From the Liveblog of
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Arab Israeli delegation meets UN team probing Israel’s human rights violations
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An Arab Israeli delegation meets with the United Nations team tasked with investing human rights violations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Jordan.
The delegation, led by former Hadash party leader Mohammad Barakeh and lawyers from the Adalah rights group, met UN officials in Amman as Israel refuses to allow them into Israel to carry out the investigation.
“There can be no just and rational dealing with a regime based on racial discrimination along ethnic lines,” says Adalah attorney Hassan Jabarin, who presented the group’s findings to UN investigator Navi Pillay and her staff.
The commission of inquiry Pillay is leading was created during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council held last May to discuss the 11-day Hamas-Israel war that month, which killed 260 Palestinians and 13 people on the Israeli side.
It was tasked with looking beyond that surge in violence and to investigate “all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law” in Israel and the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.
While the council has ordered eight previous investigations into rights violations in the region, this was the first open-ended probe, and the first to examine “root causes” in the drawn-out conflict.
It was also the first tasked with looking at systematic abuses committed within Israel proper.
AFP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.