GENEVA (Dispatches) – The world could be witnessing “another Nakba” expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations committee has warned, slamming the Zionist regime for “ethnic cleansing” and saying it was inflicting “unimaginable suffering” on Palestinians.
For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe — the mass displacement in the war that accompanied to Israel’s occupation of Palestine in 1948.
“Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations,” warned a UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights.
“What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba,” it said, after concluding an annual mission to Amman.
During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba.”
The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in the Israeli-occupied territories presently make about 20 percent of its population.
The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968.
The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York.
“What the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba. The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of Israel,” they said in their report.
“Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.”
Israel resumed its genocidal war on Gaza in mid-March, breaching a 2-month ceasefire with Hamas,
The Zionist regime has since been pummeling Gaza, practically making the territory uninhabitable in an apparent bid to force Palestinians to leave it.
For the past 70 days, Israel has prevented humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, where hundreds of civilians have been killed in intensified attacks since the war resumed. 
This protracted obstruction of vital supplies marks the longest period of aid disruption since the genocidal war on Gaza began 19 months ago, exacerbating malnutrition and hunger among the already vulnerable 2.3-million population.
The devastating Israeli war has so far killed at least 52,787 Palestinians and injured 119,349 others. Most of the victims have been women and children.