UN Expert: Israel on Track to Exterminate Nearly Entire Gaza Population

Date: 07 September 2024 - 22:15

News ID: ۱۳۱۰۷۵

NEW YORK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime is on track to wipe out nearly the entire population of Gaza if global powers don’t intervene to stop its genocide, a UN expert warned, based on estimates of the true death toll in Gaza from the first 11 months of the slaughter.
“Reading the health experts, I am starting to think with horror that if it’s not stopped, Israel’s assault could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years,” UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese wrote on Friday on social media, Truthout reported.
Albanese cited a recent report from University of Edinburgh global Public Health Chair Devi Sridhar finding that the true death toll from the Zionist regime’s genocide could be estimated at 335,500 as of September.
Sridhar based this rough calculation off of an estimate by public health researchers published in The Lancet in July regarding typical indirect death counts from previous conflicts, citing research hailed as the gold standard in the field. At that time, the researchers estimated that the true death toll could be roughly 186,000, stemming from direct killings like bombings as well as the Zionist regime’s destruction of the health, food and sanitation systems in Gaza.
The death toll, then, could be between 15 and 20 percent of the population by the end of this year, Albanese said, in just over a year of the regime’s genocide. And, as Sridhar writes in her Guardian report, the calculation that she borrows from The Lancet editorial is highly conservative — meaning the death toll could be even higher than her 335,500 estimate.
Israeli officials have repeatedly suggested that they would be happy to kill all 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Last month, Zionist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is currently leading the regime’s charge to annex the occupied West Bank — moaned that international powers wouldn’t let Israel wipe out Gaza’s population.
“Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our captives are returned,” Smotrich said.
However, global powers, particularly the U.S., are currently allowing Israel to continue its genocide, with no end in sight. Because the true death toll may not be known for years after the genocide is over — if it’s ever fully calculated — Israel is on the path to kill off Gaza’s Palestinian population with no repercussions.
“Once the dust settles, I can’t imagine how the world will go on after having allowed that. Again,” Albanese said.