Ref: 35/2023
Date: 21 March 2023
Time: 11:20 GMT
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the decision of the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, on 14 March 2023, to close the Voice of Palestine Radio Station offices, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) channel, and ban their representatives from operating and broadcasting in occupied Jerusalem and Israel for six months.
Pursuant to the decision, yesterday morning, the Israeli authorities raided Marcel Production Company in Jerusalem and handed it an order to prohibit it from providing communications services to the Station.
This decision is the latest in the long series of Israeli occupation authorities’ systematic and illegal measures targeting the Palestinian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) operating in occupied Jerusalem since 1967, aiming to change the characteristics of the City and strangulating and forcibly displacing the City’s indigenous people. All of this aims at changing the characteristics of the City in favor of settlement activity and Judaization in order to create facts on the ground that would revoke Palestinians’ right to the land.
It is noteworthy that the Palestinian CSOs are exposed to daily violations by the Israeli occupation authorities intending to terminate them and undermine their role in developing the Palestinian society and strengthening the Palestinian resilience in the occupied City. The closure of Orient House in East Jerusalem in 2001 and the organizations operating under its umbrella was a landmark in the Israeli targeting of the Jerusalemite organizations, given its symbolic importance for the Palestinian presence in the city. Over the past years, the Israeli authorities have targeted dozens of organizations, arrested their staffs, and prevented them from conducting any activities in occupied Jerusalem. This campaign targeted and closed well-established organizations, including media, cultural, educational, humanitarian, and religious organizations, by the Israeli authorities on financial grounds or alleged incitement against the authorities. The most prominent of these organizations was the Maps Department and the Land Research Center of the Arab Studies Association; Al-Quds University Administration; Health Work Committees; Al-Hakawati Arts and Cultural Center; and Christian and Islamic religious institutions. Also, Media organizations, including the official Palestine TV, were also previously subjected to closure, and their correspondents were and still are prevented from covering any events in occupied Jerusalem.
PCHR alarmingly views the decision of closing the Voice of Palestine Radio Station and banning its staff from conducting any activities in Jerusalem and Israel. PCHR fears that the IOF may take further escalatory steps in this regard in light of the above-mentioned ministerial decision, including the arrest and attack of the Voice of Palestine Radio staff.
PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligations under Article (1) of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention to “respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances”. PCHR demands end of the conspiracy of silence exercised by the international community towards the Israeli occupation’s practices, encouraging the latter to furtherly commit violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including creating a Jewish majority in occupied Jerusalem.