A United Nations human rights expert has slammed Israel’s “apartheid practices” in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying the Tel Aviv regime’s actions against Palestinians amount to “persecution.”
Faraan: Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, made the remarks in a report released on Tuesday, which details Israeli efforts to stamp out the Palestinian collective identity and sovereignty. “Realizing the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination requires dismantling once and for all the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and its apartheid practices,” she said.
Albanese also documented the use of lethal force against journalists and humanitarian workers critical of Israel, as she pointed to the recent detention order against French-Palestinian human rights defender Salah Hammouri, who has been held in Israeli jails under the policy of so-called administrative detention since March.
Israeli officials extend the detention of a Palestinian lawyer for another three months, just one day before his release. According to the report, almost 4,500 Palestinians are currently detained, 730 under the practice of administrative detention, in which Israel keeps the detainees without charge for up to six months, a period that can be extended an infinite number of times.
Children as young as 12 have been victims of arbitrary arrest and detention, the report said, adding that 500 to 700 minors were arrested by the Israeli regime every year. Albanese further pointed to the closure of seven Palestinian civil society rights groups’ offices by Israeli forces in the West Bank in August, calling the move an abuse of counter-terrorism legislation.
