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United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese suggested in her new report on October 31, , that Israel’s genocidal violence on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is integral to the Zionist regime’s goal of colonising Palestine.

This is the Italian lawyer’s second report on Gaza. Her , released in March, found there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza had met thresholds indicating it is committing genocide.

The new report includes Israel’s violence in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Albanese is known as the “good Albanese”, after putting Australia’s media in its place at the .

She said while “the scale and nature of the ongoing Israeli assault” varies in different areas, the totality of “the Israeli acts of destruction directed against the totality of the Palestinian people” warrant the application of the Genocide Convention (the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

Albanese assesses the Israeli-made catastrophe in Gaza through the lens of the , the Apartheid Convention, international humanitarian, human rights and criminal and customary law.

It is also informed by the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) finding in July that the .

The UN special rapporteur concludes that nation states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a legal obligation to prevent “the serious risk of its continuous breach”.

Destruction laid bare

Albanese said that, as she was writing, Gaza’s official death toll surpassed 42,000 people, although the true figure is likely thousands more. This included more than 13,000 kids and more than 700 babies, with “many shot in the head and chest”.

Distribution sites, tents, hospitals, schools and markets have all been attacked. “The magnitude of destruction in Gaza has prompted allegations of domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and ecocide,” Albanese wrote. “Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem.”

“More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tons of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhea and skin diseases,” she said. “As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.”

Her report further confirms that Israel has built roads and bases in more than 26% of the Gaza Strip. The “buffer zone”, along the Gaza border with Israel, has been extended to 16% of the territory, while 84% of the Gaza Strip has been forcibly evacuated — the majority of the population corralled into a “humanitarian zone” of just 12.6%.

The list of atrocities is never ceasing: 32 of 36 hospitals had been damaged within 300 days, purposeful attacks on food supplies, to trigger starvation, have been described by an Israeli minister as “justified and moral”.

Polio has reemerged in Gaza, and Israel has attacked polio vaccination operations.

She said this “wholesale destruction” is “now metastasising to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”. This includes 5505 Israeli forces raids between October 2023 and September.

Offence of genocide

“Even when conservatively considered, these multiple torments constitute precisely the irreparable harm that ICJ has warned against since January 2024, and which Israel has intentionally inflicted on the Palestinians as a group,” Albanese said.

The ICJ  and ordered it to stop genocidal acts immediately.

The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. There are five categories of what comprise genocidal acts: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, bringing about destructive conditions of life, preventing births and forcibly transferring children of the group.

Article 1 of the Genocide Convention provides that state parties, of which Australia has been since 1949, are required to actively prevent and punish a genocide taking place, whether it be perpetrated in a “time of peace or a time of war”.  can be seen as being in line with this obligation.

Albanese outlines that the prevention and punishment and, “in particular, proving genocidal intent” is still developing.

She said that “stigma” attached to genocide prevents perpetrators from documenting its commission and, therefore, to establish intent, “a complex assessment of facts, statements and circumstances” must be undertaken.

She further asserted that to prove genocidal intent the totality of the multiple atrocities being perpetrated with intent to destroy must be assessed, as genocide is “more structurally complex and insidious” than other atrocity crimes, such as mass killing or extermination.

The historical and sociopolitical context in which genocide forms is “key to identifying how intent forms”.

“In settler colonial contexts, land and its resources are particularly relevant,” the special rapporteur underscores. “Land is intrinsic to both a people’s right to self-determination and the settler colonial project. An inherent conflict exists between the colonisers, who seek to acquire and control the land, and the Indigenous population, for whom the land is integral to their identity.”

Genocidal intent is not confined to individual perpetrators, as it has been established in international criminal tribunals that it can be a state responsibility “without an individual being convicted of the crime”.

This can be established via an assessment of the aggregate genocidal intent of individual perpetrators. A state should not be exonerated from the charge of genocide, according to Albanese, and genocidal intent can be established via “the only reasonable inference” test.

Genocide under Australian law

�ճ����, which came into effect on July 1, 2002, established the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as core international : genocide; crimes against humanity; and war crimes; as well as crimes of aggression, added in 2010.

Federal in June 2002 to enact three international atrocity crimes, as part of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (division 268).

The various forms of the core international  are set out under Sections 268.3 through to 268.7.

These carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Yet, to launch a genocide prosecution, the federal attorney general must first approve it and this has never happened.

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe’s is seeking to remove the attorney general’s fiat from the atrocity crimes, so they can no longer be blocked.

The totality reveals the crime

“The current intent to destroy the people as such could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality,” Albanese’s report said, and it adds three factors that support this.

The first is Israel’s long-term ambition to secure a “greater Israel” encompassing all Palestinian territory. Gaza has been “intentionally rendered unlivable” since last October to destroy the Palestinian people and this is now spreading to the West Bank. Her third point is that the genocide has been facilitated by the broad assertion that Israel is “defending” itself.

Further criminal responsibility for a genocide cannot be confined to individual actors, as it must capture the responsibility of the state, she writes.

“A state is obliged to prevent, to not commit and to punish genocide”. Since the ICJ plausible genocide ruling in January, it has been incumbent upon the Israeli government to stop the genocide, which it has not attempted to do.

“Instead, genocidal violence continued in Gaza with serious risk of expanding to the West Bank amid increasing genocidal incitement,” Albanese writes. “No one has been investigated or prosecuted, let alone punished.”

Albanese said Israel’s genocide is part of the century-old Israeli settler colonial project.

To halt Israeli crimes she recommends “full arms embargos and sanctions”, recognising Israel as an apartheid state, deployment of international protectors, protections for displaced Gazans, prosecution of dual citizens involved and ensuring that humanitarian aid is unhindered.

“Since its establishment, Israel has treated the occupied people as a hated encumbrance and threat to be eradicated, subjecting millions of Palestinians, for generations, to everyday indignities, mass killing, mass incarceration, forced displacement, racial segregation and apartheid,” Albanese said.

“As the world watches the first livestreamed settler colonial genocide, only justice can heal the wounds that political expedience has allowed to fester. The devastation of so many lives is an outrage to humanity and all that international law stands for.”

[Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers, where this article was .]