West Bank faces ‘mass ethnic cleansing’ amid Israeli plan of takeover: UN rapporteur

A high-ranking United Nations human rights official has warned that the West Bank faces the threat of mass ethnic cleansing by Israel as the occupying entity is carrying out its plans of taking over the entire Palestinian territory and displacing its inhabitants.

In remarks on Monday, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese warned that the threat of Israel’s mass ethnic cleaning of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is quite “real”, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

She stressed that ethnic cleansing involves acts that constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide.

The UN official’s warning comes as Israel has been conducting a large-scale assault against the West Bank for the past several weeks which is by far the single longest Israeli aggression in the territory since the second Palestinian Intifada in the early 2000s.

The massive aggression has so far displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians in the course of just a few weeks, the vast majority of them from refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

Albanese further stressed that the current Israeli aggression in the West Bank is characterized by airstrikes, armored bulldozers, and controlled demolitions and destruction of villages and vital infrastructure, including agricultural land.

The UN rapporteur also emphasized that the Tel Aviv’s strategy is aimed at realizing the so-called “Greater Israel” free of Palestinian presence, adding that to achieve this goal, the regime relies on forced displacement and oppression of the Palestinian people.

UN rapporteur: Israel engaged in 'ethnic cleansing' in West Bank

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory says what is happening in the West Bank is the “litmus test” of the Israeli regime’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians.

Albanese warned that Israel’s plan to “ethnically" cleanse the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is tantamount to a “genocidal campaign” to erase the Palestinians as a nation.

The UN official renewed her call on the international community to fulfill its obligations to protect Palestinians from annihilation, stressing that the only way is to implement the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s Advisory Opinion.

The Advisory Opinion has already found that Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories is “unlawful”, and that its “near-complete separation” of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning “racial segregation” and “apartheid.”

Under the ICJ’s judicial statement, Israel must take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in the besieged territory and to punish incitement to genocide, among other orders.

Last week, Albanese said the entire world knows the Israeli regime is currently repeating in the West Bank what it has done in the besieged Gaza Strip and that it wants all Palestinians to leave their land, while Arab countries and the international community do nothing.

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