Amnesty International called Wednesday on the international community to act promptly to end the Israeli policy of closures and house demolitions in the West Bank and Gaza.
“The confinement of more than three million people for 10 months to their own villages or homes by curfews and closures is a totally unacceptable response,” the London-based organization said in a statement published on its website.
Amnesty International welcomed the European Union’s call on July 16 for international observers, “but the international community must not wait any longer before acting to unblock what has become an intolerable situation.”
"Almost every road to every village we passed south of Jerusalem was blocked by mountains of earth or concrete blocks," said the report by Amnesty delegates to the Occupied Territories.
"The main north-south road between Nablus, the area’s largest city, and Jenin is empty of vehicles other than army vehicles for many stretches. Army checkpoints consistently turn back Palestinian vehicles. In a number of cases, Palestinians requiring urgent medical attention have died," said Philippe Hensmans, an Amnesty spokesman who took part in the delegation.
The delegates also visited areas of the West Bank where dozens of homes of Nawaje, a Bedouin group, had been bulldozed as a reprisal after one settler had been killed.
“In the vast majority of encampments, not a single person was accused of the murder and arrested. Yet the [Israeli army] bulldozed the tents and stone shelters, blew up the caves where many groups live, and even filled wells with rubble,” it said.
In Rafah and Khan Yunis, more than 70 homes have been demolished since March, most of them one-storey buildings of refugees who lost their homes in 1948.
“Israel is a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions. Yet its actions towards the Palestinians, regarded as protected persons, under the Conventions, is in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War," added the report.
According to Amnesty estimates, since the beginning of the Intifada in late September 2000, at least 480 Palestinians have been killed, most of them unlawfully, by Israeli security forces when their lives and the lives of others were not in danger.
Amnesty noted in a report this spring that nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed, by that date alone, were children.
Meanwhile, more than 130 Israelis have been killed, most of them civilians deliberately targeted in suicide bombings or drive-by shootings by Palestinian armed groups and individuals – Albawaba.com
