Situation in the OPT – Letter from Kuwait

Letter dated 31 October 1985 from the Permanent Representative of

Kuwait to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

I have the honour to transmit a letter dated 30 October 1985 addressed to Your Excellency by the Permanent Observer for the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United Nations.

I should be grateful if you would arrange for this letter to be circulated as an official document of the General Assembly, under agenda item 75, and of the Security Council.

(Signed)  Mohammad A. ABULHASAN

Ambassador

Permanent Representative

ANNEX

Letter dated 30 October 1985 from the Permanent Observer for the

Palestine Liberation Organization to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

I am instructed by Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to bring the following to your immediate attention so you may be kept appraised of the deteriorating situation in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories:

On 28 October 1985, the below mentioned Palestinians were arrested and informed that they were being deported and that they were to appear before an Israeli military review board.

1. Hassan Abdul Jawad Farrarjeh, 32 years old, is a journalist from Bethlehem who, up to his arrest, lived in the Dheisheh refugee camp.  He was also head of the Dheisheh Camp Youth Center, which the Israeli occupation authorities closed 3 years ago.

2. Dr. Azmi Al-Shuaibi, 38 years old, a dentist from El-Bireh, is a member of the El-Bireh Municipal Council, which was illegally dissolved by the Israeli occupation authorities in 1982.  Prior to his arrest, Dr. Al-Shuaibi had been placed under "town arrest".  He suffers from a number of serious kidney ailments and was being treated at the Hadasah hospital at the time of his arrest.

3. Ali Abu Hilal, 32 years old, a Trade Unionist in Jerusalem, is a resident of the suburb village of Abu Dis.

4. Zaki Muhammad Abu Steiteh is a former political prisoner who had been released in the May 1985 prisoner exchange. He is a resident of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Israeli occupied Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Again we would remind that these deportations, if carried out, will be in flagrant violation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; The 1949 Geneva Conventions, and numerous United Nations resolutions on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

The number of Palestinians being deported from the Israeli occupied territories is alarming and raises the possibility that Israel intends to illegally and forcibly eliminate the total Palestinian presence from the occupied territories.

This real possibility and the present situation in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories requires an immediate practical response from the United Nations Secretary-General and the Security Council.

(Signed)  Zehdi Labib TERZI

Permanent Observer

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