{"id":286463,"date":"2023-04-13T10:48:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?post_type=document&p=286463"},"modified":"2023-04-13T14:23:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:23:31","slug":"un-special-rapporteurs-urge-international-community-to-end-forced-displacement-and-annexation-of-occupied-territory-press-release","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/un-special-rapporteurs-urge-international-community-to-end-forced-displacement-and-annexation-of-occupied-territory-press-release\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Special Rapporteurs Urge International Community to End Forced Displacement and Annexation of Occupied Territory – Press Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arabic: \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629<\/a><\/p>\n

GENEVA (13 April 2023)<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The international community must take immediate action to stop Israel\u2019s forced evictions and displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem as part of Israel\u2019s annexation and de-Palestinianisation of the city, UN experts* said today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world’s attention has been focused on Israel’s recklessness in Al-Aqsa, rockets fired from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, with deadly attacks against Israeli and international civilians making headlines. All the while, tenfold Palestinian deaths were not making similar headlines,\u201d the experts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been an ongoing and unchecked tragedy: the forced eviction of Palestinians from their homes,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite efforts of international organisations and activists, Palestinians under Israeli occupation continue to be forced out of their homes and dispossessed of their land and properties on the basis of discriminatory laws,\u201d the experts said. They said these laws were designed to consolidate Jewish ownership in Jerusalem, irredeemably altering its demographic composition and status.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s transfer of its own population into the occupied territory confirms a deliberate intention to colonise the territory it occupies \u2013 a practice strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law,\u201d they said, reiterating their\u00a0past statement<\/a>. \u201cIt amounts to a\u00a0prima facie\u00a0<\/em>war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 150 Palestinian families in the Old City of Jerusalem adjacent neighbourhoods such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah are at risk of forced eviction and displacement by Israeli authorities and settler organisations. Over the past decades, hundreds of Palestinian properties in occupied East Jerusalem have been taken over by settlers, in part due to a law that claims to allow the transfer of pre-1948 Jewish property to the \u2018original Jewish owners\u2019 or their \u2018heirs\u2019. According to the experts the law helps settler organizations expropriate Palestinian properties through a manipulation of the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is lawfare in action. The law is discriminatory and acquisitive by design, and no such right to restitution exists for the over 1 million Palestinians and their descendants who were displaced and dispossessed from Jerusalem, Israel, and the rest of the West Bank and Gaza as of 1947 and in 1967. They are still longing for justice,\u201d the UN experts said.<\/p>\n

The experts expressed specific concern for three families in East Jerusalem: the Shehade family in Silwan, the Ghaith-Sub Laban family in the Old City, and the Salem family in Sheikh Jarrah. Despite living in their homes for many decades under a protected tenancy lease, these families have faced eviction lawsuits filed by settler organisations seeking to take over their properties for years. The Ghaith-Sub Laban family has already exhausted all legal avenues to challenge the eviction order, and the Israeli authorities have served them with a notice to vacate their house by 25 April, or face forced eviction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is in blatant violation of international law that does not confer the occupying Power the authority to change the local legislation unless strictly required by security needs: settler-colonial intent and interests are not a security need,\u201d the experts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe establishment and expansion of settlements constitute a grave breach of international law, prosecutable under the Rome Statute. No State should passively acquiesce with these illegal acts to trump the rights of Palestinians to self-determination, adequate housing, property, non-discrimination\u201d the experts stressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Palestinians, the enjoyment of human rights is a far-off hope as the suppression of these rights is part of the very architecture of the Israeli occupation,\u201d they said. \u201cThe almost 56-year long occupation and the way it is allowed to conduct itself with general impunity and without consequences, makes a farce of international law and the credibility of the system mandated to enforce it. The occupation must end with all deliberate speed and until that day, Israel must comply fully with international humanitarian law and international human rights law obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experts have repeatedly raised these issues with the Government of Israel without any response to date.<\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n

*The experts:\u00a0Francesca Albanese,\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967<\/strong><\/a>;<\/strong>\u00a0Balakrishnan Rajagopal,\u00a0<\/strong>Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing<\/strong><\/a>;<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Paula Gaviria Betancur,\u00a0<\/strong>Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the\u00a0Special Procedures<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

UN Human Rights, Country Page:\u00a0Occupied Palestinian Territory<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Israel<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arabic: \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629 GENEVA (13 April 2023)\u00a0\u2013 The international community must take immediate action to stop Israel\u2019s forced evictions and displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem as part of Israel\u2019s annexation and de-Palestinianisation of the city, UN experts* said today. \u201cThe world’s attention has been focused on Israel’s recklessness in Al-Aqsa, rockets fired from Gaza, Lebanon […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"template-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[897],"document-category":[1329,1338],"document-source":[6726,5073,2025],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2849,1741,2613,1961,2297,2185,1737,2137,2729],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-286463","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","country-israel","document-category-press-release","document-category-statement","document-source-special-rapporteur-on-the-human-rights-of-internally-displaced-persons","document-source-special-rapporteur-on-the-right-to-adequate-housing","document-source-special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-the-opt","document-subject-annexation","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-internally-displaced-persons","document-subject-jerusalem","document-subject-land","document-subject-legal-issues","document-subject-racial-discrimination","document-subject-settlements","document-subject-shelter","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/286463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/286463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=286463"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=286463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}