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huwara
UN Human Rights Chief Condemns Israeli Minister's 'Unfathomable' Threat to Huwara
Noting that communities like Huwara are often targeted by Israeli settlers, Amnesty's regional director urged Israel "to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians."
Mar 03, 2023
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for saying that Huwara, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, "needs to be wiped out" and "the state of Israel should do it."
Smotrich's comment Wednesday came after Israeli settlers on Sunday rampaged through Huwara, killing a 37-year-old Palestinian man—mass violence that came just hours after a Palestinian gunman murdered a pair of Israeli brothers, who were 19 and 21.
While presenting a report on Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine and "the current intensification of violence" to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Türk blasted Smotrich's remark as "an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility."
"Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life."
More broadly, Türk lamented that "the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is a tragedy. A tragedy, above all, for the Palestinian people. Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life. Nobody could wish to live this way—or imagine that forcing people into conditions of such desperation can lead to an enduring solution."
"2022 saw both the highest number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the past 17 years, and the highest number of Israelis killed since 2016," he highlighted. "This death toll has further, and sharply, deteriorated in the first weeks of 2023, and in the month that has just ended."
Türk's office found that over the reporting period, Israeli security forces frequently used lethal force, "regardless of the level of threat—and, at times, even as an initial measure, rather than as last resort." Researchers also documented "several cases of apparent extrajudicial, targeted killings" by such forces.
As the rights chief told the council, other key findings in the report include:
- Israeli security forces killed 131 Palestinians—including 65 people who were unarmed and did not engage in violence—and since 2017, fewer than 15% of such killings have been investigated, and fewer than 1% led to an indictment;
- Palestinians killed 13 Israelis—and nine more, including three children, have been killed in two attacks since then;
- Israel increasingly imposes collective punishments such as the blockade of Gaza, which are prohibited by international law, on Palestinians;
- 967 Palestinians are being held in "administrative detention," the highest number in 15 years; and
- There are over 270 illegal Israeli settlements across Palestine.
"The occupation is eating away at the health of both societies, on every level—from childhood to old age, and in every part of life," Türk stressed. "For this violence to end, the occupation must end. On all sides, there are people who know this."
The U.N. leader urged decision-makers in the region and around the world to heed the recommendations of his office's reports "and to step back from the precipice to which increasing extremism and violence have led."
\u201c"The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a tragedy," @UNHumanRights chief @volker_turk told the @UN Human Rights Council.\n\nFull STATEMENT at #HRC52 \u27a1\ufe0fhttps://t.co/Ay18urzszf\u201d— UN Human Rights Council \ud83d\udccd#HRC52 (@UN Human Rights Council \ud83d\udccd#HRC52) 1677865307
While the settler attack on Huwara drew rare widespread rebuke—including from Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a pair of conservative Jewish organizations in the United States—the Israeli government's recent shift to the right has stoked fears that violence in the region will only get worse and more frequent.
As Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said earlier this week, "The Israeli settlers burning down Palestinian homes and attacking Palestinians in the street are supported by the Israeli military and the Israeli government."
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa, declared Friday that "under Israel's apartheid system, impunity reigns."
"Despite the intensity and scale of Sunday's attacks, which resulted in the killing of one Palestinian and the wounding of nearly 400 more, and despite a rare show of international condemnation of settler violence, Israeli police yesterday released six suspects who were arrested in connection with the attacks," she noted. "Meanwhile two others have been issued with administrative detention orders, which violate international law."
\u201c#Huwwara - Impunity reigns for perpetrators of settler violence. "@amnesty reiterates its call on #Israeli authorities to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, & to dismantle its system of #apartheid against #Palestinians." https://t.co/Smn9VnPjLe\u201d— Khulood Badawi (@Khulood Badawi) 1677863325
Like Miller, Morayef emphasized that "Israeli authorities have long enabled and incited settler attacks against Palestinians, and in some cases soldiers have directly participated."
"State-backed settler violence is endemic in the occupied West Bank," she continued. "Towns and villages like Huwara, which was the epicenter of Sunday's attacks, are frequently targeted as they are surrounded by illegal settlements. For example, in October 2022, settlers broke into a school in Huwara where they smashed windows and beat teachers and pupils; less than two weeks later a café was set on fire, and groups of settlers assaulted Palestinian residents with pipes and rocks."
