UN rights expert report to call for Israel arms embargo over ‘acts of genocide’
A UN human rights expert will deliver a report on Tuesday saying that Israel has carried out acts of genocide in Gaza and should be placed under an arms embargo.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in her report there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel was carrying out three of the five acts defined as genocide: killing Palestinians, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction” of the population in whole or in part.
“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,” Albanese’s report said.
The report, which has been seen by the Guardian, is due to be delivered on Tuesday to the UN human rights council, which appointed the Italian lawyer in 2022. She does not speak on behalf of the UN as a whole.
Israel imposed a visa ban on Albanese in February, after she argued that the 7 October massacre of Israeli civilians which started the war was not an act of antisemitism.
“The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression,” Albanese wrote on the X social media platform on 10 February. [Continue reading…]