UN rights rapporteur accuses Israel of apartheid, genocide
Geneva
A UN official tasked with monitoring the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday accused Israel of using companies to pursue a 'settler-colonial' displacement project aimed at apartheid and genocide.
Francesca Albanese, an Italian legal and human rights academic, said that while political leaders and governments shirked their obligations, 'far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.'
Albanese, who was appointed UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories in 2022, has published a report entitled 'From economy of occupation to economy of genocide.'
Israel has long accused Albanese of lacking fairness, neutrality and impartiality. The Israeli government rejects cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council and its organs.
The Israeli diplomatic representation in Geneva described her report as being 'motivated by her obsessive hate-driven agenda to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel' and as a flagrant abuse of her office.
Albanese's report investigates what it terms 'the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.'
It goes on to describe 'the role of corporate entities in sustaining the illegal Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza' and says that corporate interests underpin the Israeli settler-colonial logic of the displacement, replacement and dispossession of Palestinians.
It adds that corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of this displacement-replacement process since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel mounted from the Gaza Strip that has led to the current war.
On Tuesday, at least 95 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks throughout Gaza, including more than a dozen desperate people seeking food at US-Israel-backed aid distribution sites.
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