Foreign
UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Thursday called for a genuine and inclusive peace process to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and a repeat of recent deadly crashes.
Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, emphasized the peace process to end the clashes.
She was addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council, held at the request of Muslim states who have asked for a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate possible crimes and to establish command responsibility
The official condemned indiscriminate rocket attacks by Gaza’s de facto authority Hamas, which claimed 10 lives in Israel and strikes inside the enclave by Israeli Security Forces that left 242 dead.
She welcomed the May 21 ceasefire but warned that it was only a matter of time until the next flare-up unless the root causes of this latest escalation were addressed.
On possible war crimes, Bachelet reminded the Council’s 47 Member States that Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas had resulted in a high level of civilian fatalities.
She said airstrikes had resulted in civilian fatalities and injuries as well as the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.
“Such attacks may constitute war crimes ‘if found to be indiscriminate and disproportionate in their impact on civilians and civilian objects,’’ she said.
Also addressing the Council, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Michael Lynk repeated his call for the latest escalation – the most serious since 2014 – to be investigated by the International Criminal Court.
Describing Gaza as “the world’s largest open-air prison”, Lynk added that the enclave was nothing more than a “tiny silver of land, holding more than two million people under occupation, cut off from the outside world by a comprehensive and illegal air, sea and land blockade”.
Israel alone had the authority to determine “who and what enters and leaves the (Gaza) Strip”, insisted the Special Rapporteur, who is independent of the UN and answers to the 47 Member States of the Human Rights Council.
“When intensive violence revisits the Palestinians in Gaza, as it regularly does, there is no escape;
“That this medieval restriction on basic freedoms has gone on for 14 years, and counting, is a harrowing stain on our humanity,” he said.
Israel would not end its occupation “without decisive international action” that is grounded in the framework of rights, the independent rights expert continued.
He insisted that Israel’s “occupation has become as entrenched and as sustainable as it has because the international community has never imposed a meaningful cost on Israel for acting as an acquisitive and defiant occupying power”. (NAN)
– May 27, 2021 @ 18:05 GMT
Tags: UN rights chief demands inclusive peace process to end Palestine occupation
