[anarchist23]

The head of the United Nations' West Asia commission, Rima Khalaf, has resigned over what she described as the pressure to withdraw a report that was critical of Israel.

The report accused Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians. Lebanon-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a UN body had clearly made the charge.

"It was expected that Israel and its allies will exercise pressure on the UN secretary-general to distance himself from the report and that they will ask him to withdraw it," Khalaf said at a press conference in Beirut on Friday.

Who is Rima Khalaf?
Rima Khalaf, a national of Jordan, was appointed as undersecretary-general of the UN and Executive Secretary of the ESCWA by the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010.
Before her UN role Khalaf held several high-ranking ministerial positions in Jordan, including minister of industry and Trade, minister of planning and deputy prime minister.
Khalaf also held the position of assistant secretary-general and director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2000 to 2006.
She was the founder of the award-winning Arab Human Development Report.
Khalaf holds a BA in Economics from the American University of Beirut and a Master's in Economics and a PhD in System Science from Portland State University in the US.
"The secretary-general issued his orders to me yesterday morning to withdraw the report. I asked him to review his position, but he insisted," she said. "Therefore, I submitted to him my resignation from the UN."

Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beirut, said that Khalaf clearly stated that she was still standing by the report, which in very explicit terms accused Israel of pursuing apartheid policies in the Palestinian territories.

"The Israeli government was very critical of the report even describing it as 'Nazi Propaganda' and one would imagine that they made it very clear to the UN leadership that that is how they saw it," the Al Jazeera correspondent said.

"So, one would also imagine that is perhaps why the UN secretary-general is demanding this report to be withdrawn from ESCWA website."

At the time of the publication, the report titled "Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" was not on the website of the UN agency, with the link for the report now directing to a web page that consists ESCWA's prior publications.

A UN spokesman on Friday claimed the issue with Khalaf was not the content of the report but as a result of her failure to follow the necessary procedure before the publication.

"This is not about content, this is about process," said UN chief Antonio Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"The secretary-general cannot accept that an undersecretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorise the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself," he told reporters.

Al Jazeera's Tyab said it was "highly unlikely" that the UN leadership was unaware of the report's existence or the language inside it before its publication.

"The curious thing here is that Al Jazeera and many other news organisations had been aware of this report for several days now," he said.

"In fact, most news organisations were invited to the press conference that was held around 24 hours ago where this report was released and members of the media were also given an embargoed advance look at this report.

"So it is very curious that the UN is now saying that the official procedures hadn't been followed, that they were not aware of the language inside the report, when even many in the media were aware of its publication and its contents.

"This feels like yet another chapter in the very strained and complicated relationship the UN has with Israel."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/o ... 41142.html

[Zionist Nationalist]

This report is a joke and was made by Muslim countries that dont have any human rights at all

[Vasili Blokhin]

@Zionist Nationalist So it's ok to have no human rights in Israel then? I thought you people was to better than those "Anti-Rights" Muslim states. Which I know some have more rights than Israel.

[Zionist Nationalist]

The Palestinian territories have their own government and Israel give them basic rights. yes things are not perfect but still better than in Muslim countries where they treat even their own citizens like shit

[Vasili Blokhin]

The Palestinian territories have their own government and Israel give them basic rights. yes things are not perfect but still better than in Muslim countries where they treat even their own citizens like shit

LOL, I do see any rights there. Hell, a lot of Muslim countries have had females as presidents. Israel don't even treat their women right.

[Zionist Nationalist]

are you joking?

Israel is the only country in the middle east where gays can march freely on the streets
women here have more rights than men and Israel also had a female prime minister (the prime minister is the leader of the country and not the president)

seriously do some research

[Vasili Blokhin]

are you joking?

Israel is the only country in the middle east where gays can march freely on the streets
women here have more rights than men and Israel also had a female prime minister (the prime minister is the leader of the country and not the president)

seriously do some research

You call that tranny a female? Plus you hate gays anyway, so that should be a con than a pro. You also forgetting turkey does that also. http://islamandhomosexuality.com/5-musl ... gay-legal/

Meanwhile: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.731392

[anarchist23]

The question is not whether the term "apartheid" applies to Israel. It is why it should cause such an outcry when it is used.

