Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
A UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said it would continue to work to ensure “the avoidance of impunity and to hold accountable those responsible for violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.”
This came in the context of the committee submitting its second report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
The report looked closely at the restrictions imposed on civic space and dealt with the role of civil society organizations and the difficulties they faced. According to the United Nations news bulletin, a copy of which we received on Wednesday morning.
The report concluded that the majority of violations are committed by the Israeli authorities "as part of the goal of the Government of Israel to ensure and maintain its permanent occupation at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people."
Immediately after submitting the report, the committee held a press conference in Geneva, during which it highlighted the findings of the report.
At the start of the press conference, Committee member Chris Sidoti gave a brief overview of the report, stating that the committee is required to report to both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly on an annual basis.
Sidoti added that the commission's mandate is unique among the UN mechanisms that emerged from the Human Rights Council to consider the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
"It is unique because we have a responsibility to look inside Israel," he said. "This is why our report examined the assaults, restrictions, and harassment of civil society actors across all territories: Israel, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in Gaza."
The UN report stated that the Israeli government has increasingly restricted civic space through a strategy of delegitimizing and silencing civil society.
This includes criminalizing Palestinian civil society organizations and their members by designating them as "terrorists", exerting pressure and threats on institutions that provide a platform for civil society dialogue, exerting heavy pressure on donors and implementing measures aimed at cutting off sources of funding and support.

The killing of the Palestinian activist Nizar Banat
The report also looked at all responsible parties, namely the government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and, as far as Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza.
The report also found that the Palestinian authorities, in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza, were also targeting Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society actors, with the aim of silencing dissenting views.
"We looked in particular at the killing of Palestinian activist Nizar Banat at the hands of the Palestinian authorities."
First time
Sidoti said that this is the first time that a United Nations human rights investigative body has dedicated a comprehensive investigation of the situation of Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders inside Israel itself, adding that "violations of rights inside Israel fall squarely within our geographic jurisdiction, and we will continue to devote attention to This will be in our next reports.
Wide presence
The discussion within the Human Rights Council was attended by representatives of fifty member states, in addition to Palestine as an observer state.
Sidoti said that the members of the committee felt great optimism during the interactive dialogue, "because none of the 51 countries that spoke expressed any problem with the content of our report and the findings and recommendations we reached."
Although he cited what he described as comments that criticized many of the cases, "no issues were raised regarding anything in our report itself. So that was encouraging for us in our future work as well."
added:
"We will continue this work. Our mandate, as you know, is not limited in time. It is not limited to a specific incident or event, it is a broad mandate. With the encouragement of the Human Rights Council, we are continuing this work as an independent commission."
A call to stop the violence
The committee member urged all those involved in the situation in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and elsewhere, to refrain from violence and killings, and to support a peaceful solution to this conflict.
In particular, I appeal to the Member States of the United Nations to fulfill their responsibilities to ensure peace, justice and human rights in all areas under our jurisdiction.