LETTERS: The OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) expressed its strong condemnation of the continued and brutal human rights aggressions by Israel across the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
From the cold blooded killings of journalists, brutal assaults on worshippers inside the Al Aqsa Mosque, to torturing Palestinian prisoners and innocent civilians, Israeli occupation forces have crossed all red lines by prolonging its aparteid regime on Palestinians, which includes discriminatory laws and illegal practices, such as land grabs, evictions, home demolitions and expansion of illegal settlements.
During its 19th regular session, the commission deliberated on these developments and stressed that the systematic human rights violations against Palestinians represent manifestations of an imposed aparteid regime by Israel, the occupying power, which is prohibited under both customary and conventional international law.
As such, aparteid belongs to the same legal category as war crimes, aggression, territorial annexation, genocide, slavery and crimes against humanity.
The commission expressed its deep concern over the use of a range of brutal tools by the Israeli occupation authorities to undermine all fundamental rights of Palestinian people, including illegal demographic changes and strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian territory into separate areas of population control, which physically divide them from one another.
This fragmentation is being geographically enforced by the occupying power through illegal wars, checkpoints, barricades, military closure zones, Palestinian-only and Israeli-only roads.
Referring to the recent killing of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, the commission reiterated its call to initiate an international investigation into this killing by the Israeli occupation forces.
It endorsed the statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese, who said this crime constitutes "a serious violation of international humanitarian law and is potentially a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)".
Given the gravity of this murder, IPHRC stressed that immediate actions must be taken to bring those responsible to justice — including the relevant authorities who paved the way for such an atrocity to be committed in the first place. The recent referral of this case to the ICC by the Palestinian authorities is the right action to take, the commission added.
Condemning further the assaults by the Jewish settlers against Al Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli police, the commission said the recent Israeli court ruling that allowed Jewish settlers to practise their rituals inside Al Aqsa Mosque as an illegal and provocative act against the Islamic character of Al Aqsa Mosque.
The commission warned that by repeatedly violating Al Aqsa Mosque, Israel is fomenting inter-communal and inter-religious sentiments that would have severe security and peace implications on the whole region.
While deeply regretting the double standards that shape the international reaction to some human rights violations while ignoring other systematic violations, such as the Israeli human rights violations in Palestine, the commission reiterated its stance that all human rights violations must be addressed fairly, firmly and systematically.
It called on the international community to fulfil its legal and moral responsibility to end the Israeli regime's decades-long impunity for its gross and systematic violations of the international human rights and humanitarian law as well as to help Palestinians enjoy their fundamental human rights including to exercise their inalienable rights to self determination.
The commission called on all stakeholders including OIC member states to assert maximum pressure by all possible means, including using the BDS movement on the Israeli occupying forces, to end its longstanding agressions and human right violations.
The commission reiterated its full support to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and resolved to continue raising awareness about the Israeli human rights violations against innocent Palestinians at all relevant international forums in cooperation with the relevant UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the OPT and other relevant UN Special Procedures.
OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission
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