The storm of controversy after Secretary of State John F. Kerry's warning that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state" reminded us once again that facts, data and the apparently tedious details of international law often seem to have little bearing on conversations about Israel conducted at the highest levels of this country. As was the case when other major figures brandished the "A-word" in connection with Israel (Jimmy Carter comes to mind), the political reaction to Kerry's warning was instantaneous and emotional. "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer. That's that, then, eh?

Not quite. Flat and ungrounded assertions may satisfy politicians, but anyone who wants to push the envelope of curiosity even a little bit further might want to spend a few minutes actually thinking over the term and its applicability to Israel.


"Apartheid" isn't just a term of insult; it's a word with a very specific legal meaning, as defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1973 and ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions, to their shame).

According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts "committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them." Denying those others the right to life and liberty, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, expropriating their property, depriving them of the right to leave and return to their country or the right to freedom of movement and of residence, creating separate reserves and ghettos for the members of different racial groups, preventing mixed marriages — these are all examples of the crime of apartheid specifically mentioned in the convention.

Seeing the reference to racial groups here, some people might think of race in a putatively biological sense or as a matter of skin color. That is a rather simplistic (and dated) way of thinking about racial identity. More to the point, however, the operative definition of "racial identity" is provided in the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (to which Israel is a signatory), on which the apartheid convention explicitly draws.

There, the term "racial discrimination" is defined as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."

A few basic facts are now in order.

The Jewish state (for so it identifies itself, after all) maintains a system of formal and informal housing segregation both in Israel and in the occupied territories. It's obvious, of course, that Jewish settlements in the West Bank aren't exactly bursting with Palestinians. In Israel itself, however, hundreds of communities have been established for Jewish residents on land expropriated from Palestinians, in which segregation is maintained, for example, by admissions committees empowered to use ethnic criteria long since banned in the United States, or by the inability of Palestinian citizens to access land held exclusively for the Jewish people by the state-sanctioned Jewish National Fund.


And so it goes in all domains of life, from birth to death: a systematic, vigilantly policed separation of the two populations.
Jewish residents of the occupied territories enjoy various rights and privileges denied to their Palestinian neighbors. While the former enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law, the latter are subject to the harsh provisions of military law. So, while their Jewish neighbors come and go freely, West Bank Palestinians are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, and to the denial of freedom of movement; they are frequently barred from access to educational or healthcare facilities, Christian and Muslim sites for religious worship, and so on.

Meanwhile, Palestinian citizens of Israel must contend with about 50 state laws and bills that, according to the Palestinian-Israeli human rights organization Adalah, either privilege Jews or directly discriminate against the Palestinian minority. One of the key components of Israel's nationality law, the Law of Return, for example, applies to Jews only, and excludes Palestinians, including Palestinians born in what is now the state of Israel. While Jewish citizens can move back and forth without interdiction, Israeli law expressly bars Palestinian citizens from bringing spouses from the occupied territories to live with them in Israel.

The educational systems for the two populations in Israel (not to mention the occupied territories) are kept largely separate and unequal. While overcrowded Palestinian schools in Israel crumble, Jewish students are given access to more resources and curricular options.

It is not legally possible in Israel for a Jewish citizen to marry a non-Jewish citizen. And a web of laws, regulations and military orders governing what kind of people can live in which particular spaces makes mixed marriages within the occupied territories, or across the pre-1967 border between Israel and the occupied territories, all but impossible.

And so it goes in all domains of life, from birth to death: a systematic, vigilantly policed separation of the two populations and utter contempt for the principle of equality. One group — stripped of property and rights, expelled, humiliated, punished, demolished, imprisoned and at times driven to the edge of starvation (down to the meticulously calculated last calorie) — has withered. The other group — its freedom of movement and of development not merely unrestricted but actively encouraged — has flourished, and its religious and cultural symbols adorn the regalia of the state and are emblazoned on the state flag.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html

[skinster]

Israel is the only country in the middle east where gays can march freely on the streets

Didn't some gay people get attacked/killed at last year's pride in Israel?

