UN should suspend Israel’s membership for genocide in Gaza

NEW YORK, November 1. /TASS/. The United Nations (UN) should consider suspending Israel over numerous violations of international law, Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, told a briefing in New York.

“It is time to consider suspending Israel’s credentials as a UN member state,” the organization’s website wrote, citing the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory. Albanese said the international community must recognize what is happening in Gaza as genocide and “understand the larger project behind what is happening in Palestine today.” It’s not just war crimes and crimes against humanity that Palestinians face, she stressed.

The UN rapporteur acknowledged that the suspension of Israel’s credentials as a member state is a sensitive subject, explaining that all countries in the world have difficulties in respecting human rights. However, no other country has maintained an illegal occupation in violation of decades of UN resolutions as Israel has, she said.

The report also notes that Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, accused Israel and its allies of “knowingly and intentionally imposing starvation and dehydration” on the people of the Gaza Strip and warned that these practices will prevent a whole generation. “The Strip is now a wasteland of rubble and human remains,” she said, adding that the Israeli leadership’s promise last year to destroy Gaza had been fulfilled.

On October 31, the enclave’s health ministry reported that more than 43,200 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli operation in the enclave that began in October 2023.

In December 2023, South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel at the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing the country of violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip. The court ruled on January 26 that Israel must take all necessary measures to prevent genocide in Gaza. Since then, South Africa has sent three urgent requests to The Hague to end Israel’s military operation in Gaza and expand humanitarian aid programs for the enclave’s population. On 28 October 2024, South Africa’s presidential administration press office said the country had submitted a 750-page memorandum of evidence in support of its lawsuit to the UN International Court of Justice.