GENEVA (Reuters) – A United Nations expert on Tuesday said Israel had transformed the occupied Palestinian territories into an “open-air prison” through widespread detentions of Palestinians.
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, told reporters in Geneva that Israel had carried out widespread, systematic and arbitrary detention of Palestinians since the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel’s permanent mission to the U.N. in Geneva did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“There is no other way to define the regime that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians — which is apartheid by default –other than an open-air prison,” Albanese said at a briefing for journalists.
“By deeming all Palestinians as a potential security threat, Israel is blurring the line between its own security and the security of its annexation plan … Palestinians are presumed guilty without evidence, arrested without warrants, detained without charge or trial very often, and brutalised in Israeli custody.”
In a report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday, Albanese found that since 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, had been arrested and detained by Israeli authorities.
The report said it was based on a six-month investigation and “consultations, testimonies, stakeholders’ contributions, and a comprehensive review of primary and public sources.”
Albanese, who said she did not visit the occupied Palestinian territories before submitting the report due to “Israel’s continued refusal to facilitate her entry”, also outlined what she called unlawful detention practices, saying they could amount to international crimes.
There was no reaction from Israel to the report.
Israel’s founding in 1948, defeating Arab armies from around the Middle East, scattered hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees through the wider region.
In the 1967 Middle East war, Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognised internationally, and launched settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Albanese’s comments come a week after Israeli forces hit the city of Jenin with drone strikes as part of one of the biggest incursions in the occupied West Bank in 20 years.
Israel said the objective of its operation was to uproot Iranian-backed Palestinian factions behind a surge in gun and bomb attacks, as well as preliminary efforts to make rockets.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by William Maclean)
