Situation in the OPT – Letter from CEIRPP Chairman

Letter dated 15 June 1990 from the Chairman of the Committee

on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian

People addressed to the Secretary-General

In my capacity as Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, I wish to express outrage at the incursion by the Israeli army into the Rimal Health Centre in Gaza City and its use of tear-gas, which seriously affected a large number of infants and women.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (press release HQ/8/90, dated 13 June 1990), on 12 June, an Israeli army officer, who was pursuing stone-throwers, fired two tear-gas cannisters into the Rimal Health Centre.  As a result, some 160 infants were overcome by tear-gas fumes and had to be given emergency treatment.  Reuters reported, on 13 June, that the Israeli army had sentenced the officer in question to 10 days in prison.

On behalf of the Committee, I wish to protest in the strongest terms the tendency on the part of the Israeli army to turn on children of ever younger ages in its efforts to suppress the intifadah through random brutality and intimidation of the civilian population.  Only a week ago, on 5 June, Agence France Presse reported that two children, aged 7 and 14 respectively, were shot and killed in Nablus.  Since the beginning of the intifadah, at least 209 children under 16 have been killed and hundreds of others wounded.

These policies and practices demonstrate yet again that Israel attaches little importance to the obligations incumbent upon it, as occupying Power, under the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, particularly to articles 24, 28 and 50 which provide for the legal protection of children.  They are also in violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989, which states that children shall enjoy special protection and care.

Deeply alarmed at the extreme gravity of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, which is exacerbated by the intransigence of the Israeli Government, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People calls once again for the urgent adoption of effective measures by the Security Council to provide international protection to Palestinian civilians, as requested by the General Assembly in resolutions 43/233 and 44/2 of 20 April and 6 October 1989 respectively.  The Committee also appeals to you, and to the organizations of the United Nations system, to do everything possible to alleviate the suffering of the defenceless Palestinian civilians living under occupation, especially the women and children.

The Committee wishes to stress once again that it is absolutely imperative to advance towards a comprehensive and just settlement of the question of Palestine in accordance with General Assembly resolution 44/42 of 6 December 1989, and again appeals to all parties concerned to intensify their efforts to attain this essential objective.

I should be grateful if you would have this letter circulated as an official document of the forty-fourth session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 39, and of the Security Council.

(Signed)  Absa Claude DIALLO

Chairman

Committee on the Exercise

of the Inalienable Rights

of the Palestinian People

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