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Agenda item 7: Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories (A/HRC/52/L.31, A/HRC/52/L.32 and A/HRC/52/L.42)
Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.31: Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan
- Hashmi (Pakistan), introducing the draft resolution on behalf of the main sponsors, namely the States Members of the United Nations that were members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) except Albania and Cameroon, said that the sponsors strongly condemned the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan on the part of Israel. That decades-long occupation had given rise to numerous grave human rights violations, including the illegal imposition of Israeli citizenship on Syrian citizens, arbitrary arrests, torture, the exploitation of indigenous resources and the alteration of the area’s demographic composition. All unlawful actions aimed at perpetuating the illegal occupation, and the entrenched impunity fuelling those actions, were to be rejected.
- The draft resolution highlighted the international legal principle that the acquisition of territory by force was inadmissible and reaffirmed the illegality of the decision taken by Israel in 1981 to impose its own domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan. The text also expressed hope for the resumption of peace talks on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). Moreover, Israel, the occupying Power, was called upon to comply with the relevant United Nations resolutions, in particular Security Council resolution 497 (1981). The text included language demanding the immediate cessation of all settlement-related plans and activities in the occupied Syrian Golan, including plans to expand such settlements and double the number of settlers in the coming years. It characterized Israeli actions aimed at changing the legal status of the Syrian Golan as a flagrant violation of international law and of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention). Lastly, Member States were called upon not to recognize the illegal legislative and administrative measures put in place by Israel in the occupied Syrian Golan. He hoped that the draft resolution would be adopted by consensus.
- The President said that seven States had joined the sponsors of the draft resolution, which had no programme budget implications. He invited the States concerned by the draft resolution to make statements.
- Eilon Shahar (Observer for Israel) said that her statement addressed all three draft resolutions submitted under agenda item 7. At previous sessions of the Council, OIC and the Palestinian delegation had repeatedly called for an end to double standards, yet the draft resolutions presented under item 7 embodied the very same double standards they claimed to deplore. If the sponsors truly cared about accountability for human rights violations, they would not have actively worked to undermine fact-finding and investigative mechanisms in Yemen, Libya and Syria, where thousands had been killed and human rights violations continued to be committed. They would have supported the independent international fact-finding mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran rather than attempting to deny access to accountability for women and girls, Baha’is, Baluchis and Kurds.
- The Council had already adopted 100 resolutions against Israel, more than one third of all country-specific resolutions in the Council’s history. At the same time, attempts to adopt resolutions on other situations were blocked by the very States now decrying double standards. The sponsors of the draft resolution sought only to target Israel. They did not care about human rights; they did not care about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex persons in their own countries; they did not care about migrants who died building their stadiums; they did not care about the minorities they systematically suppressed; they did not care about freedom of expression and peaceful assembly as they targeted and killed people who took to the streets to demand change.
- Agenda item 7 represented an attempt on the part of certain States to prevent the Council from scrutinizing their own domestic human rights violations and to distract their people and prevent them from demanding more respect for their rights. Many of the States in favour of the draft resolution did not even recognize the right of Israel to exist or the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Item 7 resolutions were not about accountability for human rights situations. They were a tool used by those who had attacked Israel ever since its creation, an embodiment of the organized hatred and discrimination that Israel had felt in the Council since that body’s establishment in 2006. OIC members and other States that were outspoken in attacking Israel yet quiet on the situation of human rights in other countries, who sought accountability for some but blocked the same accountability for others, should abandon their double standards, stop the impunity they provided to despots around the world and cease the systematic hate they directed against Israel. Her delegation rejected agenda item 7 and called on all States to vote against all draft resolutions submitted thereunder.
