DaysofPal – A new United Nations report has accused Israel of pursuing a “de facto” state policy of torture against Palestinian detainees, warning that the practice has become more widespread and severe since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on 7 October 2023.
The findings, released Friday by the UN Committee Against Torture, state that torture and ill-treatment by Israeli authorities are “organized and widespread” and that they have “gravely intensified” during the reporting period.
The panel noted that Israel still lacks legislation criminalizing torture, allowing state officials to escape liability under the legal principle of “necessity.”
“The committee was deeply concerned about reports indicating a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment during the reporting period,” the report said.
It added that Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, if carried out as alleged, would result in “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” living conditions for Palestinians.
The committee highlighted patterns of abuse reported in detention centers, military facilities, and interrogation sites, raising alarm over the rise in mass arrests and enforced disappearances since the Gaza war began.
The report’s release coincided with mounting outrage over a video showing Israeli border police shooting two unarmed Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The footage, widely circulated on social media, shows the men emerging from a building with their hands raised and shirts lifted to demonstrate they were unarmed.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) described the incident as an apparent “summary execution.”
“We are appalled at the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin,” UN rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva.
He said the killing appeared to be “yet another apparent summary execution” and stressed that UN rights chief Volker Türk is demanding “independent, prompt, and effective investigations.”
Summary execution is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and international law.
The UN has urged full accountability for those responsible for unlawful killings and other rights violations in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have dramatically escalated raids, arrests, and lethal force over the past year.
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