The United Nations’ top human rights official warned of the worsening situation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and of “unjustified death and suffering” in the Gaza Strip.
“The situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is deteriorating dramatically,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
He said 528 Palestinians, 133 of them children, had been killed by Israeli military forces or settlers since the start of the current war in Gaza in October until June 15, “in many cases raising serious concerns of unlawful killings.”
In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed in clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, including eight members of the security forces, according to the UN high commissioner for human rights.
Two weeks ago, Turk said people in the West Bank were “subjected to unprecedented bloodshed, day after day.”
He spoke as the Israeli military arrested at least five Palestinians during the attack on several towns and villages in Ramallah and the West Bank el-Bireh province, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported an attack by settlers in Palestinian farmland in the village of Yasuf, east of Salfit.
During the night, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians in Qusrah, near Nablus, also in the West Bank, taking them to a school where they were detained and interrogated, Wafa reported.
Israeli forces have detained an average of 35 Palestinians per day since the start of the war, with 9,112 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons as of June 1, nearly double the number of Palestinians arrested on October 1, according to counts from intelligence groups. Palestinian prisoners.
Turk also told the 47-member council that he was “appalled” by the disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law in Gaza, where “there has been unjustified death and suffering.”
“More than 120,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured since October 7 as a result of intense Israeli offensives,” said the official.
“Since Israel intensified its operations in Rafah in early May, nearly a million Palestinians have again been forcibly displaced, while aid delivery and humanitarian access have deteriorated further.”
More than 37,000 people have been killed and more than 85,400 injured in Israel’s war in Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian enclave’s Ministry of Health reported on Tuesday. Israel’s revised death toll from Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel is 1,139, with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.
Turk said he was “extremely concerned about the escalation of the situation” between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, as at least 401 people in Lebanon have reportedly been killed in the fighting, including paramedics and journalists.
More than 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon and more than 60,000 have been displaced in Israel, with 25 Israeli deaths, he said.
Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva accused Turk of “completely omitting the cruelty and barbarity of terrorism” in his speech to the council.
Turk also said that global conflicts will kill three times as many children and twice as many women in 2023 as in the previous year, as the total number of civilian deaths increased by 72 percent.
The warring parties were increasingly “pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable – and legal,” he told the council.
“Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence. …Children shot. Bombed hospitals. Heavy artillery launched against entire communities. All coupled with hateful, divisive and dehumanizing rhetoric.”
Pointing to other conflicts – including in Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Syria – he noted that funding to help the growing number of people in need was dwindling.
“At the end of May 2024, the gap between humanitarian financing needs and available resources was $40.8 billion,” Turk said, in contrast to “nearly $2.5 billion in global military spending in 2023”.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
