The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday slammed the punitive security measures implemented by Israel following the Tel Aviv shooting, while at the same time stating its condemnation for the shooting itself. He said that Israel was imposing a collective punishment against Palestinians.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement released by the United Nations, “We are also deeply concerned at the response of the Israeli authorities, which includes measures that may amount to collective punishment,” adding that it, “will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time”.
Al-Hussein said that while “Israel has a human rights obligation to bring those responsible to account for their crimes the measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens — maybe hundreds — of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”
UN slams Israel after Palestinian permit ban https://t.co/mGoBKpXmIJ #auspol
— Therese (@Th2shay) June 11, 2016
A wave of unrest began in October that has seen some 30 Israelis killed. However, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the surge of Israeli violence against Palestinians.
Following Wednesday’s gun attack, Israeli authorities prohibited entry for all Palestinians into Israel. In also froze more than 83,000 permits allowing Palestinians to enter Israel and East Jerusalem during Ramadan, including freezing the work permits of 204 of the suspected attackers’ relatives who work in Israel.
Israeli authorities additionally froze all coordination with the besieged Gaza Strip for Ramadan, cancelling weekly visitations by elderly Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. This goes against a ceasefire agreement that ended Israel’s 2014 offensive on the besieged Palestinian territory.
49th anniversary of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The world turns a blind eye to all https://t.co/EeYfNlf8qU
— Tuba Nur Sönmez (@tubanursonmez) June 11, 2016
Newly-appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman also issued an order on Thursday to suspend the return of all Palestinian bodies killed during suspected attacks on Israelis.
The alleged attackers’ hometown of Yatta in the West Bank has been sealed by Israeli forces, with Palestinians forbidden to leave except for humanitarian or medical cases. Overnight raids have heightened tremendously.
Yisrael Katz, Israeli Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister, said Yatta must undergo “a preventative ‘root canal’ treatment that will go down in history,” adding that the town must be cordoned off for “a long time”. This while members of the Israeli leadership threatened a harsh response for the act of “terror.”
(MA’AN, PC)
