September 29, 2004
Four Years of “al-Aqsa Intifada”
Four years of the "al-Aqsa"
Intifada have passed. Since its inception, 3082 Palestinians and 1072
Israelis have been assassinated. During
all this time, several political initiatives have failed to stop violence and
improve the humanitarian situation. Until today, a high number of innocent
people, comprising many children, have lost their lives.
Violations of human rights,
perpetrated by Israeli occupying forces, have largely continued against
Palestinian civilians. The human rights violations against Palestinian civilians
mostly have been dealing with: house demolitions, assassinations, wide-spread killings,
torture, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, harsh prison conditions, land confiscation,
settler violence, restriction of the freedom of movement, and destruction of
private property.
Assassination of Palestinian
leaders and activists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah continues. Since the
inception of the “al-Aqsa” Intifada, 196 Palestinians have been assassinated by
the Israeli forces, in addition to 86 bystanders. Assassinations do absolutely
nothing for Israeli security except buy them time before the next attack. The PHRMG
firmly rejects any kind of assassination and strongly condemns the act of killing
that Israel flaunts
in the face of the world.
Since the start of this Intifada,
575 (304 up to 14 years old; 271 from 15 to 17 years old) Palestinian children under
age 18 have been killed by the Israeli Forces and 110 Israeli children have
been killed by Palestinians. Children’s killing is always illegal and represents,
without any doubt, one of the most awful crimes. Killings of children clearly and
gravely violate any standard of human rights as well as several international conventions,
world widely recognized. The PHRMG calls both sides, the Israeli and the
Palestinians, to stop assassinations of children immediately, and bring to an
end any sort of violence against them.
Since “Al Aqsa Intifada”, 161
suicide bombers have been dying in suicide bombing attacks. The PHRMG condemns all
suicide bombing attacks murdering innocent people and calls on stopping killing
innocent civilians of both sides.
Checkpoints, gates, earth mounds,
ditches and concrete roadblocks daily obstruct and humiliate West Bank
Palestinians in their normal lives. The IDF currently maintains 51 checkpoints
in the West Bank. Since the inception of the “al-Aqsa
Intifada”, 83 Palestinians have been killed at checkpoints. This situation is
dramatically increasing the frustration of the Palestinians, and will never
lead to the improvement of any peace-process. These absurd and unjustifiable closure
and restrictions humiliate, cause difficulties and make the Palestinians’ way lives
nearly impossible.
Over the past four years, the
Israeli forces have been demolishing more then 3,700 Palestinian homes
throughout the Occupied
Palestinian
Territories. The major part of them
has been destroyed as a form of ‘collective punishment” frequently targeting
Palestinian innocent families, in retaliation to Palestinian militants’ attacks.
Only in Rafah, since the beginning of the current Intifada, the Israeli
incursions have demolished about 1,800 buildings, leaving more than 15,000
homeless. The PHRMG calls upon the Israeli government to stop this unacceptable
form of “collective punishment”. It clearly represents a grave breach of the
Fourth Geneva Convention and a proper war crime.
The construction of the separation
barrier (the “apartheid” wall), throughout the West Bank
territory and not only alongside the “Green Line, is being confiscating big
amounts of Palestinian lands, barring
Palestinian people from several basic services.
The building of the barrier has indeed brought awful consequences upon
Palestinians lives, seriously restricting their freedom of movement and
preventing them to reach their fields, so often the only their source of life,
as well as schools, hospitals, etc. Moreover, the fence cuts off villages from
the urban centers, making access to markets difficult. Approximately 6000
Palestinians now live in enclaves between the barrier and the Green Line;
nearly 40,000 Palestinians live in enclaves totally surrounded by the barrier.
Relations between the 200,000 Palestinian residing in East Jerusalem and the
West Bank population are almost completely cut off, even provoking many cases
of “family separation”. Even though the barrier has been considered illegal by
both the International Court of Justice in The Hague,
on the 9th of July, and the United Nations General Assembly, on the
20th of July, Israel
is being continuing its illegitimate erection, perpetrating the umpteenth
violation of international rules. The PHRMG continues to be extremely concerned
about the daily condition of all the Palestinians, whose life has made
impossible by the “apartheid” wall. Furthermore, the PHRMG urges Israel
to change immediately the route of the West Bank
barrier, alleviating Palestinians sufferings.
Since the beginning of the
Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been arrested
by Israeli authorities. Currently, 7366 Palestinian prisoners are reportedly held
in detention by Israel.
