UN report warns of ‘Genocidal Project’ as Israel advances in Gaza and West Bank

A United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 per cent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, the final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as Colonial Erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognised as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the UN should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come to fruition.

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel,” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law. As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’”

The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza, where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant 

airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centred on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defence units say they have been barred

by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes, and their crews have been attacked. Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones,” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.”

“Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 per cent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.”

Palestinians walk near rubble and destroyed buildings on October 10, 2024, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo: File/REUTERS/Mohammed Salem)

In May, Israel’s Rafah invasion caused the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, driven into southern Gaza because of Israeli evacuation orders, into “uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies,” Albanese notes.

By August, 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were displaced “under dire conditions,” according to the U.N.

The months of “relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another—fleeing bombs and bullets with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear, and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food, and healthcare — have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children,” the report reads. “The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging and triggering further displacement. Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to ‘the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’”

The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.

Israel has killed at least 43,163 people in Gaza and wounded 101,510 in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed—some by Israeli forces—in Israel during the incursion by armed Palestinian fighters into Israel, and more than 200 were taken captive. In Lebanon, at least 2,787 people have been killed and 12,772 wounded since the Israeli assault on Gaza began, with 77 killed in strikes across the country on Tuesday alone.

The report found evidence that Israel has carried out “more than 93 massacres.”

U.N. investigators concede the number of dead in Gaza is probably a vast undercount given that at least 10,000 people, including 4,000 children, are missing, probably buried under the rubble, where “the voices of those trapped and dying are often audible.” Other Palestinians, an “uncertain number,” have been seized by Israeli forces and “disappeared.” Israel has repeatedly attacked aid distribution sites, tent encampments, hospitals, schools, and markets “through the indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire.” The report notes that “at least 13,000 children, including more than 700 babies, have been killed, many shot in the head and chest,” while approximately “22,500 Palestinians have sustained life-changing injuries.”

“The disturbing frequency and callousness of the killing of people known to be civilians are ‘emblematic of the systematic nature’ of a destructive intent,” the report reads. “Six-year-old Hind Rajab was killed with 355 bullets after pleading for help for hours; the fatal mauling by dogs of Muhammed Bhar, who had Down’s syndrome; the execution of Atta Ibrahim Al-Muqaid, an older deaf man, in his home, later bragged about by his killer and other soldiers on social media; the premature babies deliberately left to die a slow death and decompose in the intensive care unit at Al-Nasr Hospital; the elderly man, Bashir Hajji, killed en route to southern Gaza after appearing in a propaganda photograph of a'safe corridor;’ Abu al-Ola, the handcuffed hostage shot by a sniper after being sent into Nasser Hospital with evacuation orders. When the dust settles on Gaza, the true extent of the horror experienced by Palestinians will become known.”

The genocide has turned the landscape into a toxic wasteland.

“Nearly 40 million tonnes of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem,” the report goes on. “More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tonnes of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhoea, and skin diseases. As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.”

In a further blow, the Israeli parliament on Monday approved a bill to ban UNRWA, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza, from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control. The ban almost certainly ensures the collapse of aid distribution, already crippled, in Gaza.

As of Oct. 20,  233 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, making it the deadliest conflict for U.N. workers.

Israel has expanded its “buffer zone” along the Gaza perimeter to 16 per cent of the territory, in the process levelling homes, apartment blocks and farms. It has pushed over 84 per cent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into  “a shrinking, unsafe ‘humanitarian zone’ covering 12.6 per cent of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.” Satellite imagery indicates that the Israeli military has built roads and military bases in over 26 per cent of Gaza, “suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.”

The blockade of food is accompanied by the destruction of water treatment plants, sewage systems, reservoirs, aid convoys, healthcare facilities, and food distribution points— crowds of desperate people waiting for food “have been massacred” by Israeli soldiers.

Israel has all but obliterated medical facilities and services in Gaza. It has damaged 32 of 36 hospitals, with 20 hospitals and 70 of 119 primary healthcare centres incapacitated. By this August, it had attacked healthcare facilities 492 times. Israel besieged Al-Shifa Hospital for the second time in March and April, killing more than 400 people and detaining 300, including doctors, patients, displaced persons, and civil servants. It carried out a forced evacuation of all but 100 of the 650 patients in Al-Aqsa Hospital.

“In August,” the report reads, “entry permits for humanitarian organisations nearly halved. Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels. Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry, and fishing economies have been destroyed; 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity and deprivation for decades to come.”

“In recent months, 83 per cent of food aid was prevented from entering Gaza, and the civilian police in Rafah were repeatedly targeted, impairing distribution,” the report notes. “At least 34 deaths from malnutrition were recorded by 14 September 2024.”

These measures “indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation.”

Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on houses and residential buildings, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 20, 2024. (Photo: File/REUTERS/Abdul Karim Farid)

Palestinians detained by Israeli forces “have been systematically abused in a network of Israeli torture camps. Thousands have disappeared, many after being detained in appalling conditions, often bound to beds, blindfolded and in diapers, deprived of medical treatment, subjected to unsanitary conditions, starvation, torturous cuffing, severe beatings, electrocution, and sexual assault by both humans and animals. At least 48 detainees have died in custody.”

