Press Releases

As part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism set up by the Human Rights Council, BADIL submitted a report on 11 October 2022 to update the Council on the contemporary status of Israel’s human rights record.  In this submission, BADIL addresses concerns arising from ongoing Israeli colonial-apartheid policies and practices that, covering four categories of systematic Israeli violations since Israel’s last UPR in 2017: (1) the denial of access to natural resources, annexation, land confiscation and denial of use; (2) the segregation, fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian communities; (3) self-determination and denial of reparations – especially return - for Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs); (4) the suppression and silencing of Palestinian rights defenders.

Detailing Israel’s colonization of occupied territory through manipulative categorizations of Palestinian land, the implantation of colonizers, and the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources as well as the denial of use and access for the Palestinian population, this report first exposes Israeli land grab policies that create a coercive environment ultimately aimed at the forcible transfer of Palestinians.

BADIL’s submission then highlights the segregation, fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian communities on both sides of the Green Line that operate to splinter the Palestinian people geographically, legally and politically into different categories, with several administrative methods to control Palestinian populations based on where they live.

Thirdly, by systematically denying Palestinian refugees and IDPs their inalienable right of return, Israel is not only perpetuating the protractedness of the Palestinian refugee issue, but is also violating the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, as the individual and collective right of return for Palestinian refugees and IDPs, who constitute 66.4 per cent of the Palestinian people, is a precondition to realize Palestinian self-determination.

Finally, BADIL concludes its submission on Israel’s discriminatory policies that delegitimize human rights organizations and defenders, as they are not merely reflective of a disregard or lack of respect for the rights of Palestinians; but because they are part and parcel of the Israeli colonial-apartheid’s wider and protracted strategy designed to facilitate the ethnic cleansing and forced population transfer of the Palestinian people.

All the above mentioned Israeli colonial-apartheid policies and practices aim at forcibly transferring the Palestinian population from their land and constitute part of a larger discriminatory legal system that aim to suppress the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

BADIL’s two previous reports submitted to the UPR on 29 June 2017 and 30 September 2013 respectively focused on Israeli policies of colonization, annexation and domination, and on Israel’s denial of the right of reparations, namely the right of Palestinian refugees and IDPs to return to their homes of origin.