Francesca Albanese is not one to hold back. Since May 2022, when she assumed the role of UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Italian international lawyer has made a name for herself as a rare voice of clarity in an international arena clouded by politicking.

Albanese’s tenure has been marked by her unflinching critique of Israel’s 15-month-long assault on Gaza, repeatedly labeling it a genocide in her public remarks and her official UN reports, tersely titled “Anatomy of a genocide” and “Genocide as colonial erasure.” Her refusal to mince her words has made her the target of a relentless smear campaign aimed at discrediting and silencing her work.

But for Albanese, the controversy is merely a distraction from the urgent fight for Palestinian rights. “I’m not a diplomat,” she says frankly from behind her signature dark-rimmed glasses. “My lighthouse is international law, and it’s so crystal clear.”

As we speak, she reflects on the ceasefire, Israel’s decades of impunity, international law and its weaknesses, the global Palestine solidarity movement, and the responsibility of her position. For Albanese, true justice is not just about holding Israel accountable. It requires a global awakening that connects Palestine to the struggle for freedom and justice everywhere, and her work is far from over.

“I read something beautiful today,” she tells me, “that says: ‘Palestine is like a magnet, attracting principled people who are fighting for justice on various fronts.’ And it’s true.”

—Nadine Talaat

Current Issue

March 2025 Issue

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nadine Talaat: After 15 months of sustained international pressure, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has brought a rare moment of relief and celebration to Gaza. But it’s a fragile one, and it’s already been violated. What steps must the international community take to ensure this leads to a permanent end to Israel’s assault?

Francesca Albanese: Firstly, I don’t think that there’s been a lot of international pressure; I think that there’s been absolutely not enough pressure for the previous 15 months. A ceasefire is not an end of the war. It’s an end to the hostilities, but what we have seen on full display in Gaza was a genocidal assault against the people there. So I agree with you: It’s very fragile. And there is this big confrontation of powers. There is Hamas, who comes out of the tunnels with clean uniforms and banners, clearly a show of force that says, “You didn’t do anything to me.” But look at the rest of the population. They’re reduced to misery, and they didn’t deserve one-tenth of it. It’s extremely painful to see the disconnect between the two realities.

On the other hand, the military display of Israel is not going to subside, because Israel has not taken lightly how Hamas has, in a way, slapped them in the face, and will continue to want to keep an upper hand, so they will continue to inflict more misery on Gaza. And the ordinary people pay the price.

Israel thinks it will be able to return to the status quo ante, to blockaded Gaza, but Gaza is much more impoverished than before. So the blockade needs to be lifted, and I do not see anyone discussing that, even at the end of the third phase of the ceasefire. Plus, Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians since the beginning of the ceasefire. It’s very worrisome, the reality in Gaza.

NT: You don’t seem very hopeful the ceasefire will last.

FA: I’m worried. It’s not that I’m not hopeful. But I want to see things happening and they’re not happening. I want to see the international community coming together and asking Israel to offer reparations, and I want people to talk about a plan to help people in Gaza recover, mentally, financially, and materially. But how do we build that bridge without political will and with Israelis who seem not to have understood what they have done to the people in Gaza? They keep on talking about victory, crushing Gaza. I don’t know why—because of continuous indoctrination, because of hubris, because of their own sense of victimhood that cannot be shared with anyone else. Not all of them, of course, but most of them don’t see the Palestinians as human.

And this is a recipe for further disasters. There is a lot of work to be done, and I do not see the basic ingredients in the pot yet.

NT: In many ways we are only starting to process the true scale of the devastation in Gaza now that Palestinians are returning to their destroyed homes and counting their dead. How do we even begin to grapple with the physical and psychological toll of Israel’s war?

FA: It requires a lot of humility and acceptance of the mistakes made. We really live in a dystopian moment, in the sense that the reality is denied. Even in the face of this horror, you have American politicians backing Israeli politicians, and basically continuing not to see the Palestinians as human. You see a cohort of vassals in Europe who do not even dare open their mouth because they’re all scared of what the United States is going to do.

