Archives for November 2020

Excellency,

I write to you to convey the somber letter and urgent appeal of a Palestinian father in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Khalil el Halabi, regarding the plight of his son, Mohammed el Halabi, who has been held captive by Israel, the occupying Power, since June 2016, imprisoned without any evidence of the charges brought against him and enduring forced interrogations and torture aimed at pressuring a confession from him for a crime he did not commit. Mohammed has long engaged in humanitarian work in support of his people was the recipient of a UN Humanitarian Hero award in 2014 in recognition, inter alia, for his tireless work with Palestinian children in Gaza who have been afflicted with cancer, and is recognized widely for his humanitarian efforts.

I share this letter with you at the request of his father, urgently appealing for any advocacy and action that can help to address Mohammed’s plight and facilitate his release from Israeli prison. I also take this opportunity to reiterate the Palestinian leadership’s abiding call for the release of all Palestinian children, women and men that are being unlawfully detained and imprisoned by Israel, the occupying Power, including administrative detainees, and for urgent attention in particular to the most vulnerable of the prisoners, including children, the sick and elderly and especially in this time of global pandemic, and urge the international community’s mobilization in this regard.

I would be grateful if you could bring my letter and the annexed letter of Dr. el Halabi to the attention of the Members of the Security Council for their urgent consideration.

Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration

                                                    Dr. Riyad Mansour

                                                    Minister, Permanent Observer Mission of the

                                                    State of Palestine to the United Nations

To:  Members of the UN General Assembly

Members of the UN Security Council,

By way of Dr. Riyad Mansour

Permanent representative of the State of Palestine to the UN

I am writing to you in regards to the case of my son, the engineer Mohammad Khalil Al Halabi who has been unjustly held in Israeli jails since June 15th 2016. He has been presented at 152 sessions of Israeli courts in one of the longest courts known without any proof being presented publicly against him.  Even his lawyer is not allowed to see what they claim is the reason for his arrest.  What the Israelis say publicly that he diverted money from the organization he was working for World Vision has been refuted by reputable governmental agencies of the Australian government who was the main donor and by the world’s leading audit companies.

My son was tortured for two months as the Israeli interrogators tried to extract a confession from him and as a result, he has lost 40% of his ability to hear. The torture included putting a dirty bag over his head and forcing him to sit for a long time while preventing him from food and sleep. He was held in an isolated room 25cmx25cm with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He was threatened with rape and he was subject to loud music. All to force him to confess to a crime he has never committed.

World Vision and the Australian government conducted intensive investigations of the alleged crime and found no proof of any irregularity in his work and both have condemned his continued arrest as has most international organizations including the OCHA which produced a very strong statement calling for his immediate release.

His lawyer has told the media that the Israelis know he is innocent but they are not willing to climb down the tree that they had ascended to so as not to be embarrassed and the result is this prolonged never-ending court delays. My son could have been released a long time if he plead guilty but he refuses to plead guilty to a crime he never committed.

Mohammad Al Halabi has been honored for his work by President Arafat and has received your own UN’s Humanitarian Hero Award in 2014 for his tireless work with cancer children in Gaza and his relentless effort to try and ease the humanitarian disaster to the people of Gaza.

I hope that this letter can be distributed to all member states and that my son’s name is publicly mentioned by all including His Excellency the Secretary General, perhaps that could force the Israeli government to agree to release him and end this long and unjust detention of an innocent man.

Finally, my message to the Israeli government: this is not the way to make a just peace. A peace that will allow our children to live in peace. We are seekers of a just peace and a just solution to our cause which requires that the issue of prisoners is addressed.

Dr. Khalil el Halabi

Gaza

November 25th 2020

Excellency,

I write in follow-up of our recent letters regarding the crimes and violations that continue to be perpetrated by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people. The occupation’s cruelty and brutality have persisted, even in this time of global pandemic. This includes relentless colonization and annexation measures that are destroying the viability of the two-State solution and violating the independence and sovereignty of the State of Palestine, depriving the Palestinian people of their inalienable right to self-determination and freedom.

Impunity for such gross violations has alarmingly become normalized when it comes to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, as accountability remains absent. This has been exacerbated by the current US administration, which has created a wholly permissive environment for the occupation and moreover acted in complicity in a manner undermining international law and the international consensus on a just solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As a result, Israel has been hyper-emboldened, escalating its crime spree with zero fear of consequences, forcing the Palestinian people to grapple not only with the same challenges being faced by the entirety of the international community due to the spread of COVID-19, but also with constant violations of their rights, well-being and security and threats to their very existence.

