On 26 November, Piers Morgan released an interview with UN expert Francesca Albanese. In it, he pushed her with his typically obnoxious and patronising ‘whataboutery’. But she refused to play his game. And she insisted quite simply that:
Israel didn’t have the right to wage a war against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese: protecting your own civilians vs attacking others
Morgan had been goading the UN’s ‘special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967′ to condemn the Hamas attack on 7 October 2024. And she answered by highlighting that “civilians must be protected under all circumstances – doesn’t matter their nationality, or their ethnicity, what they’ve done before”. She added that:
The day Israel was attacked, it had all rights to defend itself, to protect its citizens in its territory… which happened between the 7th, 8th and the 9th of October.
But when Morgan tried to justify Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign in Gaza, Francesca Albanese clarified:
this ‘eye for an eye’ logic would justify what has happened on October 7. And I totally refuse to go there.
Outlining the mass destruction in the early weeks of the genocide, she said that, even if Israel had the right to attack Gaza:
it has violated the rules of war because it has caused disproportionate, unnecessary, and deliberate damage to the civilian population
Nonetheless, she stressed that the right didn’t exist, because:
The International Court of Justice [ICJ] has said in 2004 and in 2024 that Israel didn’t have the right to defend itself.
No right to self-defence for an occupying power
Back in 2004, as Al Jazeera reports, the ICJ said Israel “could not invoke the right to self-defence in an occupied territory”. And although Israel did not physically occupy Gaza after 2005, it still exerted control over the territory via its brutal blockade in the following two decades. As Albanese emphasised previously, that amounts to occupation. She said:
Israel does not claim it has been threatened by another state. It has been threatened by an armed group within an occupied territory. It cannot claim the right of self-defence against a threat that emanates from a territory it occupies, from a territory kept under belligerent occupation
In January 2024, the ICJ found it plausible that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Later, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories was illegal. The court avoided talking about self-defence, but the BBC explained that ICJ president Nawaf Salam had clarified that:
Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not bring Israel’s occupation of that area to an end because it still exercises effective control over it.
Francesca Albanese has previously insisted that it is essential to place the events of 7 October 2023 within the context of decades of Israeli occupation of Palestine:
2/3 Today’s violence must be put in context. Almost six decades of hostile military rule over an entire civilian population (incomprehensibly ignored by too many official statements & media outlets) are in themselves an aggression, and the recipe for more insecurity for all.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) October 7, 2023
What should Israel have done?
Francesca Albanese also answered this question from Morgan perfectly. She asserted that:
In line with international law, Israel had to do what they have not done in 57 years and, what the International Court of Justice has reminded all member states as of July this year, Israel needs to withdraw the occupation in whole or in part. Because the occupation has caused the conditions for violence to fester in the occupied Palestinian territory. And the court has been very specific, has said that Israel needs to withdraw the troops, dismantle the settlements which are war crimes, and including the control over the natural resources. Israel has continued to expand in the occupied territory and it continues to do that even now as it commits a genocide…
And she stressed:
It’s key to understand, because Israel – the whole purpose of advancing the occupation is to continue to take Palestinian land. So my question to you is, what do Palestinians have to do? Because they have tried armed resistance, they have renounced armed resistance, they have gone to the International Court of Justice, to the ICC, they’ve tried… the advocacy with all member states, and member states have continued to kick the can in the air.
The impunity, she insisted earlier on in the interview, must end. She said:
International law is as strong and as effective as the political will of members states who enforce it.
And she called on UN members to act, because:
No other state… has violated international law and violated the inviolability of the UN as Israel, which has accused every organ and entity of the United Nations, like the Secretary General, the ICC, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, members of the Security Council, UN organisations of being antisemitic, [of supporting] terrorism and other insults. And also, Israel this year alone has killed 240 UN staff members, it has fired on UN peacekeepers, it has destroyed 70% of UN premises – including clinics including schools – in Gaza alone. This is unprecedented. And it shouldn’t be condoned. … This is why it’s about time to draw a red line.
