Israel should make peace with Hamas, top UN expert on Palestine says

The United Nations’ top expert on the situation in Palestine has called for Israel to make peace with Hamas despite the October 7 massacre, saying it should be up to Palestinians to decide who governs the Gaza strip.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Australia was “complicit” in the scenes of death and destruction in Gaza and accused Israel of using the war against Hamas as a pretext to push Palestinians out of their ancestral lands.

Palestinians leave from the northern part of the Gaza to flee the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip on Friday. Credit: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images

Albanese, who has faced fierce criticism from Israel and its supporters for alleged bias since taking on the role, is visiting Australia for a series of speeches and media events, including on the ABC’s Q&A and an address the National Press Club in Canberra next week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “crush and eliminate Hamas” following the attacks that left approximately 1200 Israelis dead, declaring that Israel will not allow the terror group or any similar entity to control the Gaza strip after the war.

Asked whether Hamas should have an ongoing role in governing Gaza, Albanese said in an interview with this masthead: “I think that the Palestinians should choose … The thing is that you can dismantle something militarily but not politically because, first of all, where is the authority in international law for you to dismantle a political authority or a movement?”

United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese is currently visiting Australia.

She continued: “A legitimate goal [for the war] would be to dismantle Hamas’s military capability, which Israel cannot do on its own and cannot do just like this.

“It needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas, which means that it needs to give freedom to the Palestinians … I think Israel definitely has a legitimate request in wanting to de-militarise Hamas, but the Palestinians have a legitimate request to not be under Israeli occupation.”

Albanese said she believed Israel was using the goal of destroying Hamas as a pretext to displace Palestinians from their lands.

“What’s happening is that under the fog of war they’re pushing the Palestinians out once again, as in 1947-49 [the creation of the state of Israel], as in 1967 [when Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank in the six-day war] because this has always been the strategy of Israel. They advance militarily, they destroy everything … and then they push the Palestinians out.”

Asked if there were things people in countries like Australia do not understand about Hamas, she said: “If someone violates your right to self-determination, you are entitled to embrace resistance.”

Palestinians walk past an area damaged after an Israeli military raid in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.Credit: AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed

The Italian international law expert, who was appointed to the UN role in May 2022, said the residents of Gaza had been living for “16 years in a cage, deprived of most goods” and with shocking rates of child mortality and depression.

She said young Palestinians were “fed up” because whatever form of resistance Palestinians have chosen has always been portrayed as terrorism, and had no realistic hope of achieving statehood.

“Violence breeds violence, and this is what we have seen here,” she said of the October 7 attacks and their aftermath.

Alex Ryvchin, the chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said Albanese’s comments were “somewhere between insane and barbaric”.

“Francesca has seen what Hamas just did and hears their calls for perpetual war and the destruction of the Jewish people and she thinks Israel should make peace with them,” he said. “I wonder if Francesca would be trying to agree terms and uphold the legitimacy of someone trying to murder her and her family?”

Describing Albanese’s views as “deranged”, Ryvchin said: “The great benefit of her words is that they prove definitively that she is unfit for any prominent post or public platform that brings her in contact with Jews or Palestinians.”

Asked why she had travelled to Australia, Albanese said: “We are all complicit right now. I mean, not me particularly, but the government is, sorry, Australia is.

“I need people to understand what’s happening in the occupied Palestinian territory because it’s like nothing we have ever seen before. Not even in my wildest nightmares would I ever have imagined this.”

With the death toll in Gaza climbing over 11,000 according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued some of his strongest comments on civilian deaths in Gaza on Saturday.

“Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks,” he said.

Albanese said the Australian government was wrong to say that Israel has acted in “legitimate self-defence” through its military campaign in Gaza.

She said Israel should have conducted a more limited military campaign after October 7 aimed at arresting and prosecuting those responsible for the attacks, and called in the UN to help de-militarise Gaza.

Albanese said the four-hour humanitarian pauses Israel agreed to under pressure from the United States did not go nearly far enough and called instead for a ceasefire.

Colin Rubenstein, executive director of Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said Albanese had a history of “ultra-extreme views about Israel, both before and during her current UN role”.

Albanese said she had faced malicious lies from supporters of Israel since she had taken on the position, including false claims that her husband worked for the Palestinian Authority.

“I get a lot of defamation. Sometimes I handle it well; sometimes I get pissed off,” she said, adding: “I know what I’m doing, I know why I’m doing it.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.