Human Lives Human Rights: The time has come that the international community must break the silence and force the Israeli authorities to end unlawful killings, willful injury, arbitrary arrests, torture and other ill-treatment, persecution and collective punishment against Palestinians.
In its latest move, Israeli forces shot in the head a Palestinian journalist Shirin Abu Akleh while she was wearing a press vest and covering an Israeli military raid in the city of Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank.
Palestinians have been killed or injured by Israel’s use of excessive force when policing protests or carrying out search and arrest raids. Some Palestinians appear to have been killed in acts that amount to extrajudicial executions, which constitute a crime under international law.
The killing of the iconic journalist Shirin Abu Akleh is a bloody reminder of the deadly system in which Israel locks Palestinians.
Israel is killing Palestinians left and right with impunity. How many more need to be killed before the international community acts to hold Israel accountable for the continuing crimes against humanity?
The violence has been escalating since Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett took office on 21 June 2021, with the months of March and April seeing the highest number of Palestinians and Israelis killed outside of armed hostilities in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in any two months since 2008.
In just less than a year, Israeli forces killed at least 79 Palestinians, including 14 children in the OPT according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
The international community has a moral and legal responsibility to take immediate action to put an end to the continuing crimes perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians to maintain the calamity of apartheid.
