The Jerusalem Human Rights Consortium (JHRC), including the Society of Saint Yves, the Jerusalem Legal Aid Centre (JLAC), the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), the Arab Centre for Alternative Planning (ACAP) and EuroMed Rights (EMR) has sent a letter out to the European Commission, the European External Action Service, the EU Special Representatives for Human Rights and for the Middle East Peace Process, and EU member states’ Permanent Representations ahead of next EU Foreign Affairs Council (21 April) to express grave concern and to urge immediate action by the EU and its member states to address the rapidly deteriorating situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
As highlighted by the recent thematic report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, since the outset of Israel’s war on Gaza – where the ceasefire is clearly failing – the human rights and humanitarian situation of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem has continued to deteriorate, marked by rising casualties, intensified settler violence, and more displacement. Such deterioration has increasingly accelerated at the beginning of this year, and even more with the start of the Israeli-US war on Iran and Israeli war on Lebanon. The recent approval of the discriminatory death penalty law by the Israeli parliament, which would apply the capital punishment only against Palestinians – in a context characterized by the systematic use of torture by Israeli authorities – is just the latest example of the escalation of Israeli’s apartheid system targeting the Palestinian population. Such measure shall be seen within an overall context where every aspect of the lives and rights of Palestinians is deeply affected.
In East Jerusalem, extrajudicial killings, large-scale demolitions and forced displacement have escalated. Checkpoints and closures are severing the city from its Palestinian hinterland, isolating communities from their social, cultural, economic and religious life and undermining their rights to self-determination and development. Punitive policing and systematic interference with freedom of worship are designed to coerce Palestinians to leave. As stressed by UN experts, these measures are components of a systematic project of demographic engineering and domination to entrench exclusive Jewish control. These policies are undermining ongoing international efforts aimed at stabilization and the advancement of peace in the region: as stressed by UN experts, peace cannot coexist with annexation and oppression.
Read the letter here. You can also consult the JHRC’s recommendations and briefing on the situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem here.