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PCHR Testifies Before UN Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights

Lundi, 25 juillet 2011 - 8h52 AM

lundi 25 juillet 2011

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PCHR Testifies Before UN Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs in the Occupied Territories

On Friday, 22 July 2011, a delegation of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) testified before the UN Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs in the Occupied Territories. PCHR’s representatives included Hamdi Shaqqura, PCHR’s Deputy Director for Program Affairs, and Iyad al-Alami, PCHR’s Deputy Director for Administrative and Legal Affairs.

For the first time, the Committee was able to convene its sessions in Gaza City after passing via Rafah International Crossing Point, as the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have prevented it from conducting its work and refused receiving the Committee officially. However, the Committee used to perform its work in Cairo, Amman and Damascus in the past years. The Committee included Dr. Palitha T.B. Kohona, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to UN in New York, as a Chairperson ; Dr. Dato Haniff Hussein, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Malaysia to UN, as a Member ; and Dr. Fode’ Seck, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Senegal to UN, as a Member.

PCHR’s representatives reviewed the human rights situation and violations against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

In his speech, Mr. Hamdi Shaqqura, PCHR’s Deputy Director for the Program Affairs, addressed the violations perpetrated by IOF against the Palestinian civilians, some of which amount to war crimes. He highlighted the excessive use of force by IOF in the period from June 2010 to June 2011, and the accompanying crimes against Palestinian civilians, particularly in the Gaza Strip. These crimes resulted in 81 deaths among civilians, including 64 ones in the Gaza Strip.

Shaqqura shed light on investigations conducted by PCHR in each crime and explained that some crimes showed that IOF deliberately targeted civilians. He also reviewed the most prominent examples of PCHR’s investigations during the reporting period, including the excessive use of force against demonstrations marking the Palestinian Nakba, which resulted in wounding 143 civilians, including 47 children, 5 women and 3 journalists, as 105 civilians of whom were in the Gaza Strip.

Additionally, Shaqqura tackled killing 4 civilians, including two children, in an Israeli shelling of houses on al-Nazaz Street in al-Shuja’iya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, on 22 March 2011. Besides, he talked about the Israeli escalation against Palestinian civilians on 7 and 8 April 2011, as 10 civilians were killed, including a mother and her son and two children, when IOF shelled civilian areas in Rafah, al-Shuja’iya and Khan Yunis. Shaqqura addressed other examples in which IOF directly targeted civilian areas, which often resulted in killing civilians, including children and women.

Iyad al-Alami, PCHR’s Deputy Director for Administrative and Legal Affairs, tackled the absence of justice in the Israeli judiciary, stressing that when the matter is about Palestinian civilians in OPT, the Israeli judiciary, including the Supreme Court, is turned into a tool to legally cover what IOF perpetrate as an integral part of the occupation. Al-Alami discussed the difficulties facing victims of human rights violations in order to access justice under the laws that do not offer them reparations.

Al-Alami reviewed the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons and what they face of cruel, inhumane and degrading conditions, including torture crimes, health conditions and medical negligence, as some prisoners suffer from serious diseases and measures of solitary confinement. Al-Alami also showed statistics and information about prisoners, including children, women and patients.
Al-Alami highlighted the strict measures imposed on the Palestinian prisoners in an unprecedented manner after the Palestinian resistance had captured the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in June 2006. These measures included naked search against prisoners, solitary confinement against a large number of them, denying all the Gazan prisoners family visitation for five years and preventing hundreds of families in the West Bank from visiting their imprisoned sons in the Israeli prisons.

Al-Alami also tackled the last punitive measures taken against the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons upon orders by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to reduce the so-called advantages given to the Palestinian prisoners. He explained that Israel started to implement some steps against the Palestinian prisoners, including intensifying the naked research and solitary confinement of the Palestinian prisoners’ leaders and preventing the prisoners from resuming their higher education.

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