“It is a painful honor to be here at such a critical moment for Gaza.” Thus has greeted the journalists Francesca Albanese, a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, at the press conference that has given this Monday in the Swiss city of Geneva. Albanese has then described the agony, the “absolute horror” that the inhabitants of Gaza have lived, who are now suffering also an “ethnic cleaning”, has described, while Israel wants to make the strip “an uninhabitable place.” Other United Nations rapporteurs, present in the appearance, have supported their arguments. Among them, Irene Khan, a special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has made special emphasis on the high number of Palestinian journalists victims of Israeli attacks.
“There have been 710 days of absolute horror for people in Gaza. 65,000 is the number of killed Palestinians (during these days), of which 75% are women and children,” said Albanese. Those are the official figures cited by the rapporteur, who, however, has insisted that they are surely severely undervalued: “We should start thinking about 680,000 because that is the figure that some academics and scientists claim to be the real number of fatalities in Gaza.”
If this figure is confirmed, it has stressed, “380,000 would correspond to children under five years old”, although it has specified after that death toll will be almost impossible to verify due to the restrictions to enter the invaded Palestinian territory imposed by the Israeli authorities. Including herself. Israel declared Albanese person not pleasant in February 2024 and was forbidden to access the occupied territories, not only to Gaza, but also the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Italian expert also weigh sanctions from the United States, imposed on July 9.
“It will take years to check the true number of figures and recover the human remains of this catastrophe, as happened in Bosnia,” said the rapporteur for the occupied territories of the UN.
The Italian lawyer does have clear other figures, which he cited. They are those of the 1,581 dead humanitarian workers, the 346 UN staff members, the majority of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRWA), and the 252 journalists who have perished for attacks by the Israeli army.
A priority
Kahn has also highlighted this last data: “Gaza has become the most lethal conflict in history for journalists.” The dead journalists, as he said, already exceed those of both world wars, the Vietnam War, those of Yugoslavia and that of Afghanistan, taken together. These deaths are part, Kahn said, of the “Israel strategy”: end the informants before they continue to reveal the atrocities that are being committed in Gaza. “Journalism is not a crime. And journalists are objects and victims of deliberate attacks” in the enclave, he stressed.
Both Kahn and Albanese have agreed that the protection of journalists on the field should be a priority on the UN -members agenda: “(British Prime Minister) Keir Starmer did not raise this issue to the Israeli President (Isaac Herzog, when they met),” said the lawyer. In Kahn’s words, in the context of an armed conflict, those killings are war crimes. If they happened outside that area, they would be “murders,” he said.
Albanese has later recalled that Israel has arrested at least 10,000 Palestinians from Gaza, whom he maintains “hungry and tortured” in his prisons. Some have even said, they have been raped. The UN Rapporteur has then questioned international leaders: “Prime Ministers, Presidents, Foreign Ministers and International Leaders: How do you sleep? It is not just the crime of Israel, it is a crime of the world,” he said.
As he has already done on other occasions, the Italian jurist has then accused the international community of “complicity” with the “genocide” against the Palestinians carried out by the government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamín Netanyahu. The rapporteur believes that countries that support Israel not only violate international law, but also benefit from the Israeli offensive in Gaza by not stopping trade with that country. “There is no safe place for the Palestinians, but there is not for international law.” Among those states that “support what Israel does,” said three: United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.
That “illegality” of Israel’s performance is “normalizing” more and more among the UN Member States. The “illegality” of the conflict has been a recurring theme in Albanese’s answers to the questions of journalists in the room, an illegality that is “normalized” more and more among the UN Member States.
The Italian lawyer has then expressed her fear that Israel does not stop if you can take Gaza and continue to implement the “Great Israel”, the project of the extreme right -wing rightful right -wing of her country that dreams of seizing part of the territory of states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
“Should the ‘Great Israel’ be understood as a project of domination sustained by the United States and Western members?” The human rights expert has asked out loud. In the last two years Israel has attacked several states in the region, in addition to Gaza and the West Bank. Among them, Lebanon, Syria – these two states maintain occupied areas – Iran and the farthest Yemen.
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