HARD TRUTH DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW FOR ISRAEL By Fardah

 Jakarta, Jan 7, 2016 (Antara) - Israel has detained a total of 5,934 Palestinian children over the last five years, the Palestinian Studies and Documentation unit has revealed.

        The committee said that from 2000 to 2010, Israel detained an average of 700 Palestinian children per year, but given the recent detention spike, the annual average has jumped to 1,200, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported recently.

        The total number of Palestinian children detained by Israeli occupiers in 2015 increased by 72.1 percent and by over 134 percent from the number of children detained in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

        WAFA also noted that the total number of detainees in 2015 increased by 147.3 percent and 221.9 percent in comparison with the total number of children detained in 2012 and 2011 respectively.

        In the occupied West Bank alone, 134 Palestinians, including 26 children, have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2015, Al Jazeera reported on December 24, 2015.

        During the 50-day Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip in 2014, 2,216 Palestinians were killed, 70 percent of which were civilians and more than half of them were children and women, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said in its annual report in August 2015.

        Moreover, Israeli military attacks in Gaza devastated civilian objects, including houses, residential buildings, industrial and agricultural facilities, mosques, schools, educational facilities, hospitals, health care facilities, and infrastructure, including electricity, water and sanitation.

        So far, Israel has tried to conceal the crimes against humanity that it has committed, by not allowing human rights bodies, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, to obtain first hand information in colonized Palestine.

        "Unfortunately, my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way," Makarim Wibisono, the sixth person to hold the U.N. Special Rapporteur position, said when announcing his resignation due to Israel's failure to grant him access to the areas he was tasked with monitoring.

        "I took up this mandate with the understanding that Israel would grant me access, as an impartial and objective observer," he added, stressing that upon assuming his post in June 2014, he was assured that he would have access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

        Repeated requests for access, both written and oral, have been unsuccessful. "With no reply from Israel to my latest request, in October 2015, to have access by the end of 2015, it is with deep regret that I accept the premise upon which I took up the mandate, which is to have direct access to the victims in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, will not be fulfilled," he said.

        The senior Indonesian diplomat submitted his resignation, effective as March 31, to the President of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council on January 4, 2016. He will present his last report to the Human Rights Council in March.   
   Special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by and reporting back to the Council. DR Makarim Wibisono served as Indonesia's Permanent Representative to the U.N. in Geneva (2004-2007) and in New York (1997-2000), as well as on a number of U.N. bodies, including as the Chairperson of the 61st United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 2005 and President of the U.N. Economic and Social Council in 2000.

        Makarim voiced deep concern for the lack of effective protection of Palestinian victims and the continuing human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law.

        "I reluctantly wish to pass the baton to a successor, selected by the Human Rights Council," he added.

        "It is my sincere hope that whoever succeeds me will manage to resolve the current impasse, and so reassure the Palestinian people that after nearly half a century of occupation the world has not forgotten their plight and that universal human rights are indeed universal," the human rights expert stated.

        He underscored that it was important for Israel's own human rights credibility to cooperate fully with the mandate, including by allowing unfettered access to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

        In his most recent reports, Makarim expressed concerns following Israeli raids against the Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements in the occupied West Bank, at the high level of clashes in the city, where Palestinians live in close proximity to a large settler population, and at the blockade around the Gaza strip, which imposes severe restrictions on Palestinian movement, imports and exports.

        He noted that the Centre has now effectively been shut down as a result of the Israeli military declaring the surrounding area a military zone.

        "We urge Israeli authorities to lift this military order," added Makarim.

        "The bottom line remains that, if Gaza is to recover from the damage wrought by multiple rounds of hostility and a shattered economy, the blockade must be lifted. The people deserve help and realization of their human rights, not collective punishment," he said in June 2015.

        Continued reports that human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Hebron, are being subjected to physical attacks and death threats, have also led to grave concerns, with independent U.N. experts denouncing such harassment as unacceptable and calling for it to end immediately on December 18, 2015.

        The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a press release revealed that human rights defenders have been subjected to physical attacks, harassment, arrest and detention, and death threats, in an apparent bid by Israeli authorities and settler elements to stop their peaceful and important work.

