6/2021

10/3/2021

Following the storming of the headquarters of the Health Work Committees in Al-Bireh

ICHR calls on the international community to take up its responsibilities in the face of occupation crimes

The Independent Commission for Human Rights, ICHR, condemns that the storming of the Israeli occupation forces to the headquarters of the Health Work Committees in Al-Bireh city at dawn on Monday 3/8/2021. The occupation forces surrounded the headquarters building, removed the doors of the two floors of the institution and prevented movement inside the building. They conducted a thorough search of the headquarters for several hours, confiscated storage devices from all computers in the institution before their withdrawal.

This was not the first incursion by the occupation forces into the headquarters of the Health Work Committees. The Israeli occupation forces committed many other incursions into the building, the last of which was committed on 11/10/2019, despite the fact that the entrance to the institution and its department have many recognized international emblems that determine the nature of the institution's work in the field humane activism.

ICHR stresses that this intrusion comes in the context of an organized ongoing process targeting community institutions and their workers to undermine their work and their role in Palestinian society, in light of difficult health conditions that citizens and health institutions are going through in the occupied Palestinian territories due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The targeting process aims at impeding the efforts, made by Health Work Committees and health sector institutions in the occupied Palestinian territories, as they respond to the pandemic.

ICHR believes that the Israeli occupation forces' continued targeting of Health Work Committees and obstructing the work of medical staff is an affirmation of the Israeli occupation’s noncompliance of the rules of international humanitarian law and international human rights law that apply to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. These rules state for keeping medical staff completely away from any military or security targeting and facilitating their tasks.

Therefore, the ICHR, while reiterating its condemnation and denunciation of this recurring crime, calls on the international community and the Special Rapporteur in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to assume their responsibilities in the face of occupation crimes and to pressure Israel to comply with the rules of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

The End