50^th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council

Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (S-30/1)

Joint Oral Intervention

Speaker: Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man

NGO in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council

Date: 13 June 2022

Civil Society Organizations welcome the CoI’s first report to the Human Right Council and support its mandate

 

Mr. President,  

We strongly welcome the Independent Commission of Inquiry’s (CoI) first report to the Human Rights Council and support its invaluable work in beginning to address the root causes of Israel’s systematic racial discrimination and repression against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, amounting to the crime of apartheid, which builds upon the findings of UN treaty bodies and the latest report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

The CoI is an indispensable and overdue step in discharging this Council’s duty to promote and protect human rights as it has been mandated to provide the Council’s first holistic view on the discriminatory, racial and colonial underpinnings of Israel’s apartheid system, violence and oppression against the Palestinian people since 1948.

Previous UN mechanisms have been given overly narrow jurisdictional mandates limited to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), which contributes to Israel’s strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people and effectively ignores the rights of 7 million Palestinian refugees, and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Without such a mandate, the Council will remain blindsided to the continuity of the discriminatory and racist underpinnings of Israel’s settler colonisation and apartheid since 1948, which has cost so much in human and diplomatic resources while failing to achieve any accountability or remedy.

As found by the Commission, Israeli violations against Palestinians in the oPt, including Jerusalem, and Israel are all “intrinsically linked” and that “[e]nding the occupation alone will not be sufficient.” This means that the Commission must analyze the situation in light of Israel’s system of apartheid, Zionist settler-colonialism, population transfer and continued dispossession inflicted upon the Palestinian people as a whole, including refugees and exiles denied the right to return to their homes, lands and properties.

Double-standards propagated by some states when it comes to the rights of the Palestinian people severely undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of international human rights mechanisms and legal standards. The latest efforts to undermine the work of this Commission will only further perpetuate violence, occupation, and impunity for international crimes perpetrated by Israeli authorities, and entrench the denial of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to self-determination, return, and reparations.

Our organizations condemn this behavior by some states and call on member states and Third Stats to provide the utmost political, institutional and material support to enable this esteemed CoI to continue with its mandate unhindered. We also support the CoI’s methodological approach to fulfill its vital mandate and pledge our assistance in any way possible.

Let’s remember that this mandate arose from the Israel’s escalation of hostilities against Palestinians last year when 240 Palestinians were killed over 11 days by Israeli authorities.

We further call on Member states and Third States to support this important accountability mechanism, to engage in good faith with the mandate of the CoI and its report.  

Thank you.

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