A U.N. expert said on Monday that Israeli \u2060clearance of rubble in Gaza could destroy valuable evidence of “atrocity crimes” and prevent the recovery of human remains.<\/p>\n
Israel’s assault on \u2060Gaza \u2013 started after the deadly raid into Israel by Hamas in October 2023 \u2013 has generated around 61 million tons of wreckage and debris that could take seven years to clear, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n
Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on the Palestinian territories, said evidence should be gathered and human remains identified before full clearance \u200cstarted. She issued a statement headlined: “UN expert warns Israeli rubble-clearing could erase traces of atrocity crimes” and said Palestinians should be \u200cbehind any plans to remove waste.<\/p>\n
“In devastated Gaza, rubble is not just construction waste. It is part of a crime scene, a graveyard, and the material record of what happened during a brutal and senseless bombing campaign that lasted two years,” she said. She said that multiple sources had confirmed Israeli companies were involved in the clearance, without naming those sources. Her office did not immediately respond to questions on where that information had come from.<\/p>\n
Israel’s Foreign Ministry, its Prime Minister’s Office and military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the past, all have fiercely disagreed with Albanese, who has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A U.N. expert said on Monday that Israeli \u2060clearance of rubble in Gaza could destroy valuable evidence of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,86,1031,85,87,99446,92,46,58195,1513,43,77],"class_list":["post-609355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-hezbollah","tag-idf","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-iran-u-s","tag-iran-nuclear","tag-israel","tag-israel-elections-2026","tag-israel-gaza-war","tag-news","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}