UN human rights envoy says Gaza a prison for Palestinians
Read Full UN Report Here (.pdf, 22pp.) **LINK UPDATED**
HRC 2nd 05 Sept 2006 :: A/HRC/2/5 :: Report on violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, submitted by John Dugard, Special Rapporteur, pursuant to Human Rights Council decision 1/106
:: English :: French :: Arabic :: (links open in new window; .pdf)
Links can also be accessed here at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
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Reuters :: 26 September 2006
Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians where life is “intolerable, appalling, tragic” and the Jewish state appears to have thrown away the key, a UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday.
Special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory John Dugard said that the suffering of the Palestinians was a test of the readiness of the international community to protect human rights.
“If … the international community cannot … take some action, [it] must not be surprised if the people of the planet disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights,” he said in a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The South African lawyer, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, repeated earlier accusations that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law with security measures which amount to “collective punishment.”
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“Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished. But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the U.S. and the EU,” Dugard said.
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“Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key,” he said.
The West Bank also faced a humanitarian crisis, albeit not as extreme as Gaza, in part due to the barrier, which Dugard alleged was no longer being justified by Israel on security grounds but was part of a move to annex more land.
Palestinians living between the barrier and the Green Line, the frontier at the end of the 1967 Six Day War, could no longer freely access schools and places of work and many had abandoned local farms, he said.
“In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned,” Dugard said.
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