UN investigator: US sanctions 'going to hurt me'

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said during a recent interview that sanctions levied against her by the U.S. government are going to “hurt me” and have serious implications on her life. 

“It’s very serious to be on the list of the people sanctioned by the U.S.,” Albanese told The Associated Press on Tuesday. 

Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has been tasked with investigating human rights abuses in Palestinian territories and has often accused Israel of committing “genocide” in its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel has long denied the accusations. 

The U.N. official warned that sanctions, when used in a “political way,” are “harmful, dangerous.”

“My daughter is American. I’ve been living in the U.S. and I have some assets there. So of course, it’s going to harm me. What can I do? I did everything I did in good faith, and knowing that, my commitment to justice is more important than personal interests,” she told the AP. 

Earlier this month, President Trump’s administration slapped sanctions on Albanese, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing she has been waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against” the U.S. and Israel, a close U.S. ally, that “will no longer be tolerated.” 

Albanese recently released an extensive report that probed the “corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.”

She recommended imposing sanctions and a “full arms” embargo on Israel. Israeli officials have called the report “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office.”

Albanese, who has been accused of antisemitism, was reappointed to a new three-year term earlier this year, despite opposition from the U.S., which has called for the official to be removed. 

Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip began after Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, carried out an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages. 

Since then, the Israeli military has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. 

“It’s shocking. I don’t think that there are words left to describe what’s happening to the Palestinian people,” Albanese said.