UN Special Rapporteur urges Israel to end occupation

The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories has deplored Israel for its continued occupation of the occupied West Bank.

Michael Lynk on Friday urged that the international community must hold Israel to account for its 54-year occupation of the territories.

“On the fifth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 2334 by the United Nations Security Council, the international community has to take its own words and its own laws seriously”, he said. 

Resolution 2334 was adopted by the Security Council on 23 December 2016, asserting that Israeli settlements violate international law and called for all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to “immediately and completely cease.”

“Without decisive international intervention to impose accountability upon an unaccountable occupation, there is no hope that the Palestinian right to self-determination and an end to the conflict will be realised anytime in the foreseeable future,” Lynk added.

Had UNSCR 2334 been implemented by the international community and had Israel complied, Palestine and Israel "would most likely be on the verge of a just and lasting peace,” he added. 

“Instead, Israel is in defiance of the resolution, its occupation is more entrenched than ever, the violence it employs against the Palestinians to sustain the occupation is rising, and the international community has no strategy to end the world’s longest military occupation.”