UN report says acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met, calls for arms embargo on Israel

An advanced unedited version of a report on Gaza by UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese found that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met”.

“Genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials,” reads the report that came out on the same day the UN Security Council adopted a Ramadan ceasefire resolution.

Titled “Anatomy of a Genocide”, the report observed that Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable.

Over 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children since Israel began the genocidal war in Gaza since the attack on October 07. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations.

Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced.

The report recommended that Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a longstanding settler colonial process of erasure.

“For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically –, seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources. The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land.”

Calls for arms embargo, reparations

Albanese recommended immediate implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the ICJ on 26 January 2024. The report calls for other economic and political measures necessary to ensure an immediate and lasting ceasefire and to restore respect for international law, including sanctions.

It also urged the UN to ensure a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of all violations of international law committed by all actors, including those amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide.

“In the short term and as a temporary measure, in consultation with the State of Palestine, deploy an international protective presence to constrain the violence routinely used against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory,” recommends the report.

“Ensure that Israel, as well as States who have been complicit in the Gaza genocide, acknowledge the colossal harm done, commit to non-repetition, with measures for prevention, full reparations, including the full cost of the reconstruction of Gaza,” it added.