This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.

I was in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday on Monday, at the headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

I had the chance to sit down and speak with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, about a number of issues.

In a statement last month, Volker Turk just characterized Israel's actions in Gaza as ethnic cleansing, saying, quote,

this latest barrage of bombs forcing people to move amid the threat of intense fight attacks

and methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance

underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that's in defiance

of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, unquote.

I ask Volker Turk about his comments.

You must imagine over the last, over 20 months or so,

that the population inside Gaza has been displaced multiple times.

I've heard it directly from some of our staff who told me that they had to move from the north to the south, back to the north and back to the south, and within these areas again and again. So it shows a group of people, multiply displaced, and with the latest orders, they are essentially now confined to one-fifth of the territory.

So you basically ask people to go again to one-fifth of the territory and empty up the land.

That's what prompted me to call it ethnic displacement and ethnic cleansing.

And just this past weekend, officials in Gaza say at least 81 Palestinians were killed,

400 injured just over a day period.

You have accused Israel of inflicting horrifying, unconscionable suffering on Palestinians.

What is your response to the latest developments?

Well, you have seen that they established the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,

which is essentially a militarized form of providing humanitarian assistance.

We have seen at least over 600 people killed when they tried to go to these distribution points.

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