The UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has criticized states that were involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and demanded a new multilateralism to stop it from occurring again.
On Tuesday, Albanese addressed delegates from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation’s Cape Town, South Africa, in a remote address, titled “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” at the UN General Assembly.
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She claimed that Israel had “strangled, starved, and shattered” Gaza when it was left. In her report, which examines the involvement of 63 states in Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank, is referred to as “decades of moral and political failure” in a colonial world order supported by a global system of complicity.
Too many states have damaged, established, and protected Israel’s militarised apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to splinter into genocide, the most serious crime against the Palestinian indigenous people, she claimed.
She claimed that a genocide had been prevented by diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace,” military ties that ranged from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery,” unconstitutional weapons sales, and trade with organizations like the European Union, which sanctioned Russia over Ukraine but continued to conduct business with Israel.
The 24-page report examines how third countries helped facilitate the “live-streamed atrocity,” focusing on how Israel used its veto seven times at the UN Security Council and managed ceasefire negotiations. It claimed that other Western countries had co-sponsored with abstentions, delays, and watered-down draft resolutions, strengthening “a simplistic rhetoric of “balance””.
Despite mounting mounting evidence of genocide, many states continued to supply Israel with weapons, according to the statement. The US Congress’s approval of a $ 26. 4 billion package for Israeli defense, as well as Israel’s threat to invade Rafah, a rumored “red line” for former US President Joe Biden, was exposed in the report.
The report also attributes responsibility to Germany, which exported arms to Israel during the genocide, with supplies ranging from “french to torpedoes” and to the United Kingdom, which allegedly flew more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since the war broke out in October 2023.
The report also highlighted the involvement of Arab and Muslim states in regional geopolitics through US-brokered normalization agreements with Israel while acknowledging the “complexity of regional geopolitics.”
It makes note of Egypt’s mediation during the war that it “maintained” significant security and economic ties with Israel, including energy cooperation, and the Rafah crossing’s closure.
Albanese claimed that the UNGA should have confronted the “perilous precedent” of sanctions the US had placed on her earlier this year because of her criticism of Israel’s actions in Palestine, which had prevented her from visiting New York in person.
These actions constitute an attack on the UN’s sovereignty, independence, integrity, and very core. These sanctions, if ignored, will add yet another nail to the coffin of the multilateral system, she claimed.
The report claimed that the genocide in Gaza “betrayed the trust placed in the foundations of global peace and security” by exposing an unprecedented rift between people and their governments.
The special rapporteur called for a new type of multilateralism during his UNGA speech, calling for “a living framework of rights and dignity for the many, not just a facade.”
