UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese speaks to Tribune about Israel’s genocide as a form of ‘colonial erasure’ — and why the Palestinian cause is a symbol of resistance against all forms of exploitation.

Since the onset of Israel’s exterminationist war on the people of Gaza thirteen months ago, Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has acquired international renown as a public chronicler, legal anatomist, and political opponent of genocide. Appointed to the role in May 2022 — the month Israeli forces assassinated Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin — the Campagna-born international human rights lawyer has produced a succession of official reports detailing Tel Aviv’s apartheid regime, its renovation of the West Bank into a ‘constantly surveilled open-air panopticon’ crisscrossed by colonial settlements, and, since last October, its crimes of genocide against the Palestinians.

Spearheading the urgent demand within international fora for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and for the mobilisation of all forms of global pressure upon the Israeli state, Albanese’s heightened profile has naturally seen her subjected to the same rote defamation campaigns familiar to all supporters of Palestinian liberation in Britain. Now, in the face of recent pleas from Israel advocacy organisations to bar her from western college campuses, the Special Rapporteur has undertaken a speaking tour of London universities, addressing Israel’s present genocide and the role (and limits) of international human rights law in resisting it. Coming as the IDF’s so-called Generals’ Plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza proceeds, and as more Palestinian and Lebanese children join the thousands upon thousands slaughtered, it was recognised by all attending Albanese’s Monday night address at SOAS that the hour could not be graver.

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Well, first of all, let me tell you that I don’t think that one can call himself or herself a human rights lawyer if they don’t stand for human rights without political or ideological considerations. Saying that starvation is acceptable is simply betraying what international law stands for, which is ultimately the protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict, hostilities, crisis, etc. Here you have a foreign secretary who is denying that a genocide is ongoing, even where the International Court of Justice has recognised it. He needs to explain how he disqualifies that. But in any case, we will hear, I think, excuses. History will judge these people who have not done anything in their power to prevent atrocities. Meanwhile, in doing so, the UK is violating its obligations under international law not to aid and assist a state which is committing international wrongdoings. This is where we are. There are responsibilities; there might be complicity. This is why I encourage strategic litigation in this country to hold people accountable, but also to make sure — and this is the power of the people — to make sure that its elected leaders do not drag this country and its taxpayers into funding a war of annihilation.

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https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/11/if-this-is-not-genocide-what-is-francesca-albanese-palestine