Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for the Palestinians where life is “intolerable, appalling, tragic", a UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday, according to Reuters news agency.
John Dugard, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed Israeli raids, blockades and demolitions, and accused the Jewish state of violating international humanitarian law with imposing strict security measures that amount to “collective punishment.”
He also said that the suffering of the Palestinians was a test of the readiness of the international community to protect human rights.
"I hope that my portrayal... will trouble the consciences of those accustomed to turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the suffering of the Palestinian people," Dugard told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"If ... the international community cannot ... take some action, (it) must not be surprised if the people ... disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights," he added.
“Indiscriminate killing”
The South African lawyer, who was appointed in 2001, said the situation that followed the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian resistance fighters in June is worse than any time during his mandate.
At least 200 Palestinian civilians have been killed in Israeli raids and bombardments in Gaza since June.
"What Israel chooses to describe as collateral damage to the civilian population is in fact indiscriminate killing prohibited by international law," he said.
Dugard also criticized the United States, Europe and Canada for halting aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, warning that three-quarters of Gaza’s 1.4 million people were dependent on food aid.
"Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key," he said.
"Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished," he said.
"But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the U.S. and the EU.
"In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions - the first time an occupied people has been so treated," he said.
“Ethnic cleansing”
Dugard also said that the occupied West Bank also faced a humanitarian crisis, but not as severe as Gaza, partly because of the separation barrier Israel is building there, which he said was not justified by Israel on security grounds but was aimed at annexing more land.
Palestinians living between the separation barrier and the Green Line, the frontier at the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, could no longer freely access schools and places of work and many had abandoned local farms, he said.
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