{"id":274561,"date":"2022-04-22T16:52:23","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T20:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?post_type=document&p=274561"},"modified":"2022-04-27T16:52:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T20:52:58","slug":"un-expert-warns-israeli-crackdown-will-fuel-more-violence-urges-international-response-press-release","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/un-expert-warns-israeli-crackdown-will-fuel-more-violence-urges-international-response-press-release\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Expert Warns Israeli Crackdown Will Fuel More Violence, Urges International Response – Press Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

GENEVA (22 April 2022)\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 A UN human rights expert today called on the international community to urgently initiate both short-term and longer-term steps to address the escalating violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past few weeks have seen a rising level of violence associated with Israel\u2019s 55-year-old occupation of Palestine,\u201d said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. \u201cInternational inaction in the face of these new levels of violence will only encourage more of the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, Israeli security forces have entered the Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem and arrested hundreds of Palestinian worshipers amidst protests and stone-throwing, rockets have been fired towards Israel from Gaza and Israel has bombed Gaza, and scores of Palestinians have been injured in demonstrations against settler marches in the West Bank. More than 40 Palestinians and 15 Israeli and foreign nationals have been reportedly killed in the violence so far this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis entrenched Israeli occupation, which has become indistinguishable from practices of apartheid, is based on the institutional discrimination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another,\u201d said the Special Rapporteur.<\/p>\n

\u201cViolence and large-scale human rights abuses are inherent in such an unequal relationship. History teaches us the bitter lesson that prolonged and unwanted alien rule is invariably enforced by violence and resisted by violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The level of violence required by Israel to maintain its occupation has been steadily increasing over the past 16 months. Last year\u00a0marked the highest number of Palestinian deaths resulting from confrontations with Israelis related to the occupation since 2014.<\/a>\u00a0As well,\u00a0the number of Palestinian children killed as a result of Israeli violence in 2021 was the most since 2014.<\/a><\/p>\n

The reported incidents of settler violence towards Palestinians or their property in 2021 was the highest since statistics were first gathered in 2017. And\u00a0the number of Palestinian homes demolished as a result of Israeli orders in 2021 was the most since 2016.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has chosen to deepen its occupation through the establishment of 300 settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law, where 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers live with full legal and political citizenship rights amidst five million stateless and rightless Palestinians,\u201d Lynk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA permanent occupation \u2013 a legal oxymoron \u2013 provides the Palestinians with no political horizon and no hope, only the despair of more of the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Special Rapporteur urged the international community to adopt a series of immediate and short-term measures that could correct this trend, including:<\/p>\n