70 years ago, on 10 December 1948, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘Universal Declaration’) in Resolution 217(III) with 48 votes in favour and 8 abstentions.[1] The Universal Declaration was born out of the ashes of the two world wars, with the atrocities committed therein having “outraged the conscience of mankind”.[2] Three years earlier, the Charter of the United Nations (‘UN Charter’),[3] adopted in San Francisco in 1945, had sought “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.[4] While at that time efforts to include an international bill of rights within the UN Charter were unsuccessful, its final text made significant references to human rights,[5] including by affirming that a purpose and principle of the UN was the development of “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.[6]

The Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land is a systematic policy, implemented through different means, fulfilling the Israeli goal of grabbing the maximum land with minimum Palestinian presence. Israeli mechanisms of confiscation have included the construction of the Annexation Wall, the expropriation of land for settlement construction and expansion, the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources, and the use of “security” as a pretext to justify the confiscation of lands. In Area C of the West Bank, Israel’s policies of land appropriation and annexation have materialized through: declaration of land as abandoned property; requisition of land for military needs, including closed military areas and firing zones; expropriation of land for public needs; and the declaration of vast areas of land as ‘State land’.[1] In addition, Israel has adopted legislation aiming at the dispossession of Palestinians, including the 1950 Absentees’ Property Law, which declares Palestinian refugees who fled during the Nakba,[2] between 29 November 1947 and 19 May 1948, as “absentees”, stripping them from their property (including land) ownership, and diverting ownership to the Custodianship Council for Absentees’ Property (‘the Custodian’).[3] Due to continued confiscations, access to lands in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has gradually decreased since 1967. Recently, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) has once again resorted to the “security” pretext to confiscate 29 dunums of land in Al-Jalamah village, Jenin, as explained in this weekly focus covering Al-Haq’s field documentation between 12 and 18 November 2018.

On 5 December 2018, the Irish Seanad (upper house) passed the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018. The Occupied Territories Bill 2018 aims to ban the importation of goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) into Ireland as well as banning services or corporate links to illegal settlements.

Al-Haq welcomes the resolution passed by the Chilean Parliament (with 99 votes in favour, seven against, and 31 abstentions) on Tuesday, 27 November 2018, calling upon the Chilean Government to review all agreements with Israel. The draft resolution requests the Chilean Government, through its President and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to review the treaties between Chile and Israel to ensure that they distinguish between the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Israeli settlements therein, and the State of Israel, and “include specific reference to the borders of Israel, recognised as the frontiers prior to the June 1967 war” – in accordance with United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016).