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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-subjects-un-workers-torture">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel subjects UN workers to torture</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">19 April 2024</span></span> </p>
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<p>A badly damaged UNRWA facility in Gaza City on 10 February.</p><small>
<span>DPA</span></small>
<p>Israel is abusing UNRWA employees detained in Gaza in order to
extract forced confessions against the agency, with detainees describing
being subjected to acts of torture.</p>
<p>The forced confessions are likely to be used by Israel in an attempt to incriminate <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/unrwa">UNRWA</a>,
the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees. Israel is seeking to
starve UNRWA out of existence through smears and unsubstantiated
allegations aimed at <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/funding-freeze-could-halt-unrwa-operations-end-month">drying up the agency’s voluntary funding</a>.</p>
<p>Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the embattled agency, <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148676">told the UN Security Council on Wednesday</a>
that Israel continues to block the provision of life-saving aid as part
of its “insidious campaign” to push UNRWA out of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.</p>
<p>More than a dozen countries, including top donors US and Germany, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/after-us-germany-freeze-aid-to-unrwa-could-eu-follow/a-68116182">froze funding</a>
or suspended future support for UNRWA after Israel alleged that 12 of
its employees were involved in the 7 October attacks led by Hamas.</p>
<p>The allegations were <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip">made public</a> by the agency on 26 January – the same day that the UN’s World Court <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-orders-israel-halt-gaza-genocide">stated</a> there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>Israel has not presented the UN with evidence substantiating its
allegations. Despite this, UNRWA dismissed the employees in question,
the UN secretary-general ordered an investigation and an independent
review of the agency’s adherence to neutrality is expected to make its
findings public in the coming days.</p>
<p>During the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/18/unrwa-head-warns-of-insidious-israeli-campaign-to-dismantle-agency">accused</a> UNRWA of “creating a sea of Palestinian refugees, millions of them, indoctrinated to believe that Israel belongs to them.”</p>
<p>UNRWA provides government-like services to 5.9 million registered
Palestine refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The agency is <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/what-mandate-unrwa-0">mandated</a>
by the UN General Assembly to serve the hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians who were displaced from their homeland during the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and “as a result of the 1967 and
subsequent hostilities,” as well as their descendants.</p>
<p>Palestinian refugees’ right of return is enshrined in UN General Assembly resolution 194. Israel has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/gazas-bell-jar/45816">denied Palestinians from exercising this right</a>
because doing so “would alter the demographic character of Israel to
the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” as the UN’s Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/top-israeli-rights-group-breaks-apartheid-taboo">stated in a 2017 report</a>.</p>
<h2>Right of return</h2>
<p>Several UN special rapporteurs <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/06/right-return-palestinian-refugees-must-be-prioritised-over-political">stated</a>
in June 2023, on the occasion of World Refugee Day, that “since 1948,
both the General Assembly and the Security Council have consistently
called upon Israel to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees and
provide reparations.”</p>
<p>The special rapporteurs affirmed that “the right of return
constitutes a fundamental pillar of the Palestinian people’s right to
self-determination.”</p>
<p>Around two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians
are refugees. Nearly every Palestinian in the territory has been
displaced from their home in the past six months and Israel has <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6269/Israel-keeps-up-its-crimes-of-forced-displacement,-threatening-to-kill-those-who-return-home">gunned down</a> people attempting to return to the areas from which they were displaced.</p>
<p>A majority of Gaza’s population is now concentrated in Rafah along
the boundary with Egypt, raising fears of a mass expulsion from the
territory.</p>
<p>At least 178 UNRWA employees are among the 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7 October.</p>
<p>Israel has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-agency-calls-israel-revoke-ban-food-deliveries-north-gaza-2024-03-26/#:~:text=Israel%20said%20on%20Monday%20it,since%20March%2021%2C%20it%20said.">banned UNRWA</a> from delivering aid to Gaza’s north as children are dying of hunger and dehydration, in violation of <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240328-ord-01-00-en.pdf">consecutive orders</a> from the International Court of Justice to allow the unimpeded flow of aid.</p>
<p>Lazzarini told the Security Council that “we demand an independent
investigation and accountability for the blatant disregard for the
protected status of humanitarian workers, operations and facilities
under international law.”</p>
<h2>Forced confessions</h2>
<p>UNRWA staff released from Israeli detention <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/summary_on_detention_and_alleged_ill-treatmentupdated.pdf">told</a>
their employer that in addition to ill treatment that may amount to
torture, they were “subjected to threats and coercion” and pressure
during interrogations to incriminate the agency.</p>
<p>These “forced confessions against the agency [included] that the
agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff took part in the
7 October attacks against Israel.”</p>
<p>According to UNRWA, some staff members were “detained during the
performance of their official duties for the UN, including while working
at UNRWA installations and in one case during a coordinated
humanitarian movement.”</p>
<p>Detained UNRWA staff were subjected to a litany of abuses, they say,
such as beatings, including by doctors, attacks by dogs and threats of