As the world focuses on mitigating the pandemic’s impact and aiding the most vulnerable, Israel carries on shamelessly with its violations, accelerating its illegal settlement colonization and annexation schemes. As our countries intensify cooperation to advance multilateralism, Israel instead exploits the pandemic to advance its policy of unilateralism. As healthcare workers and medical supplies are dispatched throughout the globe to contain the spread of the virus, Palestinian medical facilities are being shut down by the occupying Power.

As countries around the world work to protect their citizenry and infrastructure from the ravages of natural disasters like hurricanes, typhoons and earthquakes, Palestinian homes and properties are being punitively destroyed by Israel as it continues its settlement march. This has included the demolition of humanitarian development projects, particularly those provided as support by EU States, including schools and shelters. As a result, hundreds more Palestinians have been rendered homeless and deprived of their property and livelihoods by this illegal occupation, creating even more need and endangering the lives of the most vulnerable, including children.

In this regard, the occupying Power is yet again flaunting plans to construct more settlements in Occupied Palestine in flagrant breach of international law and UN resolutions, including Security Council resolution 2334 (2016). Ignoring the global appeals to cease this illegal practice, and following its announcement of plans last month to construct nearly 5,000 settlement units, the Israeli “Housing Ministry” opened the bidding process for the construction of more than 1,200 settlement units in the illegal settlement of “Givat Hamatos”. If implemented, this nefarious plan will seal off the city of Bethlehem, disconnecting it from Jerusalem, and gravely undermine whatever potential remains for realizing the two-State solution on the pre-1967 borders as this illegal occupation cements its separation and isolation of millions of Palestinians into fragmented Bantustans, oppressed under a two-tiered system of law centered on institutionalized discrimination akin only to apartheid.

As underscored by the UN Special Coordinator Nickolay Mladenov in his statement on 16 November, “If built, it would further consolidate a ring of settlements between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. It would significantly damage prospects for a future contiguous Palestinian State and for achieving a negotiated two-State solution based on the 1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states.”

It is patently clear that the Israeli government is attempting to impose a fait accompli on the ground before the Trump administration leaves office, acting as though international law and the will of the rest of the international community mean nothing. The plans by the US Secretary of State to visit the illegal Israeli settlement of “Psagot” is the most recent glaring example of the warped relationship between the occupying Power and current US administration. We deplore all of these attempts to give legitimacy to Israeli settlements illegally established on stolen Palestinian land.

Such actions flagrantly violate international law and UN resolutions, including Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) and all relevant resolutions that preceded it, which affirmed the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and called upon all States not to recognize them as legitimate and not to render any assistance to the occupying Power in their maintenance. Moreover, Security Council resolution 2334 unequivocally called upon States “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”. We urge all States to uphold their legal obligations in this regard, stressing that such distinction will truly make a difference in advancing not only accountability but ultimately a just solution.

Another matter that requires urgent attention is Israel’s ongoing practice of necro-violence, by which the occupying Power seizes and withholds the bodies of Palestinians it has murdered. This inhumane practice is directly linked to Israel’s wider policy of repression of the millions of Palestinians living under its occupation, tantamount to collective punishment as they are prohibited from burying their loved ones in accordance with cultural and religious rituals.

In this regard, we highlight today the plight of Kamal Abu Waar, age 46, who died in an Israeli jail last week as a result of medical negligence despite repeated calls for his release due to his deteriorating health. Israeli prison authorities prevented Abu Waar’s family from seeing him in the last few months before his death and continue withholding Abu Waar’s body, ignoring numerous requests by family members and human rights organizations to return his body for proper burial.

As occupying Power, Israel is responsible for the lives and well-being of prisoners, whether held in Israeli prisons in the Occupied Palestinian Territory or in Israel in violation of the 4^th Geneva Convention. Israel is currently holding nearly 5,000 Palestinians in its military prisons, including hundreds of children and men and women held without charge or trial through the unlawful practice of administrative detention, whose release has been continually called by governments, human rights groups, and other international organizations. The Palestinian leadership reiterates these calls and calls again for the necessary medical treatment of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and immediate release of all vulnerable prisoners, particularly women, children, older persons and those with pre-existing medical conditions, especially in this time of pandemic.

