UNITED Nations human rights expert Francesca Albanese has accused the international community of giving “Israel licence to torture Palestinians.”

Ms Albanese, the world body’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Monday that “torture has effectively become state policy” in Israel.

Presenting her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, she argued: “Israel has effectively been given a licence to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it.”

In her report, titled Torture and Genocide, Ms Albanese says: “What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.

“Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation room.

“Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory has become a space of collective punishment, where the destruction of the conditions of life turns genocidal violence into a tool of collective torture with long-term mental and physical consequences for the occupied population.”

Ms Albanese called on UN member states to “prevent and punish” acts of torture and genocide and to do much more to uphold international law.

She said Israel’s increasing use of torture “as part of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people makes this violation all the more grave and indefensible.”

Ms Albanese added: “If the international community continues to tolerate such acts when inflicted on Palestinians, then the law itself will be stripped of meaning.”

She has faced a huge backlash from Israel and its allies, such as the United States and Germany, with a constant stream of calls for her removal as a UN special rapporteur.

Israel’s mission to the UN blasted Ms Albanese’s report, branding her an “agent of chaos.”

In a statement, it said: “Ms Albanese abuses her platform to engage in virulent anti-semitism, including peddling narratives that constitute Holocaust distortion and trivialisation.

“She routinely makes statements supporting terrorist organisations and advocates dangerous extremist narratives to undermine the very existence of the state of Israel.”

Since October 7 2023, when 1,139 people were killed during a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel and some 240 were taken hostage, Israel’s invasion of Gaza has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 172,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

In the occupied West Bank, Israel authorities have arrested more than 18,500 Palestinians, including at least 1,500 children, since October 2023, according to Ms Albanese’s report.