Press Release—Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestine Territory
Joint Press Release
Geneva — 27 May 2021 — International-Lawyers.org, International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), Association Ma’onah for Human Rights and Immigration (AMHRI), and Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ) welcome the Human Rights Council’s decision to convene a Special Session to address the grave human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. We regret that despite registering as soon as the registration portal opened, none of our organizations were authorized to deliver an oral statement. Nevertheless, we are providing this statement of our positions on the situation in Palestine.
Beginning on 10 May 2021, Israeli forces launched an act of aggression against the occupied people of Palestine that was the deadliest since 2014. The horrifying images of deadly rockets delivered by aircraft in the media contributed to exposing Israel’s blatant disregard for human rights and humanitarian law. Hundreds of defenseless Palestinian civilians were killed, including dozens of children. Thousands of Palestinians were injured and hundreds of Palestinian homes were destroyed. Over seventy thousand Palestinians were displaced in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. In contrast, thirteen Israelis were killed and 117 wounded. The disproportionate casualties and damages recorded during the recent confrontations contradict Israel’s claim that it was acting in proportional self-defence.
Israel as an occupying power has the responsibility to ensure the safety of those it occupies and to end its occupation of Palestine. Israel has a legal obligation to respect Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Until the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is fully realized there can be no equivalence between the act of people struggling for self-determination, and the acts of an unlawful occupying power.
The recent atrocities add up to decades of discrimination, intimidation, inhumane treatment, and violence by Israeli authorities against Palestinians in their own land. In East Jerusalem, nearly a thousand Palestinians remain at risk of forced eviction. In Gaza, almost two million Palestinians have been denied the necessities of life for prolonged periods of time and have been subjected to attack from high-powered military weapons provided to Israel by, among others, European countries and the United States. Israel’s attack on Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Friday, 7 May 2021, during Ramadan, and without legitimate security grounds, reflects a callous disregard for the religion of others. Palestinians’ fundamental rights are increasingly undermined by the policies of Israeli government, and ethnic cleansing is a reality for Palestinian inhabitants in the OPT. These actions by Israel, taken as a whole, are now widely recognized as constituting the crime of apartheid and amount to the international crime of genocide.
The international community must not remain silent. The international community must uphold the jus cogens right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and it has an erga omnes obligation to end apartheid and genocide wherever they take place. Israel must stop the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, including the forced evictions of Palestinian families from their homes. Israel must end its policy of apartheid. We urge the Council to encourage the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for the atrocities committed for years in Palestine, including the determination of whether those acts amount to genocide.