Isn’t it the time to coalesce around principles, around international law? And this would be already a good understanding of a starting point. I want to hear talks about “tomorrow” premised upon the rules that we have in our system. Who’s going to pay for Gaza? It has to be Israel. Because even leaving aside the genocide analysis, there is wall-to-wall agreement that Israel has committed war crimes. And it has to pay for those war crimes.

NT: It seems that Israel has simply shifted its assault to the West Bank, where it’s carrying out a military raid that has killed dozens of Palestinians and displaced thousands more.

FA: What’s happening in the West Bank is an extension of Gaza; it’s never been out of the game. Israel’s violence in the West Bank has been happening for decades and for the past two decades, more significantly. This is why it’s important to keep an eye on the context and the broader scheme. It’s Greater Israel. Israel wants to get rid of the Palestinians politically and if necessary physically, because the Palestinians are a continuous reminder of Israel’s original sin. They are the reminders that their land was already inhabited.

In Gaza, Israel sees this mission as accomplished, because one way or another, the Palestinians in Gaza will have such a hard time to survive, to rebuild their lives. Now they need to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and expand settlements. This is where the fight needs to intensify.

And this is my shock at the international community: Where are the Palestinians supposed to go, exactly? Palestinians have endured this for decades. It was despicable that there were Israeli civilians killed on October 7, but do we understand that this is what violence breeds? Violence breeds violence, and the violence that the Palestinians have endured is so extreme. I’m not saying that the Palestinians who slaughtered Israelis on October 7 were full of love, absolutely not. But they were the children of those whose homes were destroyed and whose parents were killed and whose communities were devastated in 2008, or 2012, or 2014, or 2023. You keep an entire population in a cage, beating them up and starving them, this is the result.

NT: As much as I don’t want to, I think it’s impossible not to talk about Trump’s presidency as we’re talking about Greater Israel’s plan. Trump has already lifted sanctions on settlers, expressed doubt about the ceasefire lasting, and insisted that he will forcibly displace Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt.

FA: Of course, I’m worried because I don’t have full trust in the Arab states’ intentions toward the Palestinians. As much as I’m horrified by some of the US president’s statements, I think he’s honest about his position here. So this worries me, because if he keeps on insisting that they will do that, it means that he knows something. Maybe the discussion got to a point where they said, “OK, we will take a few 100,000 Palestinians” and maybe, in Trump’s mind, this will become 1 million. Where there is smoke, there is fire. But I don’t think it’s possible because the Palestinians and even the Jordanians, for example, won’t accept it.

NT: Let’s talk about justice and accountability. Twenty twenty-four was a historic year, from the International Court of Justice rulings to International Criminal Court arrest warrants, and it seems like the international community finally woke up to Israel’s crimes. How do we capitalize on this momentum to ensure concrete measures to end Israel’s impunity in 2025? What are the chances we see real justice and what does that look like?

FA: People need to understand that international law is not a magic wand; it’s something that needs to be activated. And that is our responsibility. Justice for Palestine starts at home, and this is where we need to hold our policymakers, our universities, and the private sector accountable, and this is why it’s so important to pursue strategic litigation.

We need a more proactive attitude toward businesses, corporations, banks, pension funds, the organizations selling Palestinian land from Europe or from North America. And of course, the policy makers who have continued to sign contracts and military licenses exporting military equipment to Israel should be held accountable. They have responsibilities for at least war crimes, because there is an obligation under international law not to aid and assist a country that is committing war crimes. So we need to use the law. And the way to activate international law is also through the domestic system.

NT: At the international level, do you think efforts like those of The Hague Group or the Hind Rajab Foundation will succeed in holding Netanyahu and Israeli leaders and soldiers who perpetrated war crimes accountable?

FA: It depends on what you deem to be success. Things do not happen overnight. For me, bringing perpetrators to justice is a success in and of itself. There is an awareness that no place is safe for those who have committed crimes, and this is true in Gaza and elsewhere. Actors like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions or the Hind Rajab Foundation are contributing to an incredibly important paradigm shift, which brings the attention from the center of the establishment back to us. But this is where we need to reorient our tools. Keep on helping local civil society, but also activate yourself to pursue justice. This takes time, but it will happen. And the same kind of accountability needs to be brought about through the choice of conscientious consumers who decide what to take home from supermarkets. And it takes a bit of self-education, but it’s about not buying into the occupation, ultimately.