rape and electrocution. The agency said that its employees underwent
treatment akin to waterboarding and had guns pointed at them.</p>
<p>UNRWA staff also experienced “verbal and psychological abuse; threats
of murder, injury or harm to family members; humiliating and degrading
treatment; being forced to strip naked and being photographed while they
are undressed; and being forced to hold stress positions.”</p>
<h2>“Possibly thousands” detained in Gaza</h2>
<p>The agency has collected information from hundreds of Palestinians –
men, women and children – who were detained in Gaza since the beginning
of Israel’s ground operation in late October last year.</p>
<p>Palestinians in Gaza have been detained by Israeli forces while
sheltering in UNRWA facilities under the protection of the UN flag since
mid-November. They have also been detained while attempting to flee
south, while working in hospitals or in the sanctity of their homes.</p>
<p>Overall, “possibly thousands of Palestinian men and boys, and a
number of women and girls,” have been detained in Gaza, the UN human
rights office said in mid-December.</p>
<p>UNRWA says that as of 4 April, it has documented the release of more
than 1,500 detainees from Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point
with Israel, including 43 children and 84 women.</p>
<p>Detainees said they were taken in trucks to various detention centers
in Israel and “held incommunicado in between periods of interrogation,
sometimes for several weeks,” according to UNRWA.</p>
<p>The transfer and detention of detainees outside of occupied territory are war crimes that <a href="https://www.addameer.org/publications/deportation-policy-palestinian-prisoners-detainees-israeli-detention">violate</a> the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.</p>
<p>Israeli authorities subjected Palestinians – “men and women,
children, older persons, persons with disabilities,” according to UNRWA –
to ill treatment throughout their detention.</p>
<p>UNRWA staff observed “signs of trauma and ill treatment” including
dog bite wounds among the released detainees upon their arrival to Kerem
Shalom checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel boundary. Many were transferred to
hospitals in Gaza due to injury or illness.</p>
<p>Released detainees said they were forced to sit on their knees for hours on end while blindfolded and their hands tied.</p>
<p>They described ill-treatment including “physical beatings, threats of
physical harm, insults and humiliation such as being made to act like
animals or getting urinated on, use of loud music and noise.” Detainees
were also deprived of food, water, sleep and toilets and prevented from
praying.</p>
<p>Tightly locked handcuffs caused “open wounds and friction injuries,”
according to UNRWA, while detainees had their ribs broken and shoulders
dislocated as a result of beating with metal bars, rifle butts and
boots.</p>
<h2>Sexual violence and threats</h2>
<p>Men and boys who were sheltering at an UNRWA installation were forced
to strip naked and remained naked during their detention. Men and women
were subjected to sexual violence and harassment, threats of rape and
were forced to strip in front of soldiers and “photographed and filmed
while naked.”</p>
<p>A 41-year-old man who was detained told UNRWA that detainees were
subjected to electrical shocks through their anuses, causing another man
he was detained with to get sick and die.</p>
<p>A woman who was detained said that an Israeli intelligence officer
displayed her neighborhood on a computer screen and asked them about
individuals residing there. “She said if you don’t confess with all
[the] information, we will bomb your home and kill your family,” the
woman told UNRWA.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Prisoners Club says that Israel “refuses to disclose
information on the number of people from Gaza it has detained over the
past six months, or on where they are being held,” Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-agency-says-staff-other-gaza-detainees-subjected-ill-treatment-2024-04-17/">reported</a>.</p>
<p>Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group based in Gaza, <a href="https://mezan.org/en/post/46418">says</a>
that Israeli forces have detained at least 3,000 people in the
territory, who are “subjected to multiple forms of cruelty, torture,
inhuman and degrading treatment from the moment they are arrested.”</p>
<p>Their detention and interrogation “occurs without any judicial
oversight or legal protection, in blatant defiance of international
humanitarian law and international human rights law,” the rights group
adds.</p>
<p>Around 1,650 Palestinians from Gaza are being imprisoned by Israel
under its Unlawful Combatants Law in total isolation and denied the
right to a lawyer or legal representation.</p>
<p>“Detainees held under this law are neither granted the status of
prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention, nor afforded the
protections of civilian detainees under the Fourth Geneva Convention,”
according to Al Mezan.</p>
<h2>Starvation and torture</h2>
<p>A lawyer with the rights group recently visited Ashkelon and Ofer
prisons, where some 300 Palestinians from Gaza not held under the
Unlawful Combatants Law are being detained pending investigation.</p>
<p>Al Mezan’s lawyer met with approximately 40 detainees, who provided
“harrowing accounts of torture and inhumane treatment,” including sleep
deprivation and starvation “as a form of torture and collective
punishment.”</p>
<p>A 19-year-old told the rights group that three of his fingernails
were removed during interrogation, that a dog was unleashed on him and
he was placed in a stress position for prolonged periods during three
days of interrogation.</p>
<p>Al Mezan’s lawyer “reported that all detainees suffer from acute
emaciation, fatigue and back curvature due to being forced to bend their
backs and heads while walking.” Many were unable to “recall the names
of people present in the room” due to the physical and psychological
abuse, the rights group said.</p>
<p>According to Al Mezan’s lawyer, “in his more than 20 years of working
with detainees, he had never encountered conditions as appalling as
those observed at Ofer prison.”</p>
<p>The rights group said that the serious harm caused to Palestinians
from Gaza in Israeli detention situates it “within the legal framework
of the crime of genocide.”</p>
<p>Al Mezan added that Israel’s use of “systematic and widespread
torture” constitute crimes against humanity and called on the chief
prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants.</p><br>
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