MAAT for Peace calls on UNHRC to hold a special session on situation in Palestine

Word For Peace Special

Okeil: The international community must assume its moral and legal responsibilities to stop the repeated Israeli attacks against the Palestinians

Today, April 16, 2022, Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights submitted an urgent appeal to the special procedures of the United Nations, especially the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and the UN Commission of Inquiry on the violations committed against the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, condemned the recent Israeli attacks against the Palestinians, and called for immediate intervention to stop these attacks.

Maat indicated that the horrific pictures and reports coming from Jerusalem expose the Israeli apartheid regime to the whole world. The international community, especially Israel’s closest allies in Europe and North America, must put an end to Israel’s impunity, and take effective measures to hold it accountable for its widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

Systematic violence and incitement against the Palestinians had exacerbated in the past few hours, laying the basis of the Israeli apartheid regime. Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on April 15, 2022, attacking worshipers with rubber bullets, tear gas, sound bombs, and rubber bullets, resulting in the injury of more than 160 worshipers, including paramedics and journalists, with two having serious injuries. Video footage showed Israeli forces beating women and the elderly with batons with excessive violence. Moreover, they arrested at least 400 worshipers from Al-Aqsa after attacking them with sound and gas bombs and beating them with batons.

Maat stressed that despite the historic decision taken by the United Nations Human Rights Council on May 27 to create a permanent commission of inquiry to address the ongoing Israeli violations against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line and to address the root causes of settler colonialism and the Israeli crime of apartheid, Israel continues to launch widespread and systematic attacks against the Palestinian people, which form the basis of the apartheid regime that amounts to a crime against humanity.

For his part, Ayman Okeil, the international human rights expert and president of Maat, condemned the recent Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers, and said that the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people urge the international community to take effective measures to put an end to Israel’s impunity after decades of violations against the Palestinian people. For 74 years, the Palestinians have been suffering from ongoing oppression, manifested in Israeli policies and practices aimed at displacing the Palestinian people to ensure Israeli control and hegemony over land and resources. The recent threat and aggression represent the latest application of these discriminatory policies and practices aimed at fragmenting the Palestinian people, as part of the tools to impose the Israeli apartheid regime.

Okeil calls on the United Nations’ special procedures to condemn the Israeli violations against the Palestinian people and demands the United Nations Human Rights Council to urgently hold a special session to address the deteriorating human rights situation in Palestine. Okeil further calls on the international community to assume its moral and legal responsibilities to cooperate in order to end this illegal situation, and work to stop the Israeli attacks against the Palestinians.