- Ahmad (Observer for the Syrian Arab Republic) said that his statement addressed draft resolutions A/HRC/52/L.31 and A/HRC/52/L.42. The repeated terrorist attacks on his country were a continuation of the criminal approach of the Israeli entity towards the people and countries of the region. Those attacks would not affect his country’s determination to fully recover every grain of the occupied Syrian Golan; that right was not subject to negotiation or to a statute of limitations. The illegal Israeli measures and decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan had no legal effect, in line with the resolutions of United Nations bodies, including Security Council resolution 497 (1981).
- Throughout the years of occupation, the Government of Israel had implemented discriminatory and racist policies that affected all the basic rights of the population. They included colonial settlement policies, the theft of land and property and the plunder of natural resources, which changed the character, demographic composition and institutional structure of the occupied Syrian Golan. Noting the long-standing violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law, and their impact on the lives of the population, he encouraged the Council members to assume their responsibility and support the draft resolutions, whose well-established legal foundations revealed that the flimsy allegations put forward by some delegations were nothing more than flagrant double standards that encouraged the occupying Power to continue with its crimes.
- The escalating scale and seriousness of violations related to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan underscored the importance of draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42 as a tool for monitoring those grave violations, highlighting aspects of their illegality and reminding countries of their obligation not to engage in any activity that would prolong them. His delegation reaffirmed its full support for the mandate of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories and called for the Committee to be granted access to those territories, including East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan. It encouraged Council members to adopt draft resolutions A/HRC/52/L.31 and A/HRC/52/L.42 by consensus, in order to send a clear message to the Israeli authorities and put an end to the unprecedented situation of unlimited impunity that enabled them to act as a force above the law.
Statements made in explanation of vote before the voting
- Stasch (Germany) said that, while her Government’s position on the illegality of annexation remained unchanged, the draft resolution focused only on Israel and distorted the realities of the situation in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of Syrians were suffering at the hands of the regime. Her delegation therefore called for a vote on draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.31 and would vote against it.
- Jiang Han (China) said that, in the occupied Syrian Golan, Israel continued to establish settlements, undermine Syrian sovereignty and violate the human rights of the population. The international community should implement the relevant Security Council and Human Rights Council resolutions and call on Israel to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, abide by the Charter of the United Nations and international law, end its aggression and occupation, stop its violations of the Syrian people’s human rights and provide reparation for the victims. His delegation would vote in favour of the draft resolution and called on other Council members to do the same.
- Taylor (United States of America) said that the United States strongly and unequivocally opposed the Council’s biased agenda item 7. No country, including her own, was above scrutiny, but no other States – including those that were the subject of resolutions adopted at the current session or those on which the Council had been unable to agree even to hold a debate – had their own stand-alone agenda item. Only Israel received such treatment. For that reason, the United States opposed the draft resolutions submitted annually under agenda item 7.
- Kauppi (Finland), speaking on behalf of the States members of the European Union that were members of the Council, said that the European Union remained opposed to the annexation of the Syrian Golan by Israel and wished to reaffirm its commitment to the protection of human rights and the application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the situation in the occupied Syrian Golan. As in previous years, the European Union had not been involved in discussions on the draft resolution, as the textual amendments it had suggested in the past had been systematically ignored. The current draft contained no substantive changes and did not in any way redress the imbalance inherent in a text that expressed deep concern about the suffering caused to Syrian citizens by the actions of Israel but failed to even mention the suffering caused by the Syrian regime to its own people. For those reasons, the States members of the European Union that were members of the Council would vote against the draft resolution.
- At the request of the representative of Germany, a recorded vote was taken.
In favour:
Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Chile, China, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam.
Against:
Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Montenegro, Romania, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America.
Abstaining:
Cameroon, Honduras.
- Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.31 was adopted by 31 votes to 14, with 2 abstentions.
Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.32: Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination
- Hashmi (Pakistan), introducing the draft resolution on behalf of the main sponsors, namely the States Members of the United Nations that were members of OIC except Albania and Cameroon, said that the realization of the right to self-determination was key to upholding human dignity and advancing human rights. Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.32 reaffirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and their rights to live in freedom, justice and dignity and to an independent State. While reaffirming the need for a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it called upon Israel to immediately end its occupation of the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and to reverse and redress any impediments to the political independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Palestine. The draft resolution expressed grave concern at the demographic changes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that had resulted from continued Israeli settlement activities. He hoped that the Council would adopt the draft resolution by consensus.