"Amnesty International reiterates its call on Israeli authorities to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians," Morayef added. "Apartheid is a crime against humanity and violence against civilians will continue for as long as it is in place."
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Conservative US Jewish Groups Issue Rare Rebuke of Israeli Settler Violence
But attacks viewed by the Rabbinical Assembly and Orthodox Union as an aberration are seen by human rights groups as inherent in Israeli policies and actions.
Feb 28, 2023
The leading Conservative and Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States on Monday issued rare condemnations of Sunday's deadly rampage by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, joining U.S. and Israeli human rights groups in decrying the violence.
The Rabbinical Assembly, the New York-based international association of Conservative rabbis, published a statement saying that "we are in pain and join the condolences to the families of those killed, among them the Yaniv family and the Al-Aqatsch family," a reference to 19-year-old Yigal Yaakov Yaniv, one of two Israeli brothers murdered by a Palestinian gunman on Sunday, and Sameh Al-Aqatsch, a 37-year-old Palestinian man killed by rampaging settlers in Hawara hours later.
"Committed to Zionism and the state of Israel, we are deeply disturbed by the acts of terror, vandalism, and violence supposedly carried out in the name of Israel or of God," the assembly continued. "These actions both harm Jewish sovereignty and constitute a danger to the existence of the Jewish state."
"We are deeply disturbed by the acts of terror, vandalism, and violence supposedly carried out in the name of Israel or of God."
Meanwhile, the Orthodox Union—also based in New York—issued its own condemnation of what the group's vice president, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, called the settlers' "undisciplined and random fury" in Hawara, where Jewish settler colonists burned homes, businesses, and vehicles while violently attacking Palestinians as Israeli soldiers looked on.
"We need to speak consistently and clearly, pledging security and a decisive response to those who commit acts of terror and violence against Jews, but absolutely condemning and decrying indiscriminate violence committed by Jews against anyone, anywhere," the statement added.
\u201cRemarkable pointed statement from the Orthodox Union condemning the violent rampage of religious settlers yesterday in the Palestinian village of Huwara: https://t.co/eTjS6lPSnI\u201d— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair Rosenberg) 1677534349
Rabbinical Assembly and Orthodox Union joined progressive organizations including the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and U.S.-based Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in condemning the settler rampage.
However, where Hauer asked "how can such a thing happen... that young Jewish men should ransack and burn homes and cars," JVP called the settler attack "the inevitable result of Zionism."
"Zionism has always required the displacement and removal of Palestinians from their lands to make way for a Jewish state," the group noted. "Under the leadership of Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, the current far-right extremist Israeli government is escalating the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948 with the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their land."
\u201cMany are blaming the new Israeli government as the cause of the unimaginable violence Palestinians are facing in Huwara and Nablus. But the origin of these atrocities is not the Israeli government. The root cause is Zionism, which always called for removal of Palestinians \ud83e\uddf5\u201d— Jewish Voice for Peace (@Jewish Voice for Peace) 1677603667
Where Rabbinical Assembly said it expects the Israeli government and military "to act to prevent harm to people and to property, and to try any person who has chosen to harm another person," B'Tselem placed blame for the violence squarely upon the "Jewish supremacist regime."
"The Huwara Pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a long-standing Israeli policy," the group argued. "It was carried out by the state of Israel."
Ironically, anti-Jewish pogroms—organized terror campaigns—in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries were a major driver of Zionist migration to Palestine.
Refuting claims that the murderous settlers were "out of control," B'Tselem asserted that "this isn't 'loss of control.' This is exactly what Israeli control looks like."
"The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it," the group said. "It's a synergy."
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Sunday's killings and rampage came days after Israeli troops killed 12 Palestinians, including a child and two elderly people, during a raid in Nablus, home of the Lion's Den, a militant Palestinian resistance group.
More than 60 Palestinians—around half of them resistance fighters—and 14 Israelis, all civilians save for one paramilitary police officer, have been killed this year alone. This follows what human rights advocates called the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians since the second intifada, or general uprising, ended in 2005.
Meanwhile, two weeks after approving the "legalization" of nine apartheid settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem that are considered illegal even under Israeli law, Israel's far-right government is pressing ahead with plans for a settlement project that would bisect Palestinian territorial contiguity in the West Bank.
Last week, the Israeli government also approved the construction of 7,287 new Jewish-only homes in West Bank settlements, the largest number ever authorized in a single proposal.
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