Ref: 26/2022
Date: 15 September 2022
Today, 15 September 2022, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) received a delegation from DanChurchAid (DCA), headed by the DCA General Secretary, Ms. Birgitte Qvist-Sørensen, at PCHR’s head office in Gaza City.
Lawyer Raji Sourani and PCHR’s staff welcomed Ms. Sørensen and the accompanying delegation. Sourani emphasized the importance of PCHR’s partnership with DCA that goes beyond financial support as it is a partnership of visions and principles based on working for human dignity and rule of law.
From her side, Ms. Sørensen thanked PCHR for the warm reception and praised the valuable partnership and relationship with it. She also expressed her appreciation for PCHR’s work and common values of human dignity and justice, stressing that human rights are fundamental to the church-related organizations.
The meeting discussed the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in the Gaza Strip that has been under an illegal and immoral closure imposed by the Israeli occupation forces for 15 years, leading to devastating consequences for around 2 million Palestinians and increasing poverty and unemployment rates. Sourani reviewed Israeli Occupation Forces’ destructive offensives on the Gaza Strip, during that period, and their devastating consequences on the civilian population and their property, noting that the latest offensive was conducted only last month. In the West Bank, IOF continued their settlement expansion and geographic fragmentation by establishing hundreds of military checkpoints that have turned the Palestinian cities into isolated Bantustans.
Sourani stressed that the international law is based on protection of civilians; however, here civilians are in the eye of the storm in Palestine, where IOF have committed for decades war crimes and apartheid against them in full view of the international community and amid the latter’s inaction. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court opened a prompt investigation into the situation in Ukraine and mobilized all potentials for it just months after the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine.
