“The threshold that indicates the practice of genocide by Israel has been reached” – Instituto Humanitas Unisinos

March 25th is marked by two events that add new perspectives to the tragedy that hits the Gaza Strip since, on October 7th, the Hamas attacked Israel and he responded with massive bombings of the Palestinians.

The report is from Manuel Pintopublished by 7Margens, 27-03-2024.

For the first time, the UN Security Council managed to pass a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire from the Israeli authorities (although with the abstention of the United States of America). And, on the other hand, the report “Anatomy of a Genocide” was released, the result of a survey carried out in recent months by the special rapporteur of the United NationsFrancesca Albanese.

The report’s conclusion could not be clearer: “By analyzing patterns of violence and Israel in its attack on Gazathis report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the practice of genocide by Israel has been reached.”

Albanian goes further: “One of the main conclusions is that the executive and military leadership, as well as the soldiers of Israelintentionally distorted the principles of jus in bello [práticas aceitáveis na guerra]subverting its protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”

After five months of military operations, “Israel destroyed Gaza”, emphasizes the report, which outlines an apocalyptic panorama for a territory that does not reach 400 km²:

• More than 30,000 Palestinians were killed, including more than 13,000 children.
• More than 12,000 are reportedly dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations.
• 70 percent of residential areas were destroyed.
• 80 percent of the entire population was forcibly displaced.
• Thousands of families lost loved ones or were exterminated.
• Many were unable to bury and mourn their families, being forced to leave their decomposing bodies in houses, on the streets or under the rubble.
• Thousands of people were detained and “systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment”.
• “The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced by future generations”, concludes the special rapporteur.

Report defends arms embargo on Israel

It is therefore understood that, in the recommendations chapter, Albanian consider that it is not just Israel that has to answer for this genocide and collaborate in repairing the destruction, death and damage caused; in fact, the States that have been “accomplices” have an unavoidable responsibility towards the Palestinian people.

Recommends, in the same vein, among other measures, the implementation of an arms embargo on Israel; support for the complaint that South Africa presented in the International Court of Justice, based on the fact that Israel did not comply with what the Court determined; carrying out an “independent and transparent” investigation of all violations of international law, including “war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide”; development, within the framework of the UN general assembly, of a plan to end the current “status quo illegal and unsustainable”, including the reactivation of United Nations Special Committee against Apartheidand, temporarily, the installation of an international protection force to control “the routine violence used against Palestinians in the occupied territories”.

French Albanian does not fail to make a firm condemnation of the attack by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Israel on October 7th and calls for their accountability, as well as the release of the hostages. His mandate, however, excluded the geographic area of Israel and from West Bankincluding East Jerusalemwithin its scope of activity, so the events that occurred there were not examined in the report now presented.

On the other hand, since Israel banned her visits, the rapporteur had to base her work solely on “data and analysis from organizations on the ground, international jurisprudence, investigation reports and consultations with affected individuals, authorities, civil society and experts ”.

The 25-page report is not limited to documenting the atrocities perpetrated by Israel over the past few months. Taking the definition of genocide as “denial of the right to existence of a people and the subsequent attempt or success in their annihilation”, the text recalls the historical process in Palestine: the forced displacement and the erasure of the indigenous Arab presence as “an inevitable part of the formation of Israel as a ‘Jewish state‘; the massive ethnic cleansing of the non-Jewish population of Palestine, both in the late 1940s and in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, with the “massive displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, murders, destruction of villages and cities, looting and the denial of the right of return to expelled Palestinians”.

A “colonial process of erasure” that has lasted decades

From 1967 onwards, the report notes, Israel “has advanced its project colonizer–colonial through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination.” This resulted in “the segregation and control of Palestinians, namely through the confiscation of land, demolition of houses, revocation of residences and deportation”.

As for Gazaspecifically, since the evacuation, in 2005, of the Israeli settlers who had settled there, and to which Netanyahu then placed strong opposition, the territory became part of the list of land to be ‘recolonized’, in view of what the current Israeli power considers it to be the “exclusive and unassailable right of the Jewish people” in the land of “Greater Israel”.

Much of the document produced by Francesca Albanesea 47-year-old jurist and academic, who has dedicated herself in particular to the problem of international migration, was to document in detail each paragraph of the acts considered as requirements that the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide establishes so that it can be stated that this crime existed or exists in a particular situation.

In the conclusions section, after justifying the reasons why you believe that Israelreached the threshold that allows us to conclude that there is genocidethe special rapporteur ends this way:

“The genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza is a climbing phase of a colonial process of erasure, which has been going on for a long time. For more than seven decades, this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically –, seeking to displace them and expropriate and control their lands and resources. The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative for the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and for future generations of this land.”

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