Israeli policies in occupied Palestinian territory have resulted in de facto annexation, warns UN Human Rights Expert

NEW YORK (20 October 2010) – UN human rights expert Richard Falk has warned that Israeli policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have transformed its occupation of the Palestinian territories into a situation of de facto annexation.

“The cumulative effects of the settlements, the security wall, and the extensive settler-only road network has been to convert the conditions of de jure ‘occupation’ into a set of circumstances better understood as de facto ‘annexation,’” the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories told the General Assembly (see full statement below).

He said that the extension of Jewish presence in East Jerusalem by way of “unlawful settlements, house demolitions and revocations of Palestinian residence rights makes it increasingly difficult to envisage a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem”, a premise of the Quartet Roadmap and of past and present inter-governmental negotiations. The Quartet Roadmap is a plan proposed by Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It has been assumed that the occupation was temporary and reversible in conformity to Security Council Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied during the 1967 war and forming the political and ethical foundation for the widely held assumption that Palestinian rights of self-determination would be satisfied by the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on then occupied territories,” he observed. “If the conditions on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are substantially irreversible for political and practical reasons, it becomes misleading and diversionary to continue adherence to the ‘two-state consensus,’” he added.

The Special Rapporteur noted that attention devoted to the situation in Gaza in recent years has led to an assumption that conditions in the West Bank are acceptable. “All is not well with respect to the material conditions of the people, especially those living in ‘Area C’, the 60 per cent of the West Bank that exists under complete Israeli military administration, in which approximately 40,000 Palestinians live and which is also the scene of a greatly increased number of demolitions and even the destruction of Palestinian villages,” he said, pointing to a recent study by Save the Children UK, which concluded that the overall situation in Area C for all human necessities, including health clinics, food, water, and shelter had reached a “crisis point.”

The Special Rapporteur stressed that “it is time, after 43 years, to acknowledge the intolerable burdens of prolonged occupation on a civilian population.”

In his report to the General Assembly, Falk recommends that a study “of the legal, political, social, cultural and psychological impact of prolonged occupation” should be undertaken by the Human Rights Council. Such a study should pay particular attention to “the plight of persons confined to refugee camps in the occupied territories and neighboring countries, as well as to overall human rights, which is an aggravated consequence of occupation.”

The Special Rapporteur also recommends that “Palestinian legal rights, including the right of self-determination, must be fully respected and implemented, in all attempts at peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two peoples.”

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council designated Richard Falk (United States of America) as the fifth Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Check the full report to the Human Rights Council: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/498/94/PDF/N1049894.pdf?OpenElement

Learn more about the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/countries/ps/mandate/index.htm

OHCHR Country Page – Israel: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/ILIndex.aspx

OHCHR Country Page – Occupied Palestinian Territory: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/MENARegion/Pages/PSIndex.aspx