Over 750 of them are detained under the so called “administrative detention”
procedure, allowing Israeli authorities to arrest Palestinians without any
charge or trial for indefinite periods of time, just claiming unspecified
“security reasons”. The Palestinian prisoners' cause has become a major part of
the daily life of Palestinian people. It has its distinguished features
expressed in its struggle within prison walls for proper human conditions and
freedom. While, from one side, Israeli occupying forces release some prisoners
due to the agreements, they arrest other Palestinian civilians from the other
one. The PHRMG points to and reveals the various aspects of the inhumane
treatment that Palestinian prisoners are subjected to, and the unacceptable
conditions and situations that Palestinian prisoners still face in most, if not
all, Israeli jails. Particularly, the Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons
daily suffer: restrictions on family visits; daily strip searches;
indiscriminate beatings in the cells and during the interrogation process; etc.
As far as the Palestinian
Authority is concerned, four years after the beginning of the second Intifada
Al-Aqsa, it still gives the perceptible impression to be broken, politically
fractured, riddled with corruption, unable to provide security for its own
people and seemingly unwilling to crack down on terrorist attacks on Israel. A
recent example, showing the complicated condition in which the PA is
irreversibly falling dawn, is represented by the turmoil erupted between the
Palestinian Authority and some military factions. The disarray, sparkled
throughout the Occupied
Palestinian
Territories, but mainly focused on
the Gaza Strip since July 2004, has been fueling extreme concern that the PA is
disintegrating and could collapse in a while, leaving a political and security
vacuum in one of the Middle East’s most volatile regions.
Kidnappings, violent occupations of public buildings, internal fractures do not
represent anything but the extreme need of a comprehensive reform within the PA
apparatuses. While Israel is constructing a massive barrier complex through and
around the Occupied West Bank and also planning for the possible withdrawal of
all the Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and four from the northern part
of the West Bank, Palestinian leaders, due to internal trouble, have not been
offering any political strategy to prevent the authority from becoming
marginalized or obsolete and play a key role in this easily breakable context.
On this regard, the PHRMG firmly prioritizes the need of holding fair,
democratic local and general elections as soon as possible, with the aim of
ensuring political pluralism and proportional representation of the Palestinian
civil society on the whole.
Finally, since the
beginning of the second uprising, the number of small arms in the
Occupied
Palestinians Territories
has dramatically increased. These weapons have add a much more militant and
violent “flavor” to the Palestinian uprising, being considered not only “means
of resistance” against the occupation, the siege, the closures, and the crimes perpetrated
by the Israeli forces, but even tools to harm fellow Palestinians and
Palestinian officials. The PHRMG is particularly concerned about the high
number of collaborators, 88, that have been killed since 2000. The PHRMG is
convinced that the collaboration “offered” by Palestinians to the Israeli
authorities represents an extraordinary mechanism for facilitating the Israeli
perpetration of crimes against Palestinian people; however the PHRMG vehemently
criticizes the assassination of collaborators: violence and killing must be condemned regardless the perpetrators.
Final calls
The PHRMG,
considering the deteriorating situation in the OPT, calls upon the Palestinian
Authority to provide any possible effort for starting comprehensive and
reliable reform within the PA institutions. It would represent, with out any
doubt, a decisive step in order to enhance the struggle of the Palestinian
people against Israeli occupation and toward the establishment of a viable,
independent and democratic Palestinian State.
The PHRMG calls
upon Israeli authorities to stop such brutal military operations throughout the
Occupied Palestinian
Territories. They are often
disproportionate and unjustifiable, inflicting Palestinian people inexcusable
“collective punishments”.
Finally, the PHRMG
calls upon the International Community to provide its best effort in order to
monitor the violations committed by both parties in the OPT. Only through a
strong commitment of the whole international institutions the peace process may
be kept alive.
The Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group (PHRMG) is a Palestinian, independent, non-governmental
organization working to end human rights violations committed against
Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, regardless of those responsible. The members of
the Monitoring Group believe that the strength of democracy and civil society
in Palestinian society will be determined by the Palestinian people, through
their defense or neglect of human rights.
Ragheb
Nashashibi Street 5
Sheikh Jarrah-Jerusalem
P.O.
Box 19918
East
Jerusalem
91198
admin@phrmg.org
www.phrmg.org
tel. 972-2-582-3372/3
fax. 972-2-582-3385