Palestinians call on UN to continue investigating Israeli crimes following damning report

A Palestinian human rights group called on the UN commission to continue its investigations into Israel’s human rights abuses including segregation, domination, and Jewish supremacy against Palestinians.

The United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel on Tuesday released its first report which urged Israel to end its violations against Palestinians and said this is the only way to bring stability for two sides.

"The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one State occupying the other," Navanethem Pillay, chair of the Commission, said.

Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinians in the 1948 territories, hailed the report and called on the UN to continue investigating Israeli human rights violations inside Israel and the rest of the Palestinian territories it controls.

"Adalah calls upon the commission to continue to investigate key human rights abuses it referred to in its preliminary report, including the Jewish Nation-State Law and its discriminatory effects, the ban on Palestinian family unification, the forced displacement of Bedouin citizens of Israel," the centre said in a statement.

Adalah added that Israel has seen an increase in violence in 2021 and 2022 and a rise in attacks on "human rights defenders and Palestinian civil society organisations advocating the protection of human rights and accountability, including the recent designation of six human rights and civil society organisations as 'terrorist organisations'."

Tuesday's report was the first Commission Of Inquiry to address human rights violations against Palestinians in all the territories under Israeli control, including 1948 Palestinians.

The report will be discussed at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council next week, though the body cannot make legally binding decisions.

Israel boycotted the inquiry and barred entry to its investigators.