The High Court approved the plan to run a barrier around five Palestinian villages northwest of Jerusalem , and imprison them in an enclave that will separate them from East Jerusalem and neighboring Palestinian villages. The five villages in the enclave are Beit Hanina al-Balad (1,400 residents), Bir Nabala (6,100), al-Jib (4,600), al-Judeira (2,100), and Qalandiya (1,200), which have a total population of more than 15,000 persons (hereafter: the Bir Nabala enclave). 9 high court justices approved the route of the barrier in the area, and ruled that imprisoning the villages in an enclave does not cause disproportionate harm to their residents. Read more about Israeli high court approves apartheid wall in Bir Nabalah
Former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu will head the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission into Israeli military operations in Gaza established after 19 Palestinian civilians were killed in an attack on the town of Beit Hanoun earlier this month. A leading figure in the struggle against apartheid, Archbishop Tutu chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1995. Israel has said the Beit Hanoun attack was the result of a technical error and apologized. Read more about Nobel laureate Tutu to head UN rights probe of Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians
On 29 November 1947 the young United Nations proposed to divide Palestine against the will of the majority of its population (UN Resolution 181). A proposal of some Arab states to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the legality of the UN partition plan was voted down at the UN General Assembly. The Partition Plan was passed, but never implemented, because powerful states at the time lacked the political will for enforcement. The failed UN partition initiative triggered armed conflict and war in Palestine which resulted in the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, i.e., the forced displacement and dispossession of 80% of the Arab-Palestinian population and the establishment of the state of Israel on 78% of the land. Read more about International Day of Solidarity: Confronting 40 years of occupation, 60 years of Nakba
As non-governmental human rights organisations based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), we would like to express our appreciation for your mission to the OPT. The current reality in the OPT is one of gross and systematic violations of international human rights law, as well as serious and grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, amounting to war crimes. These exigencies give this visit, which we have long urged, exceptional significance. We hope that your visit and its follow-up will mark a renewed, substantive engagement by the UN on the issue of Palestinian human rights. Read more about Palestinian human rights groups address UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
On 18 November 2006, Adalah submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court of Israel against a ruling delivered by the Haifa District Court (sitting as a Water Tribunal) on 13 September 2006 that upheld prior decisions of the Water Commissioner not to provide water to hundreds of Palestinian Arab Bedouin families living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev). The Water Tribunal based its decision on the political issue of the “illegal” status of the unrecognized villages. Adalah argued in the appeal that the Water Commissioner’s decisions to deny the basic right to water to hundreds of families were based on improper and arbitrary considerations. Read more about Bedouin citizens of Israel denied water as means of transfer
On 29 November 2006, the international community observes the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. As a Palestinian organisation dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Al-Haq takes this opportunity to emphasise that the root cause of the pervasive violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the OPT is the almost 40-year-old Israeli occupation. Both Israel and the international community have repeatedly failed to meet their international legal obligations with regard to the OPT. Consequently, the full realisation of the fundamental rights of Palestinians, including the right to self-determination, remains as distant as ever. Read more about On International Day of Solidarity - Occupation is the Issue
Israel began building an eight-metre high, 703km-long concrete barrier through the West Bank in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2002. To date, some 670km of it has been completed. In July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague ruled that the barrier’s route, which weaves around the western border of the majority occupied territory was illegal under international humanitarian and human rights law, because it ‘gravely’ infringes on a number of rights of Palestinians living in the West Bank. Barely five kilometres separate holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Christians believe that Jesus Christ was born. Read more about Ghettos form in shadow of the wall
According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 21:00 on Saturday, 25 November 2006, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that ‘Ali Saleh Sarsour, 19, from the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah, died from a wound he had sustained on Wednesday evening, 22 November 2006. Sarsour was hit by a live bullet to the head from an unknown source, when he was near his house in Deir al-Balah. Earlier on Saturday, at approximately 19:30, Sa’ed Mufeed ‘Awadallah, 21, from al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, was evacuated to Shifa Hospital in the city, after he had been wounded by a live bullet to the right foot. Read more about One Palestinian killed, one wounded, in misuse of weapons
This year, the international day for the elimination of violence against women comes at a time of continuous suffering for Palestinian women due to the violence perpetrated against them by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and Palestinian society. Palestinian women are subjected to serious human rights violations at the hands of IOF troops that include killing, death of kin, destruction of houses, forced migration, detention, and humiliation at military checkpoints even for pregnant women in labor, some of whom died at these checkpoints. A total of 33 women and 116 children have been killed so far this year, most of them in the Gaza Strip. Read more about PCHR Calls for Increased Efforts Against Gender Violence in Palestine
On 12 November 2006, Adalah submitted a response to a petition filed to the Supreme Court of Israel by residents of the Jewish community town of Kamoun, located in the Galilee in the north of Israel. Adalah filed the response on behalf of residents of the Arab village of Kammaneh (the Kammaneh Local Committee), one of the three named respondents. The residents of Kamoun requested in the petition the cancellation of the master plan for the neighboring village of Kammaneh, unless three demands are met. In its response to the petition, Adalah argued that these demands are racist, and reminiscent of the former apartheid regime in South Africa. Read more about Arab village of Kammaneh subjected to apartheid policies in Jewish town of Kamoun's master plan