In spite of these continuous and escalating violations, the Palestinian people remain steadfast in their legitimate struggle against the occupation. Here, we recall that this week marked 32 years since the Palestinian leadership declared the independence of the State of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 lines and the relevant UN resolutions. That Declaration, made on 15 November in Algiers, constituted a very painful and historic compromise meant to pave the way to peace. While Israel has never reciprocated and never compromised, that Declaration brought universal recognition of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and widespread global recognition of the State of Palestine, which now numbers 139 countries. These are facts that cannot be ignored.

Yet, despite the fact that Palestine’s acceptance of the two-State solution and engagement in good faith negotiations across decades has been responded to with constant attacks by Israel on their rights and on the two-State solution, the international community has regrettably not been compelled to act on legal obligations and responsibilities to bring an end to this injustice. Despite Israel’s absolute contempt for international law and complete departure from the two-State solution, the lack of concrete action to hold it accountable has only emboldened its rogue behavior, prolonging this illegal, colonial foreign occupation to the detriment of the Palestinian people, the region and international community as a whole.

Continued lack of accountability wrongly conveys acceptance of the unjust status quo whereby the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to freedom, sovereignty, and peace, as enshrined in the UN Charter and relevant UN resolutions, are ignored in an era where international law applies to some, but not all. This absence of real consequences for Israeli crimes raises questions of complicity and liability among States as continued inaction only enables Israel to further manipulate international law and entrench its colonial occupation at the direct expense of inalienable Palestinian rights and international peace and security. As stressed by the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, “The international rule of law matters and, if we are to avoid the rule of the jungle, it must be obeyed. And if the rule of law matters, then so must accountability”.

The international community, including the Security Council, have a role to play in correcting the wrongs of history and promoting justice and peace. Since the UN’s founding, the question of Palestine has been a crucial test of the very meaning, applicability and efficacy of international law. The international community bears a legal, humanitarian, and moral responsibility to end the longest military occupation in modern history and to assist the Palestinian people to achieve self-determination and independence, a promise pledged long ago and at the core of the international consensus on a just solution. We thus appeal again to all States to act responsibly and urgently, individually and collectively, to uphold international law in regards to the Palestine question and to implement all relevant UN resolutions. This is as imperative for ending this injustice as it is for preserving a rules-based international order.

This letter is in follow-up to our 696 letters regarding the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine.  These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A/55/432-S/2000/921) to 9 November 2020 (A/ES-10/xxx-S/2019/xxx) constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations being committed against the Palestinian people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. 

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of the present letter made available to the members of the Security Council for their immediate, valuable consideration and also distributed as an official document of the Security Council.

Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.

Dr. Riyad Mansour

Minister, Permanent Observer

Excellency,

I write to once again draw attention to the critical situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, due to the illegal policies and practices of Israel, the occupying Power, being perpetrated relentlessly and mercilessly against the Palestinian people.

As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and its vast short and long-term effects, the Palestinian people have neither been spared nor been given a reprieve from Israel’s oppression. On the contrary, the occupying Power has persisted with its attacks and violations with zero regard for international law or for the pandemic’s severe impact on all, only worsening their plight. The escalation of these attacks and violations is clearly deliberate as the Israel openly exploits the international community’s immersion in the fight against the pandemic as a chance to further entrench its illegal 53-year occupation and colonial settlement regime.

Home demolitions, land appropriations, ethnic cleansing, arrests and detentions, and killing of civilians have not stopped. One might think such policies would cease during a pandemic. However, judging by the historical record, one should not be surprised as Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its complete disregard for international law, for the humanity of the Palestinian people, and for the serious humanitarian impact of COVID-19. The failure to ensure accountability for such gross violations has only bolstered the Israeli Government’s sense of impunity, allowing it to believe it can continue getting away with its crimes even as a pandemic rages across the globe and highlights the many vulnerabilities of our human family and the need to uphold human rights in all circumstances.

On 25 October, a Palestinian boy died of injuries after being beaten by Israeli occupying forces near Ramallah. Amer Abdul-Rahim Snobar, age 18, was taken to a local hospital suffering from severe neck injuries sustained from the butts of the soldiers’ rifles and died thereafter. Like most killings committed by Israeli soldiers, we fear that the perpetrators of this murder will not be held accountable, perpetuating the sense of impunity and the degradation of Palestinian life. International humanitarian law places Israel under the legal obligation to provide for the welfare of the population living under its military occupation, and it is imperative that the international community remind Israel of its legal obligations and hold it to account.

