KABUL (Pajhwok): The United Nations’ special rapporteur has warned that the international community has effectively allowed Israel to subject Palestinians in the occupied territories to sustained physical and mental suffering, according to a report cited by Al Jazeera.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, stated on Monday that “torture has effectively become state policy” in Israel.
“Israel has effectively been given a licence to torture Palestinians, because most governments and ministers have allowed it,” she said while presenting her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council.
In the report, titled “Torture and Genocide,” Albanese wrote: “What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly — a regime of organised humiliation, pain, and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.”
The report emphasized that torture extends beyond detention facilities:
“Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation rooms. Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence, and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory has become a space of collective punishment.”
It stated that the destruction of living conditions has turned genocidal violence into a form of collective torture, with long-term physical and psychological consequences for the population.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, since October 7, 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 72,263 people and injured 171,944 others.
In the occupied West Bank, the report noted that Israeli authorities have arrested more than 18,500 Palestinians since October 2023, including at least 1,500 children as of February.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations strongly rejected Albanese’s findings, describing her as an “agent of chaos.”
In a statement, the mission said: “Albanese abuses her UN platform to engage in virulent antisemitism, including promoting narratives that constitute Holocaust distortion and trivialisation. She routinely makes statements supporting terrorist organisations and advances dangerous extremist narratives that undermine the very existence of the State of Israel.”
Albanese urged UN member states to take action to “prevent and punish” acts of torture and genocide, and to uphold international law.
“The increasing use of such practices as part of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people makes this violation all the more grave and indefensible,” she said, according to a UN press release.
She warned that continued inaction by the international community risks undermining the rule of law: “If such acts are tolerated when inflicted on Palestinians, the law itself will be stripped of meaning.”
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