Israel Found Delinquint by UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Economic Rights

In the long overdue investigation by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Economic Rights, composed of independent experts from 18 countries charged with reviewing Israel's compliance with the Covanent on Economic, Social, and Economic Rights, Israel was condemned for its "institutionalized form of discrimination."  Regarding domestic policy, the Committee notes that
while the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund were linked legally to and sponsored by the state of Israel after 1948, these institutions benifit only Jews and are systemically allocated vast amounts of confiscated Palestinian property to be used exclusively by Jews.

More specific forms of discrimination against Palestinian Arab citizens were noted in such mixed Arab-Jewish towns, such as Lod and Jaffa.  The report revealed that Palestinian citizens were not provided with basic municipal services and that Arab neighborhoods had "deteriorated into virtual slums" as a result.  The committee also addressed the problems stemming from the estimated 200,000 "present absentees" (property confiscated from Palestinian Arab citizens forced to leave their villages and towns during the 1948) as well as the hundreds of unrecognized Arab villages inside Israel proper whose occupants lack basic services and are constantly subject to home demolition.

The Committee also addressed Israel's  manipulation of demography in favor of a distinct ethnic group. The Committee "noted with concern" that while the Israeli Law of Return allows Jews anywhere to claim citizenship, Israel makes it "almost impossible [for Palestinians] to return to the land of their birth."

Since Israel is obliged to apply the Covenant in the occupied territories, Israel was found to seriously breach those obligations by such policies as the exclusion of Palestinians from Jerusalem, discriminatory restrictions on travel, the closure on Jerusalem, and the separation of Palestinian Jerusalemite families.  The Committee also deplored the continuing home demolition, diversion of water from Palestinian areas, confiscation of Palestinian land, illegal settlement expansion, and the fracturization of Palestinian land continuity by the new by-pass roads which connect the illegal Jewish settlements.  The Committee expressed outrage at all policies of "population transfer," including planting Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, and observed that the closure on of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip caused "widespread violations" of Palestinian social, economic, and cultural rights.

In its concluding remarks, the Committee recommended that Israel act immediatly to comply with international human rights law, including the right to self determination.  Since Israel was negligent in its initial report to the Committee and ommitted crucial information about the occupied territories, the Committee has asked Israel for an additional report in two years that should also cover occupied East Jerusalem.

The Committee's report relied on the information of Government as well as nongovernmental sources, including several Palestinian NGOs.  Though Israel had initially ascribed many of the obvious violations to faults inherent in the Oslo Accords, the omission of the Oslo Accords in the report demonstrated that the treaty does not supercede international law.  Rather the report established the first legal opinion on the nature of Israeli institutions, indicating these institutions are inherently discriminatory by their preference of a specific ethnic group and by the government's  reliance on population transfer as a central policy option.

Though neither the Committee nor the Convention provide any mechanism of enforcement, the legal opinion will provide human rights groups and diplomats with additional resources to advocate for Palestinian ritghts in the future.  More significantly, however, the report demonstrates that the source of human rights violations on the Palestinian Arab population comes not from faulty peace treaties, not only from the occupation,  but  rather Israel's "discriminatory" (Zionist) nature.
 
 
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