- The President announced that 16 States had joined the sponsors of the draft resolution, which had no programme budget implications. He invited the State concerned by the draft resolution to make a statement.
- Khraishi (Observer for the State of Palestine) said that his statement addressed draft resolutions A/HRC/52/L.32 and A/HRC/52/L.42. He did not understand the logic that could justify not voting in favour of resolutions under agenda item 7, for that would be voting against the Council, and States that did not respect the Council and its programme of work should not present their candidacy to join it. Self-determination was such a fundamental right that he could not understand why anyone would not vote in favour of it.
- In 2018, the Knesset had adopted the Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People, under which Jewish citizens enjoyed the right to self-determination, a right that had been instrumental in helping many States Members of the United Nations put an end to colonialism and occupation; yet the Palestinian people were being denied that same right. States that claimed to be in favour of the two-State solution should first and foremost recognize the right of Palestinians to self-determination.
- The Council members had all recognized the settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as illegal under the terms of Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague Conventions and the Fourth Geneva Convention; under article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, they could be considered as constituting a war crime. Both the Human Rights Council and the Security Council had adopted resolutions condemning the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and considering them to be contrary to international law.
- However, successive Israeli Governments had continued to allow land to be stolen and, just the previous month, a decision had been adopted to overturn the 2005 decision on disengagement and to allow settlers to return to four settlements in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the current Government had legalized nine new settlements; two weeks previously it had agreed to the building of 10,000 new units for settlers. The Israeli Prime Minister had justified that action by saying that nobody could prevent the Jews from settling on their historic homelands. However, the Palestinian people had been present before the advent of Judaism, Islam and Christianity; they were the Indigenous People of those lands. If the international community did not take action to end the daily theft of Palestinian land, it would kill the two-State solution. He urged all members of the Council to vote in favour of the right to self-determination to ensure the legal integrity of the international community.
- Taylor (United States of America), speaking in explanation of vote before the voting, said that, while some Council members claimed they could not support country-specific resolutions that were not supported by the country concerned, even in some of the most egregious cases brought before the Council, those same States repeatedly supported each resolution that addressed Israel in that manner. One-sided resolutions submitted under agenda item 7 distracted from efforts to advance peace. The United States was committed to a negotiated two-State solution and believed that Israelis and Palestinians alike deserved to live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of security, freedom and prosperity. Her delegation called for a vote on draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.32 and urged all Council members to vote against it.
- At the request of the representative of the United States of America, a recorded vote was taken.
In favour:
Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Chile, China, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam.
Against:
Czechia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America.
Abstaining:
Cameroon, Lithuania, Romania.
- Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.32 was adopted by 41 votes to 3, with 3 abstentions.
Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42: Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan
- Hashmi (Pakistan), introducing the draft resolution on behalf of the main sponsors, namely the States Members of the United Nations that were members of OIC except Albania and Cameroon, said that the text affirmed that any action taken by Israel to transfer parts of its own civilian population to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the occupied Syrian Golan constituted a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and relevant provisions of customary international law, and recalled that the International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion of 9 July 2004, had indicated that Israeli settlements were unlawful under international law. Such settlements seriously endangered the viability of the two-State solution.
- The operative part of the draft resolution called for the full implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions; demanded that Israel should immediately cease all actions causing the alteration of the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied territories; and urged States and international organizations to avoid taking actions that recognized, aided or assisted the expansion of settlements or the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. It was universally acknowledged that the illegal settlement policy was fuelling a human rights catastrophe. He hoped that the Council members would unanimously reject the Israeli Government’s illegal settlement policy and adopt draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42 by consensus.
