“Genocide has become the ultimate form of torture for the Palestinians” Francesca Albanese

 

At a press conference, during the launch of her latest report, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, frames her report around what she calls the connection between torture and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory. She argues that torture is not an isolated abuse but a deliberate system, saying it is “strategic, it is deliberate, and it is integral” to the destruction of Palestinian life and dignity. Drawing on testimonies and documented cases, she describes detention, forced disappearance, sexual violence, starvation, denial of medical care, and the lasting trauma carried by individuals, families, and communities. She says the evidence shows that what is happening is not simply mass detention, but “the normalization of the abuse within it.”

She then broadens the focus beyond prisons, arguing that the entire occupied territory has been turned into what she calls “a torturous environment” where “nowhere is safe.” In her words, suffering is not incidental, “it’s engineered,” with violence, displacement, surveillance, raids, and dehumanization forming part of a larger system. Albanese closes with one of the sharpest lines of the remarks: “Genocide has become the ultimate form of torture for the Palestinians,” and says the report is ultimately a test of whether the international system still has meaning when faced with atrocities that “can wait no longer.”