be able to tell them what I did — I reported, I documented, I brought evidence and footage, even if it wasn’t enough to prevent the genocide.
It seems that international law is in a deep crisis. Israel’s violations have been abundantly obvious to the majority of the public around the world, but there is no enforcement of the law or any action on the ground. Where does that leave us?
As an international lawyer, the answer to this for me is straightforward, because it’s very clear what is to be done and the question can be resolved in line with international law. Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories has been declared unlawful by the International Court of Justice, therefore Israel must withdraw its troops from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. I know this may sound like fantasy to many Israelis, but this is what has to be done, because it’s impossible to imagine that Israel will [be allowed to] continue to rule militarily over the little that remains of Palestine.
I know this is not everything for the Palestinians, but it’s a start; it might be a step toward something else. Many people call for one democratic state, others for two states. One way or another, what the ICJ declared in July 2024 is that the occupation is unlawful and it must be dismantled totally and unconditionally, which means withdrawing troops, dismantling settlements, compensating the Palestinians, and allowing the refugees displaced in 1967 to return.
Do you see that as realistic? Can the international community actually make that happen?
It is certainly what international law prescribes, in the interpretation of the highest judicial body in the world. There are peaceful, non-violent means to do this, and there is also recourse to coercive measures when a country poses such a threat to peace and security as Israel does today — and not just to Palestine, to the entire region. It is bombing country after country, sustained by the impunity of states whose leaders belong to the past century and still think with a colonial mentality.
But the new generation is not like that, and the polls prove it. So it’s not a question of if Israel will be forced to stop its apartheid practices, but when. Because things are going to change. And so I call on Israelis to be part of this, to help get there. To do so, they will have to renounce not their rights but their privileges — privileges that they’ve had at the expense of an entire people.
I understand many Israelis may feel insecure and unprotected. But they may never be more secure and protected if they continue to seed resentment all around. There are ways to ensure Israel’s stability and security without oppressing others. And there is still time to try these ways.
Still, right now what we’re seeing is Trump’s “Board of Peace” taking shape, which was set up ostensibly to oversee the ceasefire in Gaza but seems to have designs that go far beyond the Strip, even to rival the UN.
The future of Gaza, like the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, should be in the hands of Palestinians. It is their self-determination. It is disconcerting to see a group that does not emanate from the will of the Palestinian people being placed in charge of “reconstructing” Gaza. And it is worrying to see the UN relegated to the corner, and the process being led by a state — the United States — that is not an independent party and has heavily supported Gaza’s destruction.
People in Gaza are extremely exhausted and traumatized. There is a need to ensure their care and wellbeing, but this is nowhere to be seen [in the discussions surrounding the Board of Peace]. All the more, atrocities have been committed in Gaza which need to be investigated. There is evidence to collect before reconstruction can take place, so independent investigators must be allowed in.
When I posted a photo on Facebook of the two of us after your SOAS lecture, a few of my Jewish-Israeli feminist colleagues unfriended me because they believe you have denied, even implicitly, that Hamas committed rape and other forms of sexual violence against Israeli women on or after October 7. Can you clarify your position on this?
I have never denied that sexual abuse occurred; this has been heavily documented. There is video evidence of [hostages] with their intimate parts exposed or in close contact with their kidnappers, for example. I recognized and condemned the sexual abuse that was reported by the UN Commission of Inquiry, and I’m in solidarity with those women.
What I did say is that I personally didn’t see any testimonies of people who were raped on October 7, and similarly that evidence of “mass rape” on that day had not emerged, despite the fact that this continues to be a recurrent allegation.
I am aware that victims of sexual violence and rape struggle to speak out, and I respect that immensely. But what I’ve said, and what I’ve condemned, is the fact that there were widespreading allegations of mass rape, and I said there is no evidence of it — like the [allegations of] beheaded babies or babies put in an oven. These are the three things that continue to be repeated in any number of European countries, including my own.
I’ve always condemned the attacks against civilians that were committed on October 7. I’ve said that targeting, killing, and kidnapping civilians is a war crime. It doesn’t matter if the victims are Palestinians or Israelis. And in fact, in my first interview after October 7, my wish was for the international community, including those who usually side with the Palestinians, to show wisdom and compassion, because that was a moment of enormous suffering for the Israelis — one that could have brought them close to the Palestinians, whose trauma has become intergenerational.
It was a very tough day for me as well. When I was watching the images of October 7, and for several days afterward, I asked myself how I would be able to continue doing this work.
