Middle East 

• On 7 February 2022, The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan, and Al-Haq jointly issued a statistical report on the assault on the Gaza Strip between 10-21 May 2021. The Israeli offensive saw 240 Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces, including 151 civilians and 59 children. The report also presents information regarding the damage to civilian objects—particularly residential houses—and commercial, industrial, health, and educational facilities, places of worship, agricultural lands, water and sanitation facilities, vehicles and others. According to the report, the occupation forces destroyed 1,313 residential units and damaged another 6,367. The number of forcibly displaced people due to the destruction of their house was 38,020, including 17,444 children and 10,218 women. The organizations reiterate their strong condemnation of the crimes committed by the Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza Strip, which continue to be perpetrated while the collective punishment of the population is implemented through closure and blockade. The organisations call on the international community and international legal bodies—including the International Criminal Court and the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—to investigate the apparent Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)and human rights in the Gaza Strip and to hold perpetrators accountable.

• On 3 February 2022, Addameer reported that leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations filed a procedural objection to the Military Commander of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the West Bank, against the declaration of the groups as “unlawful associations”, under the 1945 Emergency (Defense) Regulations. The declarations were made following the decision by Israel on 21 October 2021, to designate the groups as “terrorist organizations” under Israel’s domestic 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law. The organizations that objected are Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

Israel 

• On 3 February 2022, Adalah published a joint statement from human rights organizations based in Israel condemning attacks on Amnesty International following the publication of its report “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity.” The signatories wholeheartedly reject the idea that Amnesty International’s report as baseless, and antisemitic. The signatories are Adalah, Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Combatants for Peace, Gisha, HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, Haqel: In Defence of Human Rights, Human Rights Defenders Fund, Ofek: The Israeli Center for Public Affairs, Parents Against Child Detention, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Yesh Din. 

Europe 

• On 7 February 2022, the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine issued a briefing on EU research funding and Israeli Apartheid. “The European Union”, says the report, “has legal and moral obligations not to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the territories it has occupied since June 1967, not to further empower Israel’s unlawful military occupation and its oppression of millions of Palestinians, and not to further undermine the Palestinian people’s inalienable and universally-recognised human rights. Yet, states the report, EU funding programmes are doing just that.” 

North America 

• On 10 February 10, the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University hosted a conversation with Gil Hochberg about her new book, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future (Duke, 2021).

• On 10 February, the Foundation for Middle East Peace and the American Friends of Combatants for Peace, launched the Gaza 101 series. Discussion will continue weekly through Thursday, March 3rd. 

United Nations

• On 8 February, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People held its 406th meeting. With the Secretary-General presiding, the Committee re-elected the incumbent members of the Bureau, with the Permanent Representative of Senegal as the Chair of the Committee, and the Permanent Representatives of Cuba, Indonesia, Namibia and Nicaragua as Vice-Chairs. The State of Palestine remains an Observer on the Bureau, while one position of Vice-Chair and Rapporteur remains vacant, and consultations are continuing. The Committee also adopted its Programme of Work for 2022.

• On 3 February 2022,UNRWA reported that the Government of Austria, through the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of Austria Development Cooperation, signed an agreement for a total of EUR 1 million for the 2022 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) Emergency Appeal.

This newsletter informs about recent and upcoming activities of Civil Society Organizations affiliated with the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. The Committee and the Division for Palestinian Rights of the UN Secretariat provide the information “as is” without warranty of any kind, and do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, or reliability of the information contained in the websites linked in the newsletter.