GENEVA: Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank amount to a war crime, a UN human rights investigator said on Friday, calling on countries to inflict a cost on Israel for its “illegal occupation.”
Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, was addressing a session of the UN Human Rights Council, boycotted by Israel which does not recognize his mandate or cooperate with him.
“I conclude that the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime,” Lynk said.
He said the settlements violate an absolute ban on an occupying power transferring part of its civilian population into an occupied territory, thereby meeting the definition of a war crime under the Rome Statute founding the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“I submit to you that this finding compels the international community ... to make it clear to Israel that its illegal occupation, and its defiance of international law and international opinion, can and will no longer be cost-free,” Lynk told the Geneva rights forum.
Many countries consider the settlements a breach of international law. Israel disputes this and cites Biblical and historical connections to the land, as well as security needs.
In a separate statement, Lynk said Israeli settlements were “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation”. There are now close to 300 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, with more than 680,000 Israeli settlers, he said.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally which has observer status at the council, was not on the speakers’ list for the debate.
Lotte Knudsen, the European Union’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said the settlements were illegal under international law, echoing the position of most countries.
“Such actions as forced transfers, evictions, demolitions, and confiscation of homes will only escalate an already tense environment.”
Palestinian Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi said Israel detained 5,000 Palestinians, some of them for more than 20 years.
Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital, but the issue of Jewish settlements on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war has long been a stumbling block in the peace process. The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.
Israeli settlements amount to war crime: UN rights expert
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Israeli settlements amount to war crime: UN rights expert
- The EU’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said the settlements were illegal under international law
- “I conclude that the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime,” Lynk said
Gulf ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict
CAIRO: Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors have expressed concerns to UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi about the safety of nuclear facilities close to their countries amid the Israeli-Iranian crisis, Qatar state news agency reported on Saturday.
The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities.
The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point on Thursday that it had struck the Russian-built Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
The potential consequences of an attack on the plant — contaminating the air and water — have long been a concern in the Gulf states.
Exiled former Tunisia leader sentenced to 22 years: reports
TUNIS: A Tunis court has sentenced exiled former president Moncef Marzouki in absentia to 22 years in prison for offenses related to “terrorism,” Tunisian media reported on Saturday.
Four other defendants, including his former adviser Imed Daimi and former head of the national bar association Abderrazak Kilani, were also handed the same sentence late Friday.
A staunch critic of President Kais Saied who has been living in France, Marzouki had already been sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison in two separate cases, one involving “provoking disorder.”
The latest ruling came after a press conference held in Paris, during which he, along with Daimi and Kilani, sharply criticized state institutions and members of the Tunisian judiciary, reports said.
Marzouki, who served as Tunisia’s third president from 2011 to 2014, said in a statement the ruling was “surreal.”
He said it came as part of a “series of verdicts that have targeted some of Tunisia’s finest men and continue to provoke the world’s mockery.”
Tunisia emerged as the Arab world’s only democracy following the ousting of longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, after it kicked off the Arab Spring uprisings.
But since a sweeping power grab by Saied in July 2021 when he dissolved parliament and began ruling by decree, rights groups have warned of a sharp decline in Tunisian civil liberties.
In April, a mass trial saw around 40 public figures, mainly critics of the authorities, sentenced to long terms on charges including plotting against the state.
Other media figures and lawyers also critical of Saied have been prosecuted and detained under a law he enacted in 2022 to prohibit “spreading false news.”
Syrian security forces detain cousin of toppled leader Assad
Syria’s security forces have detained Wassim Assad, a cousin of toppled leader Bashar Assad, state news agency SANA said on Saturday.
Wassim Assad was sanctioned by the United States in 2023 for leading a paramilitary force backing Assad’s army and for trafficking drugs including the amphetamine-like drug captagon.
Bashar Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led rebel insurgency in December and fled to Moscow. Most of his family members and inner circle either fled Syria or went underground.
Syria’s new security forces have been pursuing members of the former administration — mainly those involved in the feared security branches accused of rights abuses.
Rights groups have called for a fully-fledged transitional justice process to hold them to account.
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Israel attacks aimed to sabotage Iran nuclear talks
- Around 40 diplomats are slated to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Israel’s attacks on Iran right before a new round of nuclear talks with the United States aimed to sabotage the negotiations, and it showed Israel did not want to resolve issues through diplomacy.
Speaking at a foreign ministers’ meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan urged countries with influence over Israel not to listen to its “poison” and to seek a solution to the fighting via dialogue without allowing a wider conflict.
He also called on Muslim countries to increase their efforts to impose punitive measures against Israel on the basis of international law and United Nations’ resolutions.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi earlier arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, Tasnim news agency reported, for a meeting with diplomats to discuss Tehran’s escalating conflict with Israel.
Around 40 diplomats were expected to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes.
“The Foreign Minister arrived in Istanbul this morning to participate in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Foreign Ministers’ meeting,” Tasnim reported.
Araghchi met with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva on Friday.
“At this meeting, at the suggestion of Iran, the issue of the Zionist regime’s attack on our country will be specifically addressed,” said Araghchi, according to the news agency.
Israel began its assault in the early hours of June 13, saying Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, triggering an immediate retaliation from Tehran in the worst-ever confrontation between the two arch-rivals.
Earlier on Friday, Araghchi said Tehran was ready to “consider diplomacy” again only if Israel’s “aggression is stopped.”
The ministers are expected to release a statement following their meeting, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said.
UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns
- According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad
- Wide scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns
DAMASCUS: UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has urged more international support for Syria to speed up reconstruction and enable further refugee returns after some 14 years of civil war.
“I am here also to really make an appeal to the international community to provide more help, more assistance to the Syrian government in this big challenge of recovery of the country,” Grandi told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of a visit to Damascus.
Syrians who had been displaced internally or fled abroad have begun gradually returning home since the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, whose brutal repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 triggered war.
But the wide-scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns.
Grandi said over two million people had returned to their areas of origin, including around 1.5 million internally displaced people, while some 600,000 others have come back from neighboring countries including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkiye.
“Two million of course is only a fraction of the very big number of Syrian refugees and displaced, but it is a very big figure,” he said.
According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad.
Syria’s conflict displaced around half the pre-war population, with many internally displaced people seeking refuge in camps in the northwest.
Grandi said that after Assad’s toppling, the main obstacle to returns was “a lack of services, lack of housing, lack of work,” adding that his agency was working with Syrian authorities and governments in the region “to help people go back.”
He said he discussed the importance of the sustainability of returns with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, including ensuring “that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity” or other services such as health.
Sustainable returns “can only happen if there is recovery, reconstruction in Syria, not just for the returnees, for all Syrians,” he said.
He added that he also discussed with Shaibani how to “encourage donors to give more resources for this sustainability.”
With the recent lifting of Western sanctions, the new Syrian authorities hope for international support to launch reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $400 billion.
