Press Release
PCHR receives the Special Rapporteur
Ref: 29/2000
Date: 28 February 2000
The United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory visited PCHR, where he has received by Raji Sourani. The Special Rappoteur came to PCHR to collect information in order to prepare his report on Israeli violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Special Rapporteur’s report will be submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in its 56th Session in March-April 2000.
During the meeting Sourani asserted the importance of not politicizing the mandate or the report of the Special Rapporteur. He also emphasised that the Special Rapporteur must work within the limits of his mandate to monitor Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Sourani recalled PCHR’s criticisms and those of other Palestinian human rights organisations, of the former Special Rapporteur, who deviated from his mandate and attempted to politicize the report.
He also criticised the European and American stance regarding the conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention on 15 July 1999. The conference was supposed to investigate measures to enforce Israel’s de jure application of the Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. However, due to pressure applied by Israel, America and many European countries, the conference was held for less than 15 minutes and no substantive efforts to meet the goals of the UN resolutions were made what-so-ever.
Moreover, Sourani outlined Israeli violations of human rights during the last year, particularly since the Barak-led labor government took power. Highlighting the following points:
- Israeli practices to judaize Jerusalem and its ethnic cleansing policy against Palestinians in the city. (All Israeli attempts to annex the city are illegal and void.)
- Israeli practices concerning settlement expansion and land confiscation are continuing at an unprecedented level.
The rate of settlement activities in the Occupied Territories have increased since Barak took power. Israel has intensified its settlement attacks in the Gaza Strip, around 42 percent of which is controlled by Israel.
Whilst the situation in Gaza in this regard is bad, the situation in the West Bank, considered strategically, economically and geographically more important by Israel, is far worse.
- The closure policy and its disastrous economic, social and political impacts on the Palestinian people.
The ‘safe passage’, which is in fact unsafe (Israel is engaged in blatant manipulation of international public opinion in this regard.)
The closure policy is a deliberate and formal Israeli policy, and the outcome of this policy is an apartheid system.
- The necessity of releasing all Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
The practice and measures adopted by the Israeli prison administration against Palestinian detainees.
The measures taken against prisoners’ families, during their visits to the prisons.
Israeli prevention of lawyers from the Gaza Strip from appearing before courts and from visiting jails.
- The Israeli High Court decision to ban torture. (The Centre is gravely concerned at, and strongly condemned the Court’s advice to the Israeli legislature to pass a law which would legalise torture against Palestinians.)
The refusal of the Court to apologize to Palestinian victims of torture. (The logical result of the Court decision would be to release and compensate Palestinian detainees who had been tortured in their interrogation and during their time in Israeli jails.)
The Centre submitted to the Special Rapporteur a package of documents and reports providing documentary and empirical support for all the above-mentioned issues, and affirmed the importance of including the facts documented by Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations in the Special Rapporteur’s report.
Finally, Sourani also stated that he considered the Israeli refusal to officially receive the Special Rapporteur to be a grave violation of the UN resolutions that established his mandate.