The report cites the role of the Israeli media in “inciting” the genocide “by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate.”

The report criticizes the Israeli media for platforming “proponents of genocide” and withholding “facts from the Israeli public.” At the same time, the Israeli military has killed over 130 Palestinian journalists. 

Palestinians are equated with the Amalek, the Biblical enemies of the Israelites, as well as Nazis, to justify their extermination.

Albanese’s report, in a section titled “Risk of genocide in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” notes that Israel has accelerated its lethal attacks, detentions, and land seizures in the West Bank.

“Genocidal conduct in Gaza set an ominous precedent for the West Bank,” it notes.

In May 2024, the governance of the West Bank was “officially transferred from military to civilian authorities — further de jure annexation — and placed under [Bezalel] Smotrich, a committed Eretz Yisrael politician,” the report reads. “The largest single land appropriation in 30 years was then approved.”

Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, claims there are “two million Nazis” in the West Bank. He has threatened to turn parts of the West Bank into “ruined cities like in the Gaza strip” and stated that starving the entire Gaza population was “justified and moral,” even if two million people died. Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has also called for the West Bank to receive the same treatment as Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas and Tulkarem live for days under curfew, making it difficult to access food and water. As in Gaza, the Israeli army, during its Operation Summer Camps, has “targeted ambulances, blocked entrances to hospitals and laid siege to Jenin Hospital. Bulldozers destroyed streets, electricity, and public health infrastructure.”

Drones and warplanes carry out airstrikes. Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and blockades make travel difficult or impossible. Israel has suspended financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority, which nominally governs the West Bank in collaboration with Israel. It has revoked 148,000 work permits for those who had jobs in Israel.

“The gross domestic product (GDP) of the West Bank contracted by 22.7 per cent, nearly 30 per cent of businesses have closed, and 292,000 jobs have been lost,” the report reads. Over 692 Palestinians—"10 times the previous 14 years’ annual average of 69 fatalities"—have been killed and more than 5,000 have been injured. Of the 169 Palestinian children who have been killed, “nearly 80 per cent were shot in the head or the torso.”

Since August, in the Jenin refugee camp, “approximately 180 homes were levelled and 3,800 structures damaged, destroying or damaging power supplies, public services and amenities, displacing thousands of families and causing widespread disruption. More than 181,000 Palestinians have been affected, many multiple times.”

The access of UN-coordinated humanitarian deliveries to northern Gaza has been largely denied over the past months, leaving people with very limited means to survive. (UNOCHA)

The report dismisses the claim that Israel is carrying out the assault in Gaza and the West Bank to “defend itself,” “eradicate Hamas,” or “bring the hostages home,” charging that these claims are “camouflage,” a way of “invisibilizing the crime.” Genocidal intent, as Judge Dalveer Bhandari from the ICJ points out, “may exist simultaneously with other, ulterior motives.”

Rather, the incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters on Oct. 7 “provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a ‘Greater Israel.’”

“In the context of Israel ignoring the ICJ directive to end the unlawful occupation, the aim to eradicate resistance contradicts the rights to self-determination and to resist an oppressive regime, protected by Customary International Law,” the report reads. “It also portrays the entire population as engaged in resistance and therefore eliminable. By continuing to suppress the right to self-determination, Israel is replicating historical instances in which self-defence, counter-insurgency, or counter-terrorism were used to justify the destruction of the group, leading to genocide.”

It notes that Israel, rather than abiding by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were supposed to lead to a two-state solution, increased its colonies in the West Bank from 128 to 358 and the number of Jewish settlers “has grown from 256,400 to 714,600.” 

Israel passed the 2018 Nation-State Law that asserts exclusive Jewish sovereignty over “Eretz Yisrael” and names “Jewish settlement” on occupied Palestinian land a “national priority.” It cultivates “a political doctrine that frames Palestinian assertions of self-determination as a security threat to Israel” and uses it “to legitimise permanent occupation.”

“The current intent to destroy the people as such could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality,” the report states.

A leaked Israeli Ministry of Intelligence “concept paper” from October 2023 outlines the plan to expel the entire Gaza population to Egypt and recolonise Gaza. It is a plan Israel appears to be following.

Albanese writes that Israel is replicating the patterns of past genocides. It creates through its rhetoric a “vengeful atmosphere” that conditions soldiers to be “willing executioners.” It claims it is acting in self-defence while targeting a civilian population. It is obliterating the infrastructure that sustains life, a process of “genocide by attrition.” It uses starvation as a weapon. It is attempting to hide its crimes by killing Palestinian journalists and U.N. workers and blocking international agencies and the international media from Gaza.

We have seen genocide before. We have also seen the complicity or silence of nations that have the power to intervene. History doesn’t repeat itself, but too often it rhymes.

Christopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and commentator.