Accountability is equally urgent in regards to Israel’s illegal settlement regime and the violations committed by the hundreds of thousands of settlers it has illegal transferred to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. Settler violence has sharply risen during the pandemic, harming Palestinian civilians, damaging properties and crops, and hampering their livelihoods, making even more coercive and dangerous this situation of occupation. As autumn marked the start of the olive harvest season in Palestine, fierce settler attacks have intensified, targeting communities whose well-being and sustenance are dependent on the harvest season. In this regard, we welcome the 5 November statement by UN agencies and international NGOs in Occupied Palestine calling for the protection of Palestinian civilians from the violence, damage and theft being perpetrated by Israeli settlers and for Israel to abide by its international law obligations and to hold the perpetrators of these crimes accountable.

In recent weeks, settler attacks against Palestinian farmers have included burning of fields, uprooting trees, stealing harvests, assaults on harvesters, including children, and vandalizing properties. All of this has been done under Israeli army protection. While millions of Palestinians are subject to the law of Israel’s military rule, illegal settlers enjoy near-absolute impunity. Israel’s desire to protect its illegal settlers under the pretext of security does not and should not justify its discriminatory, apartheid policies against Palestinians living under its occupation.

Equally rampant is Israel’s proliferation of illegal settlements throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in breach of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, as unequivocally reaffirmed in Security Council resolution 2334 (2016). On the heels of its announcement of the construction of nearly 5,000 more settlement units, on 2 November, Israel approved the destruction and confiscation of approximately 200 Palestinian businesses and buildings in occupied East Jerusalem as part of a plan to expand illegal settlement projects disguised as so-called ‘technology parks’. The occupying Power has served dozens of eviction, informing of the deadline of December 30 to leave before the demolitions are carried out. 

Such policies endanger the lives and livelihoods of many families who are now threatened with home demolition and forced displacement. Moreover, the advancement of such illegal policies will alter East Jerusalem’s landscape and demographic composition through the inevitable transfer of Israeli settler population and appropriation of Palestinian land, resources, structures, assets, and more, all in grave breach of the law and the rights of our people.

The occupying Power’s policy of demolition of Palestinian homes and structures cannot be divorced from its ongoing attempts and plans to annex our land. Disregarding international law, and the added sensitivity of the pandemic, Israel has intensified its inhumane practice of home demolitions and forced evictions, rendering hundreds more Palestinians homeless and violating countless of their human rights.

On 3 November, Israel demolished an entire community’s residences in Khirbet Humsa Al Bqai’a, leaving more than 70 people, among them 41 children, homeless and even more vulnerable in this time of pandemic. According to OCHA, Israeli authorities demolished 76 structures, including homes, animal shelters, latrines, and solar panels, making this the largest forced displacement operation in over four years, adding to the thousands of properties destroyed and thousands of families displaced from their rightful homes.

Israel must immediately end its unlawful policy of demolitions and abide by its obligations as an occupying Power. The extensive destruction of property and forced transfer of protected people in an occupied territory are grave breaches of international law. Moreover, such cruel policies further impede the socioeconomic development of the Palestinian people, directly impacting their rights to shelter, healthcare, education, livelihoods, movement, safety, and wellbeing. Although international condemnations have been issued, they will not be enough to stop Israel from continue to carry out such inhumane policies. As long as accountability remains absent, Israel will persist with such demolitions and every other colonization measure as its objective is clearly to devour more Palestinian land without Palestinian inhabitants. As OCHA has reported, demolitions are a key means of creating an environment designed to coerce Palestinians to leave their homes.

It is time for the international community to act. This dangerous level of impunity by the Israeli Government is enabled by a lack of accountability. Israel’s systematic violations are widely documented and reported, however, inaction has permitted the occupation to entrench, compounded by looming threats of annexation, ongoing settlement colonization, territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing, and other heinous crimes, with grave impact on the Palestinian people and the prospects for a just peace and security.

Israel’s failure to comply with international law and relevant UN resolutions undermines the two-State solution on the 1967 lines, constitutes a threat to regional and international peace and security, and goes against the core principles of the UN Charter. The international community cannot remain silent or indifferent in the face of these crimes. We therefore once again appeal for responsible and decisive action to be taken, including the Security Council and General Assembly, in order to align Israel’s behavior with international law and all relevant UN resolutions, including resolution 2334.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of the present letter made available to the members of the Security Council for their immediate, valuable consideration and also distributed as an official document of the Security Council.

Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.

Dr. Riyad Mansour

Minister, Permanent Observer