Anyway, back to apartheid-Israel, here's Richard Gere :

[stephen50right]

If anyone believes that Israel is going to be swayed by anything the UN says, then they really should lay off the LSD sugar cubes.

God bless Israel.

[Eamonor]

It is an uncomfortable fact that in the case of Israel's long term sustainability, either firm policies have to be enacted to maintain and strengthen the Jewish majority, or some form of apartheid state must remain, those are the only two options.

[Zionist Nationalist]

It is an uncomfortable fact that in the case of Israel's long term sustainability, either firm policies have to be enacted to maintain and strengthen the Jewish majority, or some form of apartheid state must remain, those are the only two options.

Why is that a case of concern? would you rather have a developed country that produce high tech or another useless failed state?

[anarchist23]

Israel is an apartheid regime. There is no getting away from the fact.

[Zionist Nationalist]

All of this is complete bullshit

[jessupjonesjnr87]

Face the facts ZN, Israel is apartheid. It also poses great danger to the world at large.

[anarchist23]

@jessupjonesjnr87
Is all OK? Good to see you back.

[AFAIK]

All of this is complete bullshit

It took you less than 12 hours to go from, 'apartheid is good' to 'that's bullshit!'

Face the facts ZN, Israel is apartheid. It also poses great danger to the world at large.

Hey triple Jay how are you?

[anarchist23]

First, and crucially, it is not about a precise analogy with the apartheid South Africa regime. Although it is true that prominent veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle have invoked the comparison. In 2002, for example, Desmond Tutu said a trip to Palestine had reminded him “so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.” And in 2009 Tutu also endorsed a book I had written called Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.

There is a rich discussion to be had about what happened in South Africa and what is happening in Israel and Palestine. But this comparison is not how one ultimately tests whether to speak of Israeli apartheid is accurate or appropriate.

That is because apartheid is a crime in international law, independent of what took place in South Africa. The 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, for example, lists apartheid as a “grave breach”, and one “without any geographical limitation”.

Apartheid is also listed as a “crime against humanity” in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted in 1998 – four years after the formal end of apartheid in South Africa.

The Rome Statute defines apartheid as “inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

Do Israeli laws and practices match this definition? In the words of the US State Department, Palestinian citizens face “institutional and societal discrimination”. This affects areas such as immigration and family life, land and housing.

There is no legal guarantee of equality, and human rights defenders have identified more than 50 discriminatory laws.

In the West Bank, the Israeli state has created and established a network of illegal settlements whose residents – citizens of Israel – live among Palestinians subject to military law. While settlements expand, Palestinian homes are demolished.

Recently, in the words of Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem, Israeli authorities have “stepped up efforts to expel Palestinian communities from vast areas in the West Bank” – this is ethnic cleansing. From January 1 to February 15 of this year, according to United Nations data, Israeli forces destroyed or confiscated 283 Palestinian homes and other structures, displacing 404.

As a senior UN official explained, while most of these demolitions “take place on the spurious legal grounds that Palestinians do not possess building permits”, Israeli figures themselves show that “only 1.5 per cent of Palestinian permit applications are approved in any case”.

Amnesty International has described the “formal denial of participation in planning for an entire population, coupled with the establishment of a parallel planning system for Israeli settlements that explicitly discriminates in favour of another population whose very presence living in the territory in question violates international law” as “unique globally”.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians continue to suffer under an Israeli blockade that constitutes illegal collective punishment. When Israel is not conducting horrific large-scale attacks on the fenced-in territory, there are routine attacks on Palestinian farmers and fishermen.

The majority of Palestinians in Gaza are actually refugees, whose lands are often a few miles away inside Israel’s pre-1967 territory. It is a reminder of the fact that Israel’s "Jewish majority" was only established by the expulsion of Palestinians, and is maintained by their continued exclusion.

This is just a sample – but the key point here is that Israel’s crimes are not “aberrations”. They are not the actions of some gung-ho generals or of one particularly right-wing government. We are talking here about core legislation, and policies maintained by the state over decades.

We are talking about then, as the Rome Statute puts it, “inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalised regime.” This is why the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged Israel to “eradicate” all practices that violate the prohibition of “racial segregation and apartheid.”

