PRESS RELEASE

19 June 1997

Released @ GMT 9am (10am local time)

The Israeli Occupation Forces Escalate Measures

Restricting the Freedom of Movement of Palestinians

Within the last two weeks, Israeli occupation forces have barred the travel of hundreds of Palestinians to and from the Gaza Strip, escalating dangerously the measures restricting Palestinian citizens and their right to freedom of movement. Hundreds of persons needing to travel between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or abroad have been prevented from doing so.

The last two weeks have seen a dramatic increase in the number of persons denied exit permits, thus preventing thousands of Palestinians from leaving Gaza to travel for reasons such as medical treatment, work, or educational purposes. The list of deprived persons includes members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), doctors, journalists, lawyers and officials in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Listed below is a sampling of persons with whom the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has assisted in seeking permits to travel from the Gaza Strip:

1. Israeli occupation forces have refused on several occasions to allow Ra’fat al-Najjar, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to travel to Ramallah to participate in legislative council meetings. Most recently, he was prevented from attending the 16 June 1997 session of the PLC, despite the fact that he holds a VIP permit from the Palestinian National Authority.
2. On the 27th January and 15 April 1997, Mr. al-Najjar was barred from going to the West Bank through Israeli territory. Later, the Israeli occupation forces allowed him to leave Gaza to attend meetings of the PLC and its committees only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays of each week. Moreover, on 25 February 1997, the Israeli occupation forces had, as a result of the tight closure that was imposed, barred all members of the PLC in the ‎Gaza Strip from going to the West Bank.

 

3. Israeli occupation forces refused to provide any information regarding the reasons for the restriction. The barring of Mr. al-Najjar’s travel constitutes a grave assault on his parliamentary immunity as a member of the PLC and has a direct impact on the Palestinian legislative process, as such practices usually lead to the postponement of the Council and committee functions.

On the 7th June 1997, Israeli occupation forces prevented Faid Abu Shamalah, who is a correspondent in Gaza for the BBC and the International United Press, from traveling to London via the Rafah border crossing to attend a training course organized by the BBC for its foreign correspondents.

Similar actions by Israeli authorities also restricted the movement of Dr. Sami Al-Esawi by preventing him from leaving the Gaza Strip through Erez checkpoint to go to Ekelhov hospital in Tel Aviv to continue his participation in a training course orchestrated jointly by the Israeli and Palestinian Ministries of Health. The course was developed to train Palestinian doctors in the specific health concerns of the Gaza Strip. Dr. Al-Esawi had been attending the course, which began on 16 February and was scheduled to last until 12 June 1997, for nearly three months when Israeli military forces barred him on the 13th May 1997 from further participating in the course.

Likewise, Dr. Yusef Mussah was also deprived of participating in a similar training course, in which UNRWA asked him to participate on the 1st of June.

Israeli occupation forces have barred the travel of advocate Jamal Al-Sousi who currently works as lawyer at the Palestinian Independent Commission on Citizens Rights. Without providing any explanation, Israeli authorities recently kept Mr. Al-Sousi from traveling to the Commission’s headquarters in Ramallah.

Notably, for more than two years, Israeli occupation forces have continued their refusal to issue Palestinian lawyers permits to visit Palestinian detainee clients in Israeli prisons, or to defend them in Israeli military courts.

These measures violate basic human rights norms, assaulting the dignity of individuals and the right to freedom of movement to leave one’s own country and return back freely. Israeli occupation forces violate not only basic human rights standards, but also the provisions of the signed peace agreements between the PLO and the Government of Israel which state that the Gaza Strip and West Bank are one territorial unity. This concept must be preserved. Depriving Palestinians of the ability to move between the two areas undermines that principal and negates the commitment to the territorial unity of the areas.

Moreover, the repeated deprivation of members of the PLC, as the representatives of the people, to fulfill the duties for which they were elected constitutes a serious danger to the Palestinian democratic process and requires the Legislative Council to postpone the fulfillment of its responsibilities and duties.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights considers the measures taken by the Israeli Government to be counterproductive to creating a peaceful atmosphere in the area, and as such, they will lead to catastrophic consequences in both the peace process and the region.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights demands that the Israeli government stop its oppressive measures against Palestinian citizens immediately and abolish its restrictions imposed on the freedom of movement of the Palestinian people, and at the same time demands the International community intervene effectively and immediately to force the Israeli government to abide by human rights standards and the signed peace agreements between the PLO and the Government of Israel.