A new UN report pointed out on Tuesday that the main causes of the persistent cycles of violence are Israel’s occupation and the discrimination against Palestinians, concluding that Israel clearly has no intention of ending its occupation of Palestinian territories.
The report was prepared by the UN Human Rights Council’s appointed team of investigators sent last year to establish all underlying root causes of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel.
The lead investigator Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief from South Africa, emphasized that they got a clear picture of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other, especially given the fact that all previous UN recommendations were overwhelmingly directed toward Israel.
Pillay stressed that those recommendations have not been implemented in most cases which only proves Israel’s sense of impunity and is clear evidence of the persistent discrimination against Palestinians resulting in systematic recurrence of violations in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
The report pointed put to the fact that Israel is giving different civil status, rights, and legal protection” to Arab minorities, presenting as an example the Israeli law that denies naturalization to Palestinians married to Israelis.
However, the UNHCR team urged additional action to ensure that human rights are equally applied, concluding that it will not be sufficient to only end the occupation.
The Commission of Inquiry was created in 2021 by the UN after Israel’s 11-day war on Gaza in May during which 260 Palestinians were killed, but Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation, calling it a witch hunt resulting in a one-sided report.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ibrahim Melhem, on the other hand, said that any international investigation and report that condemn Israel and demanded its punishment was welcome.
He called on the UN to hold Israel accountable and to impose sanctions for the crimes it has committed against the Palestinians, stressing that Israel feels impunity and will commit other crimes due to the lack of prosecution and accountability.
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