Human Rights

Information available to PCHR suggests that the six Palestinians detained by Israeli occupying forces during the onslaught on al-Boreij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, 3 March 2003, have been subjected to beating, torture and inhuman treatment by Israeli soldiers.

On 27 February 2003, Adalah, on behalf of six human rights organizations and in its own name, submitted arguments to the Supreme Court of Israel challenging the Israeli army’s recent military “assistance order”. Human rights organizations are seeking to prohibit the Israeli army from using Palestinian civilians as human shields and as hostages.

After a 12-year-old Palestinian girl was shot in the head while sitting at her desk in a UNRWA school in the Palestinian territory, a top UN relief official in the region has expressed dismay at the Israeli military’s indiscriminate use of force in civilian areas.

Israeli forces killed 8 Palestinians, including a pregnant woman who bled to death under the ruins of her destroyed home in Bureij refugee camp. Israeli forces demolished 14 homes and a mosque. This Israeli military campaign came less than 24 hours after a similar operation in Khan Younis, which left three Palestinians dead, 39 others wounded and a number of Palestinian homes destroyed.

Israeli forces invaded Khan Younis refugee camp, killing two Palestinians, wounding 39, including seven inside Nasser hospital. In addition, Israeli forces destroyed an apartment building, rendering dozens of neighboring homes destroyed and bulldozed five additional homes. They also demolished large parts of the walls surrounding Nasser hospital and an UNRWA preparatory school.

The Daba’a Municipality has yesterday for the first time
this week been able to access village lands near the village residential area, where they found some 250 explosives, placed some 3 meters deep, that will be used to clear the rocky landscape in the area to make way for Israel’s apartheid wall. The explosives are located an average of 50 meters away from the village’s residential area, and whose blasts will cause the complete damage of a number of homes and partial damage to others, says the Palestinian environmental network PENGON.

Israel’s acts during the last 55 days constitute alarming indications of the possible situation should a war with Iraq be initiated in the region, warn human rights organizations Al Mezan and Al-Haq.  There is fear that the OPT may witness an unprecedented increase in human rights violations.

This morning, Israeli occupying forces seized direct control over the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, killing five Palestinians, including two children. Israeli forces demolished six Palestinian homes.