The Commission on Human Rights should condemn continuing egregious violations by Israeli authorities and armed Palestinian groups. These violations include Israeli policies that amount to collective punishment, Palestinian attacks targeting civilians, and the severe humanitarian impact of the separation barrier on the Palestinian population.
The Commission should call for the inclusion of human rights norms and a dedicated human rights monitoring mechanism in any peace negotiation framework. The “Quartet” roadmap, which has since been adopted in UN Security Council Resolution 1515 (2003), and the unofficial Geneva Accords were published in 2003 without reference to human rights standards or monitoring mechanisms.
Background
International attention since the Commission’s 59th session has focused on short-term opportunities for negotiation and the impact of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier. Long-term patterns of serious human rights violations are still ongoing.Parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to ignore basic standards of human rights law and the laws of war. The current intifada, now in its fourth year, has resulted in the killing of some 3,500 people and injured more than 30,000, many severely. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians. The intensity of violence by Israeli security forces and Palestinian armed groups involving harm to civilians varied with political developments.
Palestinian abuses. Armed Palestinian groups continued to target Israeli civilians through suicide bombings and other deliberate attacks that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. At least 130 civilians were killed in such attacks in 2003. Armed Palestinian groups also executed dozens of Palestinians for allegedly collaborating with Israeli authorities.
Separation Barrier. Israel’s “separation barrier” is having a disastrous humanitarian impact. According to UN OCHA, some 650,000 Palestinians will be directly affected by the barrier’s construction. It has aggravated crippling restrictions on freedom of movement, and imperils essential access to education, work, water, and family life.
Settlements. Israel’s policy of establishing and expanding civilian settlements in the territories under military occupation violate international humanitarian law’s prohibitions against transfer of civilians to occupied territory and the creation of permanent changes that are not for the benefit of the protected population. The settler population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has doubled in the ten years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, and now stands at 236,381 people. The government continues to confiscate Palestinian lands to expand existing settlements and bypass roads, particularly in the East Jerusalem area. At least 62 new settlement outposts have reportedly been established since the current government took office in 2001. The separation barrier’s existing and planned route reinforces the pernicious humanitarian human rights consequences of Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
As of January 2004, the government indicated it might dismantle some “settlement outposts,” and possibly some government-authorized settlements as well. These proposals are largely cosmetic and fail to address the human rights and international humanitarian law violations attached to the settlements as a whole.
Use of Force/Impunity. Human rights groups continued to document repeated indiscriminate use of lethal force by Israeli troops, as well the excessive use of force in situations where law enforcement means were called for. Investigations into alleged wrongdoing by Israeli forces were infrequent, and the results rarely made public. Palestinian Authority (PA) officials condemned attacks on civilians, including suicide bombings, but failed to move decisively against those responsible for ordering and organizing them where they had the capacity to do so.
Assassinations policy. Israeli forces killed some 97 individuals under its assassinations policy in 2003, and injured 500 others. More than half those killed were civilian bystanders. At least some of these attacks were indiscriminate and disproportionate, including an operation on 21 October 2003 in Gaza city that killed 12 civilians.
Israel originally depicted its assassinations policy as a last-resort means to prevent imminent attack. By 2003 the government had steadily expanded the selection of targets and killed repeatedly without showing any link to imminent attack and that the arrest of suspects was not possible. The essentially political nature of the killings was shown even more clearly when Israel twice suspended its assassination policy for political reasons.
Collective punishment. By May 2003 Israel’s policy of house demolitions had made more than 13,000 Palestinians homeless. Thousands of homes and buildings have been demolished on alleged security grounds, many in excess of the requirements of military necessity. Twenty-one thousand dunums (approximately five thousand acres) of agricultural land have been razed. Israeli forces also demolished the homes of scores of families of alleged armed militants, a clear violation of the prohibition against collective punishment contained in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were so severe and widespread as to constitute collective punishment. These crippling restrictions disrupted access to medical care, education, and economic activity, and were frequently accompanied by extended curfews. Movement restrictions remained even as additional restrictions were imposed as a result of the separation barrier. The UN OCHA reported 757 movement barriers in place at the end of 2003.
Humanitarian crisis. Israel has a positive obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Regulations to ensure the welfare of residents of occupied territory. In November 2003 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ended its emergency relief aid program, arguing that “what began as an emergency situation facing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians has now turned into a long-term collapse of the local economy.” The ICRC statement said that “humanitarian aid is no longer the best way to help ... It is essential that the West Bank Palestinians' basic rights under international humanitarian law are respected.”
Arbitrary detention and torture. As of January 2004, some 5,900 Palestinians were being held on security-related grounds. Reports of ill-treatment were widespread, including kicking, beating, squalid conditions, and deprivation of food and drink, and Israeli human rights organizations documented cases of torture. Some 631 persons were administrative detainees, held on the basis of secret evidence without effective judicial review.
Recommendations
Commission members, bearing in mind their obligations as High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, should:
- Condemn abuses by both Israeli authorities and armed Palestinian groups, including collective punishments and suicide bombings.
- Call on the Israeli authorities to investigate and prosecute all cases involving excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Israeli security forces.
- Call on the Palestinian Authority to prevent attacks against civilians and to arrest and bring to justice, in accordance with international standards, those responsible.
- Call for the inclusion of human rights norms and a dedicated human rights monitoring mechanism in all peace negotiation frameworks.
- Condemn the impact of the separation barrier’s route on the rights of access to work, family life, water, education, health, and freedom of movement.
- Urge Israel to end all settlement activity on lands occupied in 1967 as a violation of customary international law, Article 49 (6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and human rights law.
