As the Human Rights Council will hold its 30th Special Session on the grave human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory on 27 May 2021, Palestinian civil society organisations[1]called on the international community to support the holding of a Special Session by the UN Human Rights Council to address the Israeli violations against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. In particular, Palestinian civil society urges the international community to:

1. Engage in the 30th UN Human Rights Council Special Session and address the escalating Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people, including the root causes of Israeli violations against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line; and
2. Establish a commission of inquiry to:

1. Monitor, document and report on all violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including the escalating attacks against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line since April 2021;
2. Include and address the root causes of Israel’s institutionalized regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people in line with the 2019 Concluding Observations on Israel by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which highlighted Israeli policies and practices against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line are in violation of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) pertaining to racial segregation and apartheid;
3. Identify individuals responsible for serious crimes; and
4. Collect and preserve evidence related to violations to be used for accountability in relevant judicial bodies and transfer evidence to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

Palestinian civil society organisations affirm that the announced-ceasefire does not mean, in any way, an end to Israel’s violations against Palestinians. For 73 years, the Palestinian people have endured Israel’s systematic, institutionalised and long-established unlawful laws, policies, and practices, embedded in Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime. The attacks on the Palestinian people is abetted by decades of failure to address the root causes and lack of accountability. Accordingly, we stress that accountability is key to achieve justice to the Palestinian people.

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