Situation in the OPT – Letter from Palestine

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Forty-ninth session

Agenda items 4 and 12

QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE OCCUPIED

ARAB TERRITORIES, INCLUDING PALESTINE

QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL

FREEDOMS IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE

TO COLONIAL AND OTHER DEPENDENT COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES

Letter dated 2 March 1993 from the Permament Observer for

Palestine to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed

to the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights

The Israeli occupation forces imposed this morning, 2 March 1993, a curfew on the Gaza Strip, closing it completely and isolating it from all the world for an unlimited period.  Besides, tens of Palestinians have been arrested in the Palestinian occupied territories.

By this new curfew on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Government continues its policy of collective punishments against the Palestinian people, with grave violations of articles 33 and 53 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 1949.

This curfew, imposed on the Gaza Strip where 800,000 Palestinians live, is completely cutting them off from all the world and prevents journalists from entering the Strip during the curfew.  This leads to a grave threat to the lives of the Palestinians.  During similar curfews in the past, the Israeli military forces indeed perpetrated mass killings of Palestinians.

In the meantime, the Israeli occupation authorities continued their policy of killings, 26 Palestinians having been killed and tens of them injured in February 1993, with grave violations of article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We kindly request you to circulate this memorandum as an official document of the forty-ninth session of the Commission on Human Rights, under agenda items 4 and 12.

(Signed)  Nabil Ramlawi

Ambassador

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