To dismiss all of this because Israel “is not the same as South Africa” is to miss the point, in the same way that to whitewash systematic discrimination simply because there is an “Arab” on Israel’s Supreme Court (the only one from 66 justices past and present) is cheap tokenism.

The facts are clear. It is Israeli apartheid that should cause offence – not campaigns (or boycotts) in support of the Palestinians’ basic rights.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cal ... 93706.html

[stephen50right]

Israel is an apartheid regime. There is no getting away from the fact.

The usual bigoted nonsense to compare the two. Israel is surrounded by Muslim enemies. If it wasn't for Israel's defense capabilities, both Egypt and Jordan would have never signed peace treaties. Israel's policies are all about survival of the Jewish people.

The whites in South Africa had no foreign enemies. That was an internal struggle. The comparison of the two countries is totally bogus and every bigoted leftist knows it.

That being said, Israel couldn't care less what the bigots say or think. Israel is here to stay and will be for a very long time.

A little known fact for you silly bigots to ponder. Israel can absorb a nuclear strike better than any other country out there. They have an elaborate underground bunker system, by far the finest in the world, which protects the vast majority of their population. If a nuclear strike happened, of course Israel's enemy would be totally annihilated, and it would take some years of rebuilding, but Israel would windup bigger and better than before. For example, say if Iran attacked Israel...Israel would of course strike back and Iran would then cease to exist as a country and a people. Israel would annex the oil fields and become fabulously wealthy over the years, and that annexation would likely be permanent.

So bigots go ahead and continue with your hate. Hope you enjoy it although we conservatives who strongly support Israel couldn't care less about your distortions and lies, only to the point of exposing it.

[anarchist23]

This is an annual report from Amnesty International on the Zionists treatment of the Palestinians.

Israeli forces unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and was committed with impunity. The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, including by attempting to retroactively “legalize” settlements built on private Palestinian land, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Israeli forces continued to blockade the Gaza Strip, subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective punishment, and to demolish homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and of Bedouin villagers in Israel’s Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting residents. The authorities imprisoned conscientious objectors to military service and detained and deported thousands of asylum-seekers from Africa.

Background

Israeli-Palestinian relations remained tense. International efforts to revive negotiations failed, with Israel continuing to develop illegal settlements on territory it occupied. In December the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on Israel to cease all settlement activities in the West Bank.

In June the government announced a reconciliation agreement between Israel and Turkey which saw the two countries restore diplomatic relations. Israel agreed to pay compensation to the families of Turkish citizens killed by Israeli forces when they intercepted the humanitarian aid ship Mavi Marmara in 2010.

In September the government of the USA agreed to increase its military aid to Israel to $3.8 billion annually for 10 years from 2019.

The year saw stabbing, car-ramming, shooting and other attacks by Palestinians on Israelis in the West Bank and in Israel. The attacks, mostly carried out by Palestinians unaffiliated to armed groups, killed 16 Israelis and one foreign national, mostly civilians. Israeli forces killed 110 Palestinians and two foreign nationals during the year. Some were killed unlawfully while posing no threat to life.

Palestinian armed groups in Gaza periodically fired indiscriminate rockets and mortars into Israel, without causing deaths or serious injuries. Israeli forces responded with air strikes and artillery fire, killing three Palestinian civilians, including two children, in Gaza.

Freedom of movement – Gaza blockade and West Bank restrictions

Israel’s military blockade of the Gaza Strip entered its 10th year, continuing the collective punishment of Gaza’s entire population. Israeli controls on the movement of people and goods into and from Gaza, combined with Egypt’s almost total closure of the Rafah border crossing and funding shortages, damaged Gaza’s economy and hindered post-conflict reconstruction. Some 51,000 people were still displaced from the 2014 war, and unexploded ordnance from that conflict continued to cause civilian deaths and injuries. The number of Palestinians leaving Gaza via the Erez Crossing declined during the year, as the Israeli authorities denied, delayed or revoked permits for businesspeople, staff of international organizations, and medical patients and their companions.

