LONDON, February 23, 2017 (WAFA) – Israel unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in 2016, the rights group, Amnesty International (AI), said in its annual 2016/2017 report on the situation of human rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Israeli forces unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention,” it said. “Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and were committed with impunity.”
It said most of the Palestinian detainees from the occupied territories were held in prisons in Israel, which is in violation of international law.
AI said Israel continued in 2016 “to promote illegal settlements” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and later retroactively “legalized” settlements built on private Palestinian land after its parliament passed the controversial land-grab law that allows settlers to remain in their illegal posts and gives them even the right to grab more Palestinian land for settlement expansion.
Israel also severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. At the same time, demolition of homes continued unabated in 2016, with some groups noting a record number of home demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli military rule.
“In the West Bank, the Israeli authorities severely restricted the movement of Palestinians on a discriminatory basis, particularly around illegal Israeli settlements and near the fence/wall. In response to Palestinian attacks on Israelis, the military authorities imposed collective punishment, revoking permits of attackers’ family members to work in Israel and closing off entire areas and villages,” said AI.
A 10-year long Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip remained in effect in 2016/2017 “subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective punishment,” said AI.
Over and above the land, sea and air blockade on the narrow Gaza enclave, Israeli forces maintained a 300-meter deep “buffer zone” inside Gaza’s border and Israeli forces used live fire and other weapons against Palestinians who entered or approached it, killing four and wounding others.
Israeli forces also fired at Palestinian fishermen in or near the “exclusion zone” that they maintained along Gaza’s coastline, which is ed to three nautical miles even though signed agreements set the fishing area to 12 nautical miles.
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