WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Human Rights Watch has denounced the Zionist regime’s systematic abuses, repression and institutionalized discrimination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War.
The U.S.-based group cited unlawful killings, forced displacement, abusive detention, unjustified restrictions on movement, and continued settlement expansion, along with accompanying discriminatory policies against Palestinians as among the major violations by the occupying regime.
Tel Aviv, it said, committed many of the abusive practices on the pretext of security.
"Whether it's a child imprisoned by a military court or shot unjustifiably, or a house demolished for lack of an elusive permit, or checkpoints where only settlers are allowed to pass, few Palestinians have escaped serious rights abuses during this 50-year occupation," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division.
The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by the regime on the one side and of Egypt, Jordan and Syria on the other. The Zionist regime occupied the West Bank, East al-Quds, the Gaza Strip and part of the Golan Heights during the offensive.
In November 1967, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, under which the regime is required to withdraw from all territories seized in the war.
"Israel today maintains an entrenched system of institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians in the occupied territory - repression that extends far beyond any security rationale," Whitson added.
The HRW also called for "increasing the protection of the rights of the population of the occupied territory” as the occupation enters its second half-century.
About 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds. Palestinians want the West Bank as part of their future independent state.
According to the rights group, the occupying regime has seized thousands of square kilometers of Palestinian land for settlements and their supporting infrastructure since 1967.