- The President announced that 14 States had joined the sponsors of the draft resolution, which had no programme budget implications.
Statements made in explanation of vote before the voting
- Manley (United Kingdom) said that the United Kingdom was committed to working with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to advance towards a peaceful two-State solution, with Jerusalem as the two countries’ shared capital. However, as other delegations had already noted, item 7 was the only item on the Council’s standing agenda that singled out one individual country, namely Israel, for scrutiny. Such disproportionate scrutiny undermined efforts to promote dialogue, stability and mutual trust and understanding between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, thereby damaging the prospects for a two-State solution. For that reason, the United Kingdom could not support any of the draft resolutions submitted under item 7.
- Nevertheless, his delegation’s position in that regard should not be misconstrued as an indication of support for illegal settlement activity or as being inconsistent with his country’s support for Palestinian self-determination. The clear position of the United Kingdom was that settlements in the occupied territories were against international law. The approval of such settlements, including in East Jerusalem, constituted unilateral action that risked escalating the situation, threatened the two-State solution and undermined the commitments made at Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh. Israel must cease the approval of settlements, the legalization of outposts and evictions from and the demolition of Palestinian property in the occupied territory, particularly in East Jerusalem. His Government was also concerned about incidents of settler violence, such as those that had recently taken place in Huwara, which had gone unchecked for too long. Israeli security forces must provide protection to the Palestinian civilian population, as they were obliged to do under international law, investigate and bring the perpetrators of settler violence to justice and end the culture of impunity. The United Kingdom also condemned, in the strongest possible terms, indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza and called on the Palestinian Authority to resume security cooperation with Israel. While the United Kingdom supported justified and proportionate scrutiny of the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the retention of item 7 on the Council’s agenda was not the appropriate manner in which to ensure such scrutiny. His delegation called for a vote on draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42 and would vote against it.
- Jiang Han (China) said that his delegation welcomed the submission of draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42. In recent years, settlements in the occupied territory had continued to expand, seriously undermining the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. China had always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people, efforts to restore their legitimate national rights and the establishment of a fully sovereign independent Palestinian State within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. China called on all parties concerned to scrupulously implement all relevant United Nations resolutions, including those of the Human Rights Council, and urged Israel to stop expanding settlements, put an end to the expulsion of the Palestinian people and lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip as soon as possible. The Chinese delegation would vote in favour of the draft resolution and called on all members of the Council to do the same.
- At the request of the representative of the United Kingdom, a recorded vote was taken.
In favour:
Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Chile, China, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam.
Against:
Czechia, Malawi, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America.
Abstaining:
Cameroon, Georgia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine.
- Draft resolution A/HRC/52/L.42 was adopted by 38 votes to 4, with 5 abstentions.
- The President invited delegations to make statements in explanation of vote or general statements on any of the draft resolutions considered under agenda item 7.
- Jiang Han (China) said that the situation between Palestine and Israel had recently begun to escalate once again. His Government called on all parties concerned to maintain calm and show restraint in order to prevent the conflict from spiralling out of control. China had always supported the just cause of the Palestinian people and efforts to restore their legitimate national rights. The fundamental solution to the Palestinian issue was the two-State solution. The international community should take urgent action to advance towards that goal, with a view to the achievement of peaceful coexistence. China was ready to work with the international community to promote an early, comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue and uphold international justice and equity. For those reasons, his delegation had voted in favour of the resolutions submitted under item 7 on the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.
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Document Type: Summary record, Voting record
Document Sources: Human Rights Council
Country: China, Finland, Germany, Israel, Pakistan, Palestine (State of), Syria, United Kingdom, United States of America
Subject: Annexation, Covenant: Economic Social and Cultural Rights, Fourth Geneva Convention, Golan Heights, Human rights and international humanitarian law, Jerusalem, Self-determination, Settlements, Situation in the OPT including Jerusalem, Statehood-related
Publication Date: 04/04/2023