Amnesty accuses Israel of multiple human rights violations

Rasa - Amnesty International has accused Israel of the unlawful killing of Palestinians, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and other human rights violations.

News ID: 427618

Date: 23 February 2017 - 08:18

RNA - In its annual "State of the World’s Human Rights" report released on Wednesday, the human rights group accused the Tel Aviv authorities of violating a multitude of international laws.

The report stated that Israeli forces tortured and ill-treated detainees, including children.

“Reported methods included beatings, slapping, painful shackling, sleep deprivation, use of stress positions and threats,” it said.

The report also said that Israeli forces had killed a large number of Palestinians, some of those in extrajudicial executions.

Amnesty also stated that Israeli troops used excessive force, sometimes lethal, against Palestinians during raids.

It also censured Israel’s illegal military blockade against the Gaza Strip which is entering its tenth year.

“Israeli controls on the movement of people and goods into and from Gaza, combined with Egypt’s almost total closure of the Rafah border crossing and funding shortages, damaged Gaza’s economy and hindered post-conflict reconstruction,” it read.

Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The rights group also condemned the Israeli regime for demolishing Palestinian homes and structures in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities demolished 1,089 homes and other structures..., forcibly evicting more than 1,593 people... Many of the demolitions were in Bedouin and herding communities which the Israeli authorities planned to transfer against the residents’ wishes," the report further added.

Nearly 280 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October that year.

There are reportedly more than 6,500 Palestinians held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which is a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge.

847/940