50th 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 Commission of Inquiry’s 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.

The Commission is an indispensable and overdue step in discharging this Council’s duty, which unlike previous UN mechanisms with overly narrow jurisdictional mandates, will provide the Council’s first holistic view on the discriminatory, racial and colonial underpinnings of Israel’s apartheid system, violence and oppression since 1948.

As found by the Commission, “[e]nding the occupation alone will not be sufficient.” Hence, we recommend the Commission to 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.

Double-standards and the latest efforts by some states to undermine the work of this Commission will only further perpetuate violence, occupation, and impunity for international crimes, and entrench the denial of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.

Our organizations condemn this behavior and call on member states and Third Stats to provide the utmost political, institutional and material support, and to engage with the Commission in good faith, to enable it to continue with its mandate unhindered.

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

Thank you.

Full statement