GENEVA, January 7, 2025 (WAFA) - A comprehensive UN Human Rights Office report released today details the asphyxiating impact of Israel’s laws, policies and practices on every aspect of daily life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The report warns that Israel is violating international law requiring States to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.
Systemic discrimination against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a long-standing concern, the report notes, adding that the situation has drastically deteriorated since at least December 2022. The report contains numerous illustrative examples of how increasingly constrained and insecure life has become for Palestinians.
“Israeli authorities treat Israeli settlers and Palestinians residing in the West Bank under two distinct bodies of law and policies, resulting in unequal treatment on a range of critical issues, including movement and access to resources such as land and water,” the report finds. “Palestinians continue to be subjected to large-scale confiscation of land and deprivation of access to resources. This has had the effect of dispossessing them of their lands and homes, alongside other forms of systemic discrimination, including criminal prosecution in military courts during which their due process and fair trial rights are systematically violated.”
The report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe the separation, segregation and subordination are intended to be permanent, to maintain oppression and domination of Palestinians. “Acts committed with the intention to maintain such a policy amount to a violation of Article 3 of ICERD (the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid,” it finds.
“Since 7 October 2023, the Government of Israel further expanded the use of unlawful force, arbitrary detention and torture, repression of civil society and undue restrictions on media freedoms, severe movement restrictions, settlement expansion and related violations in the occupied West Bank, which has marked an unprecedented deterioration of the human rights situation there,” it states, adding that this is compounded by the continuation and escalation of settler violence, in many cases with the acquiescence, support and participation of Israeli forces.
The military justice system administered against Palestinians provides little or no human rights protection compared to Israeli civil law, which provides much greater human rights protection for settlers. “The military legal system is a significant tool in controlling Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”
The report also documents trends of unlawful killings and other forms of State and setter violence and it contains numerous examples of lethal force that has been deliberately used when unwarranted, in a discriminatory manner against Palestinians, and with the apparent intention to kill.
For example, on 28 January 2025, Israeli forces shot in the abdomen a 10-year-old boy, Saddam Hussein Rajab, who died from his injuries on 7 February 2025. A video recording shows that he was shot while standing empty-handed at the doorstep of a building in Tulkarem. Israeli forces initially stated that the boy “was messing with the ground” in a suspicious way and subsequently announced a probe into the killing. On 9 February 2025, ISF killed an eight-month pregnant woman, 23-year-old Sondos Shalabi, subsequently stating that she had been shot because she was “looking suspiciously at the ground”. Israeli forces also acknowledged that the woman was unarmed and no IEDs were found near her.
Discriminatory movement restrictions also have a detrimental impact on the enjoyment of human rights, infringing on the right to work and preventing Palestinians from accessing their lands, causing major financial hardship, the report adds. In addition, the construction of new roads – only accessible to Israeli settlers and linking settlements together – cut off Palestinian communities from one another. Thousands of Palestinians have also been evicted from their homes across the West Bank, which may amount to unlawful transfer, a war crime.
Palestinians are also deprived of their natural resources, says the report. For instance, it describes how Israel unlawfully confiscates and demolishes Palestinian water infrastructure and diverts water to its settlements. This compels the Palestinian Authority to buy large amounts of water from an Israeli Government company that extracts water from the occupied West Bank.
“There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said. “Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives – every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.”
“Every negative trend documented in the report has not only continued but accelerated. And every day this is allowed to continue, the consequences worsen for Palestinians.”
Impunity prevails for human rights violations, including endemic violence committed by Israeli forces and settlers. According to the report, of the more than 1,500 killings of Palestinians between 1 January 2017 and 30 September 2025, the Israeli authorities have opened 112 investigations, with only one conviction.
Thousands of Palestinians remain arbitrarily detained by Israeli authorities, mostly under “administrative detention”, without charges or trial.
The illegal settlement expansion continues unabated. Israeli authorities and settlers have appropriated tens of thousands of hectares of Palestinian land, most of which serves to build new Israeli settlements or outposts, illegal under international law. A recent example is the approval by Israel’s security cabinet of the construction of 19 new settlements, which Israeli officials have said is to block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“The Israeli authorities must repeal all laws, policies and practices that perpetuate systemic discrimination against Palestinians based on race, religion or ethnic origin,” Türk said. He called on the Israeli authorities to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including by dismantling all settlements and evacuating all settlers, and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
T.R.