Israeli forces maintained a “buffer zone” inside Gaza’s border with Israel and used live fire and other weapons against Palestinians who entered or approached it, killing four and wounding others. Israeli forces also fired at Palestinian fishermen in or near the “exclusion zone” that they maintained along Gaza’s coastline.

In the West Bank, the Israeli authorities severely restricted the movement of Palestinians on a discriminatory basis, particularly around illegal Israeli settlements and near the fence/wall. In response to Palestinian attacks on Israelis, the military authorities imposed collective punishment, revoking permits of attackers’ family members to work in Israel and closing off entire areas and villages.

Arbitrary arrests and detentions

The authorities detained or continued to imprison thousands of Palestinians from the OPT, holding most of them in prisons in Israel, in violation of international law. Many prisoners’ families, particularly those in Gaza, were not permitted entry to Israel to visit their relatives in prison. The Israeli authorities continued to arrest hundreds of Palestinian children in the West Bank including East Jerusalem. Many were subjected to abuse by Israeli forces including beatings and threats.

The authorities held hundreds of Palestinians, including children, under renewable administrative detention orders based on information that they withheld from the detainees and their lawyers. The numbers held under such orders since October 2015 were the highest since 2007; more than 694 were held at the end of April 2016 (the last month for which reliable data was available). Some detainees undertook lengthy protest hunger strikes; Palestinian detainee Bilal Kayed remained on hunger strike for 71 days. He was released without charge in December. Anas Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah ended their hunger strike on 22 December after 90 days without food.

Three Israeli Jews held as administrative detainees were released.

The authorities gave circus performer Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakha two additional six-month administrative detention orders in June and December, based on secret evidence. His first six-month detention order had been issued in December 2015.

Palestinians from the West Bank who were charged with protest-related and other offences faced unfair military trials, while Israeli civilian courts trying Palestinians from the Gaza Strip issued harsh sentences, even for minor offences.

Mohammed al-Halabi, a Gaza-based humanitarian worker, was denied access to his lawyer and interrogated intensively for three weeks after his arrest in June. He was charged in August with embezzling money from the charity World Vision and passing it to Hamas, the de facto administration in Gaza. World Vision said it had not seen any substantive evidence to support the charge.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Israeli soldiers, police and Israel Security Agency (ISA) officers subjected Palestinian detainees, including children, to torture and other ill-treatment with impunity, particularly on arrest and during interrogation. Reported methods included beatings, slapping, painful shackling, sleep deprivation, use of stress positions and threats. Although complaints alleging torture by ISA officers have been handled by the Ministry of Justice since 2014, and more than 1,000 had been filed since 2001, no criminal investigations were opened. Complaints that the Israeli police used torture or other ill-treatment against asylum-seekers and members of the Ethiopian community in Israel were also common.

The UN Committee against Torture conducted its fifth periodic review of Israel, criticizing continued reports of torture and other ill-treatment, impunity, and the authorities’ failure to proscribe torture as a crime under the law. Israeli officials noted that legislation criminalizing torture was being drafted by the Ministry of Justice, but it was not put before the Knesset (parliament).

In September the High Court upheld a 2015 law allowing the authorities to force-feed hunger-striking detainees; the law was not used in 2016.

Unlawful killings

Israeli soldiers, police and security guards killed at least 98 Palestinians from the OPT in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; eight in the Gaza Strip; and three in Israel. In addition, one Palestinian citizen of Israel, responsible for killing three Israelis in Tel Aviv on 1 January, was killed by Israeli police inside Israel. Most of those killed were shot while attacking Israelis or suspected of intending an attack. Some, including children, were shot when they were posing no immediate threat to others’ lives and appeared to be victims of unlawful killings.

Extrajudicial executions

Some of those killed appeared to have been victims of extrajudicial executions. They included 16-year-old Mahmoud Shaalan, shot dead by Israeli soldiers at a Ramallah checkpoint in February; Mohammed Abu Khalaf, killed in February by Israeli border police in East Jerusalem; and Maram Abu Ismail and her 16-year-old brother Ibrahim, who were shot dead at Qalandia checkpoint in April by private contractors employed by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

Excessive use of force

Israeli forces used excessive, sometimes lethal, force against Palestinian protesters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, killing 22 and injuring thousands with rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition. Many protesters threw rocks or other projectiles but were posing no threat to the lives of well-protected Israeli soldiers when they were shot.

