Israel committed genocide in Gaza: UN

UN expert calls for immediate arms embargo

FE Team | Published: March 27, 2024 22:06:10

GENEVA, Mar 27 (Reuters/AFP): A United Nations expert told the global body's Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel's military campaign in Gaza since Oct 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo.
"It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings," Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the UN rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called "The Anatomy of a Genocide".
"I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met," she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.
"I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself," she said, prompting a burst of applause.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was "outrageous" and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
"Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality," it said. Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.
Intense Israeli
bombardment hits
southern Gaza
The southern Gaza Strip came under intense Israeli bombardment overnight, despite international pressure for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territory where famine is looming.
Besieged Gaza is in desperate need of aid and the United States said it would continue airdrops, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after the Islamist group said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.
A fireball lit up the night sky in the southern city of Rafah, the last remaining urban centre in Gaza not to have been attacked by Israeli ground forces. About 1.5 million people are crammed in the area, many having fled south towards the border with Egypt.
The sound of explosions was also heard and smoke was seen rising in Gaza City in the north, where Israeli troops have been attacking the city's largest hospital for more than a week.
Hezbollah launches
dozens of rockets
after Israeli strikes
Lebanon's Hezbollah said it launched dozens of rockets at Kiryet Shmona, an Israeli town over the border, early on Wednesday in response to deadly Israeli strikes on the village of Hebbariyeh in southern Lebanon a day earlier.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza, in the biggest escalation between the old enemies since a month-long conflict between them in 2006.
Both sides have said they do not want all-out war and are open to a diplomatic process but strikes have picked up this week after a lull in cross-border shelling.
At least seven people were killed in the Israeli strikes on Hebbariyeh, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters. The Israeli strikes appeared to be aimed at the Islamist group's emergency and relief centre in the village, the sources said.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel to the reported Hezbollah strikes on Wednesday or detail of any casualties or damage. The Gaza war has spread beyond the enclave's borders to other parts of the Middle East.
Aside from tensions between Israel and Hamas' ally Hezbollah, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have been attacking ships in and around the Red Sea, and armed groups in Iraq with close ties to Tehran have attacked bases hosting US forces in that country.