UN rights chief: Israel refuses to issue visas for staff, blocks human rights access

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has slammed Israel’s failure to issue or renew visas for her staff to monitor the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, raising questions about the Tel Aviv regime’s intentions.

Bachelet said that Israel’s treatment of the UN staff is part of a wider and worrying trend to block human rights access to the occupied Palestinian territory.

“This raises the question of what exactly the Israeli authorities are trying to hide,” she said.

The UN chief vowed that her office would continue to report on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

Further explaining the matter, Bachelet said in a statement that in 2020, 15 international staff of her office in Palestine which has been operating in the country for 26 years had no other choice but to leave as visa requests and visa renewals went unanswered for two years.

Bachelet, who leaves office on Wednesday, also added that Israel’s failure to process visa applications that are necessary for her staff’s access will not go uncontested.

“We will continue to deliver on our mandate. And we will continue to demand access to the occupied Palestinian territory for our staff, in line with Israel’s obligations as a UN member state,” she said.

The UN rights chief further said Israel’s treatment of her staff was part of a “wider and worrying trend to block human rights access” to the Palestinian territories. Her statement said that in 2021, Israeli forces killed 320 Palestinians – “a 10-fold increase on the number killed in 2020” – and injured 17,042 people.

In the latest Israeli violations of human rights in occupied Palestine, four Palestinians, including three children, died in the besieged Gaza Strip during the month of August after Israel prevented them from leaving the enclave to receive treatment. Israel constantly tries to prevent such violations of human rights from being reported.

According to the Palestinian al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, the latest victim of this ban “was a 6-year-old child, Farouk Abu Naga, who died recently as a result of the delay in granting him a permit to cross to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds) to receive treatment.”

In 2019, Israel expelled Human Rights Watch’s country director Omar Shakir, after accusing him of supporting calls for a boycott. Also during the same year, the Israeli government refused to renew the mandate for an international force that monitored violations in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

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