UN Report Criticizes Israel’s ‘Permanent’ Occupation
Israel has violated international law by making its occupation of Palestinian territory permanent, according to the first report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. The 28-page report, which will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 27. The report also criticized Israel’s “defacto annexation polities,” which include “expropriating land and natural resources, establishing settlements and outposts, maintaining a restrictive and discriminatory planning and building regime for Palestinians and extending Israeli law extraterritorially to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.” The report also accuses Israel of discriminating against its own Arab citizens.
The report calls for an investigation by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It also calls for an urgent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice “on the legal consequences of Israel’s continued refusal to end its occupation,” and an investigation by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
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The commission’s review was based on interviews with what it called experts and stakeholders, and submissions received following a call for them issued in September 2021. The commission is headed by Navi Pillay, a former UN human rights chief from South Africa who has been accused of having an anti-Israel agenda. Miloon Kothari of India, the first UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, and Australian international human rights law expert Chris Sidoti are the other members of the commission. The commission was established in May 2021 in the wake of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Israel did not cooperate in the commission’s investigation.
Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned the report. “Precisely because I was not prime minister at the time of Operation “Guardian of the Walls”, I feel obliged to emphasize: the UN report on the operation is biased, false, inciting and blatantly unbalanced. Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, but this report was written by anti-Semites (as Israel has already revealed) and is a distinctly anti-Semitic report,” he tweeted on Friday.
