Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, says she is “shocked” but not “surprised” by the genocide in Gaza, having studied the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades.

“This is what settler colonialism, if unchecked, leads to,” she told the audience of the European Palestinian Network Conference in Copenhagen via videolink.

Albanese called for an end to Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, but said this “doesn’t mean the Jewish people cannot live ever in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

“There are many anti-apartheid Jews who live among Palestinians, but not as settlers, not as supremacists, but as equal, renting instead of stealing,” she said, according to Al Jazeera.