Freedoms of expression, association and assembly

The authorities used a range of measures to target human rights defenders, in both Israel and the OPT, who criticized Israel’s continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

On 11 July the Knesset passed the so-called Transparency Law, which imposed new reporting requirements on organizations that receive more than 50% of their funding from foreign governments, almost all of which were human rights groups or other NGOs critical of the Israeli government.

Using military orders prohibiting unauthorized demonstrations in the West Bank, the authorities suppressed protests by Palestinians and arrested and prosecuted protesters and human rights defenders. Following the annual “Open Shuhada Street” protest in Hebron on 26 February, the authorities prosecuted Palestinian human rights defenders Issa Amro and Farid al-Atrash on charges that included participating in a march without a permit and entering a closed military zone. They were apparently prosecuted on account of their peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Issa Amro also faced charges arising from his peaceful activism in previous years.

For months after he filmed the extrajudicial execution of Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif by an Israeli soldier on 24 March in Hebron, B’Tselem volunteer Imad Abu Shamsiyeh received death threats from Israelis in nearby illegal settlements. Police turned him away and threatened to arrest him when he sought to lodge a complaint in August.

Palestinians and foreign nationals assisting human rights NGOs such as Al-Haq with their work in connection with the ICC received death threats.

A number of prominent Israeli human rights organizations and their staff, including Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem and Amnesty International Israel, were targeted by a government campaign to undermine their work.

In May the authorities charged former nuclear whistle-blower and prisoner of conscience Mordechai Vanunu with breaching the severe and arbitrary restrictions the authorities have imposed on his rights to freedom of movement and expression. The case was still pending at the end of the year.

Housing rights – forced evictions and demolitions

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities demolished 1,089 homes and other structures built without Israeli permits, an unprecedentedly high number of demolitions, forcibly evicting more than 1,593 people. Permits remained virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Many of the demolitions were in Bedouin and herding communities which the Israeli authorities planned to transfer against the residents’ wishes. The authorities also collectively punished the families of Palestinians who carried out attacks on Israelis by demolishing or making uninhabitable 25 family homes, thereby forcibly evicting their inhabitants.

The authorities also demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes and other structures inside Israel that they said were built without permits, mostly in Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab region. Many of the villages were officially “unrecognized”.

Impunity

More than two years after the end of the 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict, in which some 1,460 Palestinian civilians were killed, many in evidently unlawful attacks including war crimes, the Israeli authorities had indicted only three soldiers for looting and obstructing an investigation. In August the Military Advocate General announced the closure of investigations into 12 incidents, despite evidence that some should be investigated as war crimes. Israel’s military investigations were not independent or impartial, and failed to deliver justice.

In a rare move, the Israeli military investigated, indicted and tried Elor Azaria, a soldier whose extrajudicial execution by shooting of a wounded Palestinian in Hebron was captured on film. The verdict in his case was expected to be delivered in January 2017. Most members of the Israeli forces who committed unlawful killings of Palestinians faced no repercussions. The Israeli army, Ministry of Justice and police also did not investigate, failed to investigate adequately, or closed investigations into cases of alleged unlawful killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces in both Israel and the OPT.

The authorities prosecuted several Jewish settlers for carrying out lethal attacks on Palestinians. In January, they charged two Israelis with committing an arson attack in July 2015 that killed three members of the Dawabsheh family, including a child aged 18 months. In May, a Jerusalem court sentenced Yosef Ben David to life imprisonment plus 20 years after convicting him of the abduction and murder of 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014.

The prosecutor of the ICC continued her preliminary examination of allegations of crimes under international law carried out by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups since 13 June 2014. The Israeli government allowed an ICC delegation to visit Israel and the West Bank in October.

Violence against women and girls

There were new reports of violence against women, particularly within Palestinian communities in Israel. Activists reported that at least 21 women were killed by partners or family members during the year. Some women were reportedly killed by abusive partners after police failed to afford them adequate protection.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/mi ... rritories/