NT: One question I’ve been reckoning with is: What does it say about the international systems and legal architecture that we have that it took 75 years of impunity and a livestreamed genocide for the wheels of justice to start turning? How has Gaza has exposed some of the weaknesses of our international justice system?

FA: I think that Gaza has exposed the extreme consequences of the system’s lack of enforcement. Enforcement depends on member states, so it’s very contingent on their will to comply with international law. In the West, for 75 years, we have not had wars, and this makes us spoiled and comfortable. We don’t think of war as a risk, and this is why we don’t value peace as much as we should.

Things are changing. I think that global warming, the unchecked growth of artificial intelligence etc., are making people feel more and more insecure. And social media has made us more united, so we connect the dots more easily. So I do see this as positive in the sense of contributing to the fertile ground that we need to have for a revolution. It can be a totally peaceful revolution, but we need to have a change of policies. What we can draw from Palestine is that this is what impunity yields. Israel has just shown the world what techniques of mass containment of people look like, and they’re going to be used against people worldwide if we do not intervene now. And frankly, I think we’re very late.

NT: Late in the sense that they are already exported worldwide?

FA: There is a market for things like this. This is why it’s important that individuals know what their governments are purchasing from Israel. Surveillance technology techniques they are going to use against you guys.

NT: In the midst of all the horror of the past 15 months, it has been refreshing to see how outspoken you’ve been about Israel’s genocide. You don’t mince your words, and people aren’t used to seeing that from a UN official.

FA: Look, I’m a special rapporteur, so my role is looking at the facts. I’m not a diplomat. I’ve attracted a lot of criticism because as of October 12, I said two things: This is the opportunity for a mass ethnic cleansing, and Israel cannot claim self-defense. These have been two issues I’ve hammered on and on about for months. And then, yes, in March 2024, I concluded that this constitutes genocide. Fifteen months later, not only do I know that it’s genocide, but I know that it’s continuing, and I know why Israel is doing it. Once you see Palestine, you cannot unsee it.

I appreciate that people who do not know as much as I do struggle with it. But a few years ago, when I wrote the book Palestinian Refugees in International Law, I was not that much of an expert on the occupied Palestinian territories. The real revelation came during the second semester of my term as a special rapporteur, as I was investigating the detention practices. This is where I understood how Israel works, and it all looked very, very colonial.

Western people have a racial bias. It’s the colonial amnesia, the incapacity to read what Israel does through the colonial lens. While for people in the Global South, it’s so obvious. I’ve had to deal with my own biases. So if I can learn, if I can undo my biases, others can do that as well.

NT: Gaza triggered such an outpouring of solidarity all over the world and I think public opinion has definitely shifted on Palestine. Do you think we’ve reached that tipping point yet?

FA: Not yet. Everyone needs to not just talk the talk but walk the walk. Everyone must be an actor for change. I used to say to my students, human rights are there for a purpose: to serve. So if you need them in court, take them to court. If you need them in the street, use them in the street. Every one of us should carry an activist inside, and this activist should pop out like a jack-in-the-box every time our freedoms are compromised.

NT:What would you hope that 2025 will bring for the fight for justice in Palestine?

FA: This is my bias as a lawyer, but I would like to start seeing courts issuing arrest warrants all over. I want to see people behind bars. I do believe that while retributive justice is not the end-all, be-all, it’s the necessary beginning. I want to see justice blossoming everywhere.

NT: What will it take to get there?

FA: Sustained awareness, sustained enthusiasm. Justice can be contagious. I really believe that it’s about feeling connected to others. As Arundhati Roy said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Palestinians and Israelis will make such an amazing country without apartheid. I want to see that day. I want to see that place. It will take decades, but in our life we need to harvest for fruits that we will not pick. And that’s OK.