Today, I wonder: Does the fact that Palestinian children are kidnapped one-by-one in the middle of the night, 700 of them every year, make them any less [aptly described as] hostages? Is it any less brutal that Palestinians get killed in the hundreds every two years when Israel needs to unload its weaponry against Gaza in yet another “preventive” war?
So this is why we need to make sure that this is the end of it. Because Palestinians have suffered too much, and Israelis have suffered too much. This is the point of no return, from which we have to move forward toward a less dark place.
But instead, everyone has been fanning the flames, and Israel has received unconditional support from much of the West.
It’s true. Why would you support any state unconditionally? Respect for human rights should always be a condition for support. Respect for international humanitarian law should be a condition for support.
Under international law, a state has the right to protect itself but not to massacre another people. Even the Israeli army [knows] that around 85 percent of the people it killed in Gaza were civilians. So this is why I say we need to draw a line, we need to be rational, we need to recognize the humanity of the other, and we need to recognize that Israel has been oppressing the Palestinians with apartheid practices for longer than many Palestinians can remember.
When people ask me whether Israel has the right to exist, I answer simply: Israel does exist, and as a member of the international community it has to comply with international law. But what many of the people who ask that question seem to be talking about is Israel’s right to exist as an apartheid state, without accountability. No. Israel doesn’t have the right to behave above the law or against the law.
Israel is not exceptional. It must get off its pedestal and realize that while it may still be able to rely on the support of strong leaders, this won’t last forever. Public opinion in Europe is changing, and the fact that the solidarity movement is being severely repressed is not helping to present Israel in a better light.
In 2024, Germany arrested more Jewish people than in any other year since the Holocaust. Why? Because they were standing against Israeli violence in Gaza. The UK has been criminalizing pro-Palestine organizations and treating NGOs and journalists as terrorists. France has been banning protests. And Italy is becoming more and more stringent in denying freedom of _expression_ and association.
Last year, you authored a report investigating private companies that are complicit in Israel’s genocide and occupation, which is not something the UN is generally known for. Why was it important to you to go beyond the level of governments to expose the corporations profiting from these violations of international law?
I spent the last two years investigating genocide. At a certain point, I realized that while many people, including Israelis, were losing their income, and while the Palestinian economy was collapsing, and while so many people were dying, the Israeli stock exchange kept rising; it grew by over 200 percent of its value. And this is because there is an interconnectivity of private actors: Banks, pension funds, military companies, surveillance companies, and so many others were profiting from it.
There was already an economy of occupation that has enabled the displacement and replacement of the Palestinians, so I could have written that report years ago. But these companies stayed engaged even when it became clear that Israel was possibly committing the crime of genocide, as the International Court of Justice concluded in its preliminary measures in January 2024. Business and human rights standards should have led these companies to discontinue their dealings in occupied Palestinian territories, but they remained engaged. So it was necessary to expose it.
And we’re not just talking about Israeli businesses, but also Western companies and others. There was a possibility here for accountability beyond Israel.
As a result of your work, you yourself have been targeted with sanctions by the U.S. government. How has this impacted your life and your ability to do your job?
Being financially censored has huge implications, impacting both my work and my private life. I can’t open a bank account anywhere, which means I can’t order a taxi, book a hotel room, or purchase anything unless I can do it using cash. I was also prevented from travelling to the United States, and many U.S. citizens have disengaged with me because they risk being accused of committing a felony under U.S. law, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in jail and $1 million fine. It’s absurd.
One can agree or disagree with what I say and do. But I was punished for my work — without any right to appeal, without being proven wrong, and in violation of my UN status, which grants privileges and immunities for actions taken in the context of my work.
Your new book, “When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine,” will be published in English in April this year. What are the lessons you hope readers will take from it?
The book is a journey across Palestine born out of my experience of living there, working there, and being the special rapporteur. I wanted to tell the story of Palestine as I’ve known it through various people — Palestinians and Israelis — to allow me to present and unpack various topics.
It became a bestseller in Italy, and it has been translated into more than 16 languages. I think people like it because it provokes an awakening, enabling them to understand issues of the present and the past in a holistic way. Everything is put in context. It’s very human; it’s not judgmental. It may also be hard to read, because there are stories of children and of people who are no longer with us. But people seem to appreciate it a lot.
And finally, what is your message today for Palestinians, and for the Israelis standing against genocide, apartheid, and occupation?
We see you. You’re not alone. The human rights movement has awakened thanks to Palestine and what has happened in the last two years. People now recognize the interconnectedness between various forms of injustice and various forms of peaceful resistance to injustice. I want to see this peaceful resistance being normalized instead of violence.