Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, presented her report to UN member states in Geneva on Tuesday.

But Israel has already dismissed her findings.

This comes amid growing international pressure on Israel to stop the war or to do much more to protect civilians.

Ms Albanese concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met”.

Before Ms Albanese even got to her feet, her findings had been dismissed by Israel, whose ambassador described it as “an outrageous distortion of the Genocide Convention”.

Israel has for years been angered by the UN Human Rights Council’s agenda, which permanently devotes an entire section – Item 7 – to scrutiny of the situation in “Palestine and the other occupied Arab territories”.

The agenda item was approved not by the UN itself, but by UN member states, decades ago, and has never expired. No other country in the world has permanent scrutiny like this, and Israel views it as discriminatory, and aimed at delegitimising Israel. It refuses to attend the council when Item 7 is under discussion.

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