Palestinians welcome UN call for settlement database

PA envoy to the world body’s Human Rights Council welcomes move to address Israel’s ‘impunity from the international community’

By AFP 25 March 2016, 1:02 pm 1

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the UN Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, October 28, 2015. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)

The Palestinian Authority has hailed the decision by the United Nations to establish a database of companies working in Israeli settlements, a ruling that Israel called an “absurdity.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday adopted four motions on the Palestinian territories, including one calling for the establishment of a list of companies operating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Israel and the US have long accused the body of unfairly singling out the Jewish state.

Ibrahim Khreisheh, Palestinian envoy to the UNHRC, called the vote a “message of hope for our people.”

“Israel continues to systematically violate the inalienable rights of the Palestinians while enjoying impunity from the international community,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labelled UNHRC an “anti-Israel circus” which “attacks the only democracy in the Middle East and ignores the gross violations of Iran, Syria and North Korea.”

UNHRC has also confirmed Canadian Stanley Michael Lynk as its new investigator on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories after his predecessor resigned, citing Israel’s continued refusal to grant him access.