GENEVA/AL-QUDS (Reuters) – An independent commission of inquiry set up by the UN Human Rights Council after the 2021 Gaza war said the Zionist regime must do more than end the occupation of land Palestinians want for a state, according to a report released on Tuesday.
While prompted by the 11-day May 2021 conflict in which 250 Gaza Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, the inquiry mandate includes lleged human rights abuses by the Zionist regime before and after that and seeks to investigate the “root causes” of the tensions.
It cites evidence saying the occupying regime has “no intention of ending the occupation” and is pursuing “complete control” over what it calls the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Al-Quds, which was occupied by the regime in a 1967 war.
“Ending the occupation alone will not be sufficient,” the report says, urging additional action to ensure the equal enjoyment of human rights.
Citing the occupying regime’s law against Palestinian in the occupied territories, the report accuses the regime of affording “different civil status, rights and legal protection” for Palestinians.
The occupying regime withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but, with the help of Egypt, clamps down on the enclave. Palestinian authorities have limited self-rule in the West Bank, which is dotted with illegal Zionist settlements.
Palestinian resistance groups retaliated the May 2021 eviction of Palestinian families in East Al-Quds by the occupying regime which led to clashes near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
The Gaza fighting was accompanied by rare street violence within the occupied territories between Zionist settlers and Palestinians.
The report will be discussed at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council next week. The body cannot make legally binding decisions.
The United States quit the Council in 2018 over what it described as its “chronic bias” against the Zionist regime and only fully rejoined this year.
Unusually, the three-member commission of inquiry has an open-ended mandate. A diplomat said that its mandate was already a sensitive issue. “People don’t like the idea of perpetuity,” he said.
Its members are from India, South Africa and Australia.