GAZA- A UN expert on Thursday called on states to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel amid its “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council presenting her latest report, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said Israel is responsible for “one of the cruelest genocides in modern history”.
The UN expert was presenting her latest report, which named more than 60 companies she accuses of being involved in supporting Israeli illegal settlements and military actions in Gaza.
“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed,” she told the council. “We must reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, suspend all trade agreements and ensure companies face legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
The report, titled From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, detailed what it described as “the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory”.
It singled out companies, including arms manufacturers, tech giants, heavy machinery companies and financial institutions, for their “complicity” in Israel’s repression of Palestinians, from sustaining Israeli expansion on occupied land to enabling the surveillance and killing of Palestinians.
The report said that while political leaders had been shirking their responsibilities to pressure Israel to halt its bloodshed in Gaza, “far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide”.
It called on the international community to “hold the private sector accountable” for companies’ complicity in Israel’s abuses, by ensuring they faced legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
Nearly 57,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war, now in its 22nd month began, hundreds of thousands have been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded enclave is now under Israeli military control, according to the UN.
