On 2 February 2023, Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights submitted a joint report pursuant to the UN Commission of Inquiry’s latest call for submissions for its ongoing investigation into facts and circumstances regarding specific alleged violations and abuses of the rights to freedom of expression and association, along with related international crimes. The submission underlines Israel’s long-established, widespread, systematic and institutionalised policies that aim to control and dominate Palestinians across historic Palestine with the ultimate purpose of entrenching and maintaining its settler-colonial apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole. Specifically, the submission focuses on Israeli policies of violent suppression of demonstrations and ensuing wilful killing and injuries, arbitrary detention, and torture and other ill-treatment, as well as smear and delegitimisation campaigns against individuals or groups—including human rights defenders and civil society organisations—seeking to challenge its apartheid regime.

Having contextualised Israel’s aforementioned policies and practices, the submission provides some illustrative cases that serve to exemplify and expose these institutionalised and systematic policies. Finally, in line with its mandate to investigate the underlying root causes of systematic discrimination and repression in colonised Palestine, the submission urges the Commission to, inter alia, recognise and acknowledge that the root causes of Israel’s systematic violations and crimes against the Palestinian people as a whole are Zionist settler-colonialism and the ensuing apartheid regime.

Read the full joint submission here.