The United Nations has released a report detailing massive human rights abuses committed by Israel in the Palestinian occupied territories and revealing that the Zionist state refuses to cooperate with the U.N.’s mandate.
In the report, Israel is named as the provoker of violence and it emphasizes that Hamas generally does not retaliate. The report called on the U.N. council to condemn Israel and to commission a full study on the prolonged occupation. In addition, an appeal is made for another World Court advisory opinion, this time on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, said that since the beginning of his tenure in May 2008, despite repeated conciliatory efforts, there had not been any alteration of Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the mandate.
The principal purpose of the report was to assess efforts to realize the Palestinian right of self-determination, including in relation to refugees in neighbouring countries. It was important to assess to what degree refugee rights in the Palestinian diaspora were relevant to any negotiated peace arrangement reached between Israel and the Governmental representatives of the Palestinian people.
Several conclusions emerged from the mission, such as widespread disillusionment with the so-called peace process as a path to the realization of Palestinian self-determination, as well as with the roles played by the Quartet and the United Nations.
There was also rejection of armed resistance as the means by which to achieve positive progress toward realization of rights, past armed resistance having led to an intensification of hardship and suffering associated with life under Israeli occupation.
Furthermore, there was short-term pessimism about the achievement of Palestinian rights due to Israeli policies, especially the expansion of settlements and the purported annexation of East Jerusalem.
There were three main areas of urgent concern, namely Israel’s frequent use of administrative detention and the recent phenomenon of hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, targeted killings by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli settlements and related violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The main recommendations of the report included that a resolution should be adopted by the Human Rights Council and a special body be mandated to prepare a study on Israel’s use of administrative detention; that the Human Rights Council should commission a study on the adequacy of international humanitarian law to cover the situations of prolonged occupation and provide Israel and the international community with appropriate recommendations; that the International Court of Justice should be requested to provide an Advisory Opinion on the Israeli practice of transferring detained Palestinians to prisons in Israel, denying normal visitation rights, possibly joined to a request for legal clarification of the special character of prolonged belligerent occupation; and that the Human Rights Council should give increased attention to Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the normal functioning of the United Nations by way of the Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Of course, the Jewish Supremacists in America and Canada condemned the factual report as “anti-Semitism.”
The B’nai B’rith, which is very vocal on “civil rights” in America, issued a statement calling the report “anti-Israel,” claiming that Jews suffer much more than Palestinians.
In Canada, the Jewish Supremacist executive director of “UN Watch,” Hillel Neuer, wrote in the National Post that Richard Falk was an “anti-Israel hatemonger.”
