GENEVA, Mar 24: The world has given Israel "a licence to torture Palestinians", a UN expert said Monday, with life in the occupied territories "a continuum of physical and mental suffering".
Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, alleged that "torture has effectively become state policy" in Israel.
"Israel has effectively been given a licence to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it," she said, as she presented her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council.
Albanese has faced harsh criticism, allegations of anti-Semitism and demands for her removal, from Israel and some of its allies, over her relentless criticism and long-standing accusations of "genocide".
"Francesca Albanese is not a promoter of human rights; she is an agent of chaos... and any document she produces is nothing but a politically-charged, activist rant," Israel's mission in Geneva said in a statement Monday.
Albanese "advocates dangerous extremist narratives to undermine the very existence of the State of Israel", it said.
Albanese's report claimed Israel was systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale "that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent".
"Torture extends far beyond prison walls, in what can only be described as a torturous environment imposed by Israel across the entire occupied Palestinian territory," she told the Human Rights Council.
She said torture destroys the conditions that make life meaningful, stripping away human dignity, leaving empty shells behind.
"The testimonies that I and many others are documenting are not only tragic stories of suffering; they are evidence of atrocity crimes targeting the totality of the Palestinian people, across the totality of the occupied land, through a totality of criminal conduct," she said.
Albanese warned that the international response would be a test of countries' collective legal and moral responsibility.
"Disregard for international law will not stop in Palestine. It is already unfolding from Lebanon to Iran, across the Gulf countries, and in Venezuela. And if left unchecked, it will spread far beyond," she said.
Though appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, special rapporteurs are independent experts and do not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself.
Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi told the council that the practices documented in Albanese's report "are not just individual cases of torture but amount to collective and systematic torture.
"We renew our call to the international community to take urgent action to guarantee accountability, to stop impunity," he said. "AFP