        "Amidst a charged and violent atmosphere over the past months in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Palestinian and international defenders are providing a `protective presence' for Palestinians at risk of violence, and documenting human rights violations," said U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst.

        The continued harassment of human rights defenders in the region, who are exercising their rights to freedoms of expression and association, is simply unacceptable. It should cease immediately, Forst stressed.

        Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country's situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not U.N. staff, nor are they paid for their work.

        In 2014, the U.N. Human Rights Council designated Makarim as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. 
   Forst from France was appointed by the Human Rights Council as the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in 2014. Forst has extensive experience on human rights issues and particularly on the situation of human rights defenders.

        In September 2015, Makarim failed to enter Gaza via the Rafah border crossing in Egypt. However, he is not the first Special Rapporteur who has been unable to enter the occupied territories, Al Jazeera reported.

        "The decision of the U.N. Special Rapporteur to resign is the fault of Israel that has come in the way of him performing his tasks as mandated by the U.N. in Palestine," HAMAS spokesman Mushir Al Masri informed an Antara correspondent in Cairo, on January 6, 2016.

        "The failure of the U.N. Special Rapporteur to visit Gaza from the Rafa border crossing is due to Israel's pressure on the Egyptian government," Mushir stated.

        In the meantime, Makarim's predecessor, Richard Falk, was detained for 20 hours at the Ben Gurion Airport and then expelled in 2008, in a move that the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called "unprecedented."
   Falk had held the U.N. Special Rapporteur position for six years until June 2014.

        "I responded to media inquiries by saying that I was shocked, but not surprised. Shocked because the evidence was overwhelming and the other three distinguished members of the U.N. fact-finding commission were struck by the finding," Falk wrote in a statement commenting on Makarim's resignation, and posted it on the Electronic Intifada website.

        Falk said he was not shocked, indeed grateful, as it illuminated the difficulty of confronting anyone charged with truthful reporting on the Palestinian ordeal under occupation, and by resigning Makarim has not allowed Israel to get away with neutering the position of special rapporteur.

        "When I met with Makarim Wibisono in Geneva shortly after his appointment as special rapporteur was announced, he told me confidently that he had been assured that if he accepted the appointment the Israeli government would allow him entry, a reassurance that he repeated in his resignation announcement," Falk said.

        He wrote that he had warned him then that even someone who leaned far to the Israeli side politically would find it impossible to avoid reaching the conclusion that Israel was guilty of severe violations of international humanitarian law and of human rights standards, and this kind of honesty was sure to anger the Israelis.

        "You can make a difference by giving foreign ministries around the world the most authoritative account available of the daily realities facing the Palestinian people. By so doing you have to expect ultra-Zionist organizations and others to react harshly, including through a continuous defamatory campaign that seeks by any means to discredit your voice and will mount accusations of anti-Semitism and, in my case, of being a `self-hating Jew,'" Falk said.

        "What both shocked and surprised me was the willingness of both the U.N. Secretary General and U.S. diplomatic representatives at the U.N. to bend in Israel's direction and join the chorus making such denunciations," stated Falk, who is Professor Emeritus for International Law at Princeton University.

        In fact, John Kirby, spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State, when asked for his comment on Makarim's resignation, during a daily press briefing in Washington DC, on January 4, 2015, expressed the U.S. government's opposition to the U.N. Human Rights Council's monitoring of Israel.

        "We remain strongly opposed to this one-sided mandate, which falls under the Human Rights Council¿s agenda item 7, the only agenda item dedicated to one country - Israel. We not only oppose this one-sided mandate, but also all HRC action taken under this item. I won't get into specific diplomatic conversations we've had with respect to his access or whether he got it or didn't get it, but we've historically been and remain opposed to this mandate," Kirby said as quoted on the website of the U.S. State Department, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel, both politically and financially.

        Kirby said the new Human Rights Council President should appoint someone, "who can take a fair and balanced approach" to this issue to fill out the remainder of Makarim's term.

        The spokesman said Makarim's successor should be the South Korean Permanent Representative to the U.N. Choi Kyong-lim.

        The current U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon is also from South Korea and has been considered by many human rights defenders as too weak while facing Israel, which has continuously violated the basic human rights of Palestinians and has never been sanctioned by the U.N.  ***2***