Human Rights Council 52nd Session

Agenda item 7: Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories

Report of the Secretary-General on human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan

Report of the High Commissioner on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan A/HRC/49/85

29 March 2023 

Joint Statement with Meezaan Center for Human Rights and Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ)

Delievered by Juanita Beltran 

Thank you. 

We welcome the report of the High Commissioner on Israeli settlements. We would like to draw attention to the suppression of peaceful protests as well as the accountability for all violations of international humanitarian law.

The occupying power has continuously committed the most serious transgressions of international law, being the violation of the rights to life, safety, and freedom of movement. The excessive use of force and further escalation of hostilities is taking the lives of thousands of civilians and compounding a complex humanitarian emergency that must be addressed now.

Peaceful protests by Palestinians supported by local activists against evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and which spread to other parts of Jerusalem were violently suppressed. Israeli police have even allowed armed Israelis beyond the previous imposed checkpoints fueling confrontation and intentionally escalating violence.  

The lack of accountability has created a general climate of impunity applied so far to continuous attacks by Israeli security forces in the context of unlawful deaths, demonstrations, and investigation of these acts in the occupied settlements.

Meezaan Center for Human Rights and Geneva International Centre for Justice strongly condemn the illegal expansion and further repression of human rights against Palestinians and Syrians by Israeli forces. We call for an immediate end to all practices that jeopardize the right to protest, life, safety and freedom of movement.