United Nations – The U.N. human rights investigator for Gaza and the West Bank called on Israel on Thursday to investigate what he called excessive force used by Israeli security forces against Palestinians and to prosecute perpetrators.
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Makarim Wibisono, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, also challenged Israeli authorities to charge or release all Palestinian prisoners being held under lengthy administrative detention, including children.
“The upsurge in violence is a grim reminder of the unsustainable human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the volatile environment it engenders,” he said in a final report to the Human Rights Council.
Israel, backed by its ally the United States, accuses the Geneva-based forum of bias against it.
Twenty-seven Israelis and a U.S. citizen have been killed since October in near-daily Palestinian attacks that have included stabbings, shootings and car-rammings. Israeli forces, for their part, have killed at least 157 Palestinians, 101 of them assailants, according to Israeli authorities.
The spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to give an immediate response, saying he was looking into Wibisono’s remarks.
Wibisono announced his resignation from the independent post last month, effective March 31, accusing Israel of reneging on its pledge to grant him access to Gaza and the West Bank.
Wibisino said any individual violence was unacceptable.
He said the upsurge came against a backdrop of “illegal” Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, construction of a wall, and Israel’s blockade of Gaza that amounted to a “stranglehold” and “collective punishment”. .
Israel must address these issues to uphold international law and ensure protection for Palestinians, he said.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed East Jerusalem, declaring it part of its eternal, indivisible capital, a move never recognised internationally.
Some 5,680 Palestinians were detained by Israel as of the end of October 2015, including hundreds of minors, Wibisono said, citing figures from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Regarding those under administrative detention, he said: “Hundreds of Palestinians being held, now including children, often under secret evidence, and for up to six-month terms that can be renewed indefinitely, is not consistent with international human rights standards.”
“The government of Israel should promptly charge or release all administrative detainees.”
Perhaps Israel should stab each terrorist with a knife too. Would that be less excessive force?
If Israel would have a percentage of courage, they’d ask the UN why there’s no outcry about the hundreds of Syrians killed?
“Shocking” said no one.
How predictable, how pathetic. Just focusing on 1 element of this menuval’s report; that the Gaza blockade is collective punishment. Besides that Israel allows humanitarian supplies ad nauseum to their enemies, I haven’t seen any starving Gazan that weighs less than 300 lbs,(Gaza wasn’t captured by Hamas, the populace voted them in; were the German civilians in WWII innocent hostages of the Nazis?).
So what isn’t being allowed in? tanks? Rockets? Makarim Wibisono is the biggest idiot and quite the anti-semite if he believes this drivel. And to focus on Israel? When 75% of the world’s population, including China, all the Moslem countries, etc have less freedom than Palestinians in Israel? There are no words. Hashem said that when the Yidden will try to be a nation like others” “Ahm l’vaadud Yoishev…” Israel will always be treated differently, judged, differently, and hated by the rest of the world until the Geulah.
And noone says anything
what a waste of an organization – America should stop supporting them and ship them off to Iran
And yet the “UN RIGHTS HEAD” (oxymoron) is silent on the fact that hamas y’s is holding a UN worker hostage in Rafa.
A little Bio ditbit of Dr. Makarim Wibisono who wrote the report …..
Former Indonesian U.N. ambassador Wibisono is from a country that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. He served as the president of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in its last year of operation in 2005 – a body that even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said “cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.”
In a 2006 statement to the new Human Rights Council, Wibisono, described Israel as showing “ruthless contempt for the lives of the innocent,” and perpetrating “callous attacks against terrorized and defenseless civilians.”
A biography says that until January 2014 (and his application for the job) he was “active in the private sector as an advisor to the Third World Network.”