The United Nations’ top human rights official has warned of the deteriorating situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and of “unconscionable death and suffering” in the Gaza Strip.
“The situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is deteriorating significantly,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
He said 528 Palestinians, including 133 children, were killed by Israeli military forces or settlers between the start of the current war on Gaza in October and June 15, “raising in many cases serious concerns about the unlawful killings.”
During the same period, 23 Israelis were killed in clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, including eight members of the security forces, according to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Two weeks ago, Turk said West Bank residents were “subjected day after day to unprecedented bloodshed.”
He spoke as the Israeli army arrested at least five Palestinians during its storming of several towns and villages in Ramallah and the West Bank governorate of El-Bireh, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa , which also reported a settler attack on Palestinian farmland in the West Bank. village of Yasuf, east of Salfit.
Overnight, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians in Qusrah, near Nablus, also in the West Bank, and took them to a school where they were detained and interrogated, Wafa reported.
Israeli forces have rounded up an average of 35 Palestinians per day since the start of the war, with 9,112 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons as of June 1, nearly double the number of Palestinians imprisoned on October 1, according to tallies by advocacy groups. Palestinian prisoners.
Turk also told the 47-member council that he was “appalled” by the disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law in Gaza, where “there has been unconscionable death and suffering.”
“More than 120,000 people in Gaza, the vast majority women and children, have been killed or injured since October 7 as a result of intensive Israeli offensives,” the official said.
“Since Israel intensified its operations in Rafah in early May, nearly a million Palestinians have once again been forcibly displaced, while aid delivery and humanitarian access have further deteriorated. »
More than 37,000 people have been killed and more than 85,400 injured in the Israeli war against Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian enclave’s Health Ministry announced on Tuesday. Israel’s revised death toll from Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel stands at 1,139, with dozens still held captive in Gaza.
Turk said he was “extremely concerned about the escalation of the situation” between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, with at least 401 people reportedly killed in Lebanon in the fighting, including paramedics and journalists.
More than 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon and more than 60,000 in Israel, with 25 Israeli deaths, he said.
Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva accused Turk of “completely omitting the cruelty and barbarity of terrorism” in his speech to the council.
Turk also said that global conflicts killed three times as many children and twice as many women in 2023 as in the previous year, with total civilian deaths increasing by 72 percent.
The warring parties are “increasingly pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable – and legal,” he told the Council.
“The killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily phenomenon. …Children were shot. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities. All this with hateful, divisive and dehumanizing rhetoric.
Pointing to other conflicts – including in Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Syria – he noted that funding to help growing numbers of people in need was dwindling.
“At the end of May 2024, the gap between humanitarian financing needs and available resources stands at $40.8 billion,” Turk said, contrasting with “nearly $2.5 trillion in global military spending in 2023 “.