UN Human Rights Council calls for report on Israeli settlers
Published: Friday, Apr 5th 2024, 14:50
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The United Nations Human Rights Council has commissioned a report on violence by Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories.
An existing commission of experts is to determine the identities of those settlers and settler groups who terrorize or intimidate the Palestinian civilian population, as the committee demanded in a resolution in Geneva on Friday. The report should be available in just over a year.
It should also shed light on whether and how Israel is taking action against violations of the law. The resolution was adopted with the approval of 36 countries, with three countries voting against. Germany was one of eight countries to abstain from voting. Since the Hamas terror attack on Israel last October, the UN Office of Civilian Aid (OCHA) has documented more than 700 cases of settler violence in the West Bank, with 17 Palestinians killed and more than 400 injured. In the comparable period from October 2022 to April 2023, there were around 560 such incidents.
These attacks and the construction of settlements in the West Bank are seen as one of the obstacles to efforts to find a long-term peace solution to the Middle East conflict. EU foreign ministers agreed sanctions against radical Israeli settlers in the West Bank for the first time in March. The United States had previously imposed corresponding punitive measures. In a further resolution on Friday, the Human Rights Council called for an end to arms deliveries to Israel. In a third resolution, the right of the Palestinians to self-determination was emphasized.
©Keystone/SDA
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