In light of the recent mass killing of civilians in occupied Palestine, the undersigned 95 organizations call on the UN Human Rights Council to urgently launch an independent investigation into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, occurring in the context of the "March of Great Return" and Nakba protests.

As the Great Return March entered its eighth consecutive week in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) continued to use the same shoot-to-kill and shoot-to-disable policy previously documented by Al-Haq.[1] In an egregious display of excessive use of force, including lethal force, against thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters, the IOF killed 59 Palestinians, including seven children, a person with disability, and injured 1,861 Palestinians, including 314 children and 88 women, amongst them 1,286 injured by live fire, of which 70 injuries were described as critical. Overall, the IOF have killed 101 Palestinians since the launch of the Great Return March protests on 30 March 2018.[2]

The eve of the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba marked the opening of the United States (US) embassy in Jerusalem, unlawfully relocated from Tel Aviv following the 6 December 2017 announcement by US President Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. On Monday, 14 May 2018, Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem was entrenched and endorsed by the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem, in violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations on the prohibition of annexation, a general principle of international law and in breach of the Israel’s obligations as Occupying Power under Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the occupied Palestinian population against any measures “by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory”.

Factual Overview

The measures taken by the Palestinian Authority to cut the salaries of public sector employees in the Gaza Strip, and other measures that have affected the residents of the Gaza Strip since March 2017, began with the announcement of the formation of the administrative committee to manage the situation in the Gaza Strip. This derived from the continued failure of the internal reconciliation efforts, in an attempt to pressure