The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories calls on countries around the world to impose sanctions on Israel (Shutterstock)

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, called on the countries of the world to impose sanctions on Israel and ban arms exports to it immediately, due to evidence that it has committed genocide crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Albanese confirmed that there are many logical elements that indicate that Israel has committed several acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

She said in her report, which she will submit this evening to the Human Rights Council, that the nature and size of the Israeli attack on Gaza, and the living conditions it left behind, reveal a premeditated intention to destroy the lives of Palestinians.

During a symposium at the United Nations in Geneva on the sidelines of the work of the Human Rights Council, Albanese stressed that Israel has been committing many crimes and violations that have been continuing for decades against the Palestinians, including the crime of apartheid.

The UN rapporteur called for all necessary measures to be taken to defend the Palestinians’ right to life and to end crimes against them.

She added, "I find reasonable reasons to believe that the minimum threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met."

Killing, harming and subjugating

In her report, the UN rapporteur enumerated three types of acts of genocide: “killing members of the group, causing serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group, and deliberately subjecting the group to living conditions that would lead to complete or partial physical destruction.”

Hamas said that the statements of the UN rapporteur on genocide were an additional acknowledgment from a senior UN official.

The movement in Bethlehem added that this puts the international community and the United Nations before a real test to protect humanity, and to stand up to their responsibilities to prevent acts of genocide that humanity exceeded decades ago.

The movement called on the International Criminal Court to “move beyond the silence and take urgent action to hold the occupation leaders accountable for the genocide and ethnic cleansing they are committing against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip in full view of the world.”

Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip for more than 5 months, leaving more than 32,000 martyrs and about 75,000 wounded, most of whom are children and women, amid warnings from international organizations of famine, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, as a result of the occupation restricting the entry of aid.

For its part, Israel rejected the findings of the Special Rapporteur.

“Instead of searching for the truth, this special rapporteur is trying to reconcile weak arguments with her clear distortion of the facts,” the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva said.

She added that Israel is waging war against Hamas, and not against Palestinian civilians, as she put it.

The French news agency quoted an American official - in response to the report of the UN rapporteur - that the United States has no reasons to believe that Israel committed acts of genocide in Gaza.

The American official said that his country reaffirms its long-term rejection of the mandate given to this special rapporteur who is biased against Israel, as he described it.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies