The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) cited confiscation of land and resources, restrictions on movement, forced dependence on the Israeli economy, and other policies as significant factors in Palestinian economic deterioration.
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“The court decision allows the Israeli authorities to re-new the administrative detention for Mohammed Balboul, 25, and Mahmoud Balboul, 22, at any time”, Issa Qaraqe, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s committee on detainees, told Anadolu Agency.
“The Palestinian leadership has provided the ICC with documentation relating to apartheid, illegal settlements in [the] West Bank and East Jerusalem, and crimes associated with the settlement regime”, Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq said in a statement.
Palestinian farmers harvest olives with an Israeli settlement in the background.
In January 2015 alone, 5,600 productive trees were vandalized, adding to the more than 2.5 million productive trees (including 800,000 olive trees) that have been uprooted since 1967.
The agency further claimed that Israel has been confiscating 82 percent of Palestinian groundwater while prohibiting Palestinians from maintaining water wells. “The Palestinians are left with no choice but to import their own water from Israel to cover 50 per cent of their consumption”, UNCTAD noted in the news release. All of this combined has “generated permanent crises of unemployment, poverty and food insecurity”, UNCTAD said.
Israel regularly responds to rocket fire from militants in Gaza with air strikes.
The list includes raw materials, agricultural fertilizers, telecommunications equipment, steel, pipes, spare parts and other capital goods.
The following tightening of the Gaza blockade, in place since 2007, made the things even worse, the report states.
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The crisis resulted in additional severe shortages of medical equipment as well as serious reduction in water supplies in the occupied territories, the United Nations finds. As well, Gaza’s socioeconomic conditions worsened and the infant mortality rate increased for the first time in 50 years. He called the closure “collective punishment” for which there must be accountability.
