Palestine, ignored

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, recently delivered his report to the General Assembly.

He cited continued "abuse of international humanitarian law" associated with the "separation wall", "children fatalities due to Israeli use of excessive force" to quell nonviolent demonstrations, and abuses at border crossings.

Despite the details and warnings in the report, Israel's policy of incarceration, targeted assassinations, and near starvation of millions of Palestinians has gone unabated for too long under the eyes of the international community.

This is the longest occupation (and refugee problem) since the establishment of the UN itself; four decades old … and counting.

Failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and "Israel's 40-year occupation" would, in the words of Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, "continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality".

Israel has disregarded with total impunity dozens of UN resolutions "censuring", "calling", "urging", "recommending", or "condemning" its attacks, settlements, deportations, and occupation.

Unfortunately, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions have fallen on deaf ears.

Israel has managed to exploit the short-sighted framework of the peace process to bypass all relevant Security Council resolutions such as 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure, and status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories - including Jerusalem- occupied since 1967.

It also rejected resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end Israeli occupation of Arab territories.

Resolution 242 of 1967 has been the only resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, but this has been systematically violated.



The unsettling settlements

Recently the Israeli government announced new expansions of its illegal settlements; according to Israeli reports and despite official claims to the contrary, illegal Jewish settlement has accelerated at unprecedented pace under the government of Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister.

This has led to a tripling of illegal settlements since the so-called peace process started in 1991.

In his report, Falk said:

"The extent of the settlement encroachment on West Bank and East Jerusalem territorial scope is difficult to calculate with precision due to the continuous process of expansion."

"The prevailing best estimate is that settlement land claims (together with Palestinian land seized for the construction of the separation wall) confiscate 14 per cent of the territory of the West Bank, which is itself only 22 per cent of the original British Mandate of Palestine."

According to recent figures there are currently some 200 settlements, 100 outposts, and 29 Israeli military bases.

The cost of sustaining the settlement network is about $556 million a year, and the number of settlers is estimated to be between 480,000-550,000.

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