THE Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on Monday condemned the 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine as ‘a shame on the international system’.
Israel attacked Jordan, Egypt and Syria on June 5th 1967, occupying the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. While Israel has returned the Sinai to Egypt following the signing of a peace agreement between them, it still holds onto the rest of the occupied territories in defiance of international resolutions that have called on it to withdraw from these territories.
‘We are marking 50 years since a deliberate Israeli attack resulted in Israel occupying the 22% of historic Palestine that had been left since 1948,” said Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the PLO’s Executive Committee. It was clear since then that, what Israel wanted was not a “temporary occupation”, but a colonial settlement strategy aimed at taking as much Palestinian land and natural resources as possible. In defiance of its obligations under International Law and UN resolutions, Israel has strengthened its colonial policies for the past 50 years.’
Erekat said: ‘For the Palestinian people, marking 50 years of occupation means marking 50 years of oppression, subjugation and daily control over all aspects of people’s lives. It means 50 years of attacks and aggression from occupation forces and settlers against a defenceless civilian population. At the same time, it has also meant 50 years of statements and international resolutions that Israel, the occupying power, has insisted on violating with impunity.’
The PLO official criticised countries that still deal with the occupation in spite of its defiance of international law. As we mark 50 years, there are a number of countries that continue to reward the Israeli occupation of our land: They trade with Israeli settlements, their companies profit from the Israeli colonial settlement enterprise and are engaged in an agenda of strengthening relations with Israel. At the same time, Tel Aviv systematically denies our basic rights, including the right to freedom and self-determination.
‘The implementation of UNSC resolutions, including 2334 regarding Israeli settlements, is long overdue. It is also overdue for countries that haven’t recognised the State of Palestine on the 1967 border to do so. How is it that countries which condemn settlements continue to trade with them? We demand a full ban on Israeli settlement products and we call upon the UN to publish as soon as possible the list of companies profiting from the Israeli colonial occupation of our country.’
Erekat called on the international community to take action to end the Israeli occupation, which is destroying the two-state solution. We are demanding from each member of the international community that they assume their legal responsibilities and stop cooperating with the Israeli occupation: We don’t want another 50 years of impunity and complicity with the systematic denial of our rights.
‘Israeli policies to destroy the two-state solution will not be met with the disappearance of our rights, rather they will be met with more resilience from our people who will remain steadfast towards the fulfilment of their rights. Our people.’
• FIFTY years after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it still controls these areas through repression, institutionalised discrimination, and systematic abuses of the Palestinian population’s rights, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
At least five categories of major violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law characterise the occupation: unlawful killings; forced displacement; abusive detention; the closure of the Gaza Strip and other unjustified restrictions on movement; plus the development of settlements, along with the accompanying discriminatory policies that disadvantage Palestinians.
Many of Israel’s abusive practices are carried out in the name of security. Whether it’s a child imprisoned by a military court or shot unjustifiably, or a house demolished for lack of an elusive permit, or checkpoints where only settlers are allowed to pass, few Palestinians have escaped serious rights abuses during this 50-year occupation,’ said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
‘Israel today maintains an entrenched system of institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians in the occupied territory – repression that extends far beyond any security rationale.’
As the occupation enters its second half-century, the focus should be on increasing the protection of the rights of the population of the occupied territory, Human Rights Watch said.
Unlawful Killings & War Crimes
Israeli troops killed well over 2,000 Palestinian civilians in the last three Gaza conflicts (2008-09, 2012, 2014) alone. Many of these attacks amount to violations of international humanitarian law due to a failure to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians. Some amount to war crimes, including the targeting of apparent civilian structures.
In the West Bank, Israeli security forces have routinely used excessive force in policing situations, killing or grievously wounding thousands of demonstrators, rock-throwers, suspected assailants, and others with live ammunition when lesser means could have averted a threat or maintained order.
Israeli official investigations into alleged security force abuses during the Gaza conflicts and in policing situations failed to hold the abusers accountable, with rare exceptions.
Illegal Settlements
Israeli authorities have, since 1967, facilitated the transfer of its civilians to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In 1967, Israel established two settlements in the West Bank: Kfar Etzion and East Talpiot. By 2017 Israel had established 237 settlements there, housing approximately 580,000 settlers.
Israel applies Israeli civil law to settlers, affording them legal protections, rights, and benefits that are not extended to Palestinians living in the same territory who are subjected to Israeli military law. Israel provides settlers with infrastructure, services, and subsidies that it denies to Palestinians, creating and sustaining a separate and unequal system of law, rules, and services.
Forced Displacement
Israeli authorities have expropriated thousands of acres of Palestinian land for settlements and their supporting infrastructure. Discriminatory burdens, including making it nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in East Jerusalem and in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under exclusive Israeli control (Area C), have effectively forced Palestinians to leave their homes or to build, at the risk of seeing their ‘unauthorised’ structures bulldozed.
For decades, Israeli authorities have demolished homes on the grounds that they lacked permits, even though the law of occupation prohibits destruction of property except for military necessity, or punitively as collective punishment against families of Palestinians suspected of attacking Israelis.
Israel has also arbitrarily excluded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from its population registry, restricting their ability to live in and travel from the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli authorities have justified these actions by citing general security concerns, but they have not conducted individual screenings or claimed that those excluded pose a threat themselves. Israel has also revoked the residency of over 130,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and 14,565 in East Jerusalem since 1967, largely on the basis that they had been away too long.
Gaza Closure, Unjustified Movement Restrictions in West Bank
For the last 25 years, Israel has tightened restrictions on the movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip in ways that far exceed any conceivable requirement of Israeli security. These restrictions affect nearly every aspect of everyday life, separating families, restricting access to medical care and educational and economic opportunities, and perpetuating unemployment and poverty.
As of last year, Gaza’s GDP was 23 per cent lower than in 1994. Seventy per cent of Gaza’s 1.9 million people rely on humanitarian assistance. Israel has also imposed onerous restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank, enforced at checkpoints within the West Bank and at its borders with Israel.
Israel’s separation barrier, ostensibly solely built for security, in fact slices through the West Bank significantly more than it runs along the Green Line separating the West Bank from Israel, contrary to international humanitarian law, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice in July 2004.
Abusive Detention
Israeli authorities have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since 1967, the majority after trials in military courts, which have a near-100 per cent conviction rate. In addition, on average, hundreds every year have been placed in administrative detention based on secret evidence without charge or trial. Some were detained or imprisoned for engaging in nonviolent activism.
Israel also jails West Bank and Gaza Palestinian detainees inside Israel, creating onerous restrictions on family visits and violating international law requiring that they be held within the occupied territory. Many detainees, including children, face harsh conditions and mistreatment.