UN Expert Warns Israeli Crackdown Will Fuel More Violence, Urges International Response – Press Release

GENEVA (22 April 2022) – A UN human rights expert today called on the international community to urgently initiate both short-term and longer-term steps to address the escalating violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

“The past few weeks have seen a rising level of violence associated with Israel’s 55-year-old occupation of Palestine,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. “International inaction in the face of these new levels of violence will only encourage more of the same.”

In recent weeks, Israeli security forces have entered the Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem and arrested hundreds of Palestinian worshipers amidst protests and stone-throwing, rockets have been fired towards Israel from Gaza and Israel has bombed Gaza, and scores of Palestinians have been injured in demonstrations against settler marches in the West Bank. More than 40 Palestinians and 15 Israeli and foreign nationals have been reportedly killed in the violence so far this year.

“This entrenched Israeli occupation, which has become indistinguishable from practices of apartheid, is based on the institutional discrimination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another,” said the Special Rapporteur.

“Violence and large-scale human rights abuses are inherent in such an unequal relationship. History teaches us the bitter lesson that prolonged and unwanted alien rule is invariably enforced by violence and resisted by violence.”

The level of violence required by Israel to maintain its occupation has been steadily increasing over the past 16 months. Last year marked the highest number of Palestinian deaths resulting from confrontations with Israelis related to the occupation since 2014. As well, the number of Palestinian children killed as a result of Israeli violence in 2021 was the most since 2014.

The reported incidents of settler violence towards Palestinians or their property in 2021 was the highest since statistics were first gathered in 2017. And the number of Palestinian homes demolished as a result of Israeli orders in 2021 was the most since 2016.

“Israel has chosen to deepen its occupation through the establishment of 300 settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law, where 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers live with full legal and political citizenship rights amidst five million stateless and rightless Palestinians,” Lynk said.

“A permanent occupation – a legal oxymoron – provides the Palestinians with no political horizon and no hope, only the despair of more of the same.”

The Special Rapporteur urged the international community to adopt a series of immediate and short-term measures that could correct this trend, including:

• Direct that Israel end its 15-year-old blockade of Gaza and allow the opening of its crossing points, as per UN Security Council resolution 1860 (2009);
• Direct that Israel immediately cease all settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as per UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016);
• Direct that Israel take immediate steps to enable Palestinian freedom of movement within the occupied Palestinian territory, including the removal of checkpoints, barriers, permit restrictions and separate highways;
• Direct that Israel immediately end all human rights violations and abuses in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the disproportionate use of force, demolitions and forced evictions, the adoption of steps to ensure accountability for settler violence and military violations of international norms on the use of force, and the ending of the suppression of Palestinian civil society organisations;
• And enable the Palestinian Authority to hold free, fair and peaceful elections in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

In addition, the Special Rapporteur called for the international community to embark upon a rights-based peace process between Israel and Palestine, which would be centred upon international law and the body of United Nations resolutions. The end goal, he said, must be the rapid and complete end of the occupation, and the realization of Palestinian self-determination.

“Only by providing a horizon of hope, through the international community’s meaningful demand that the occupation must fully end with all deliberate speed, can this alarming rise in violence be reversed,” Lynk said.

ENDS

Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

UN Human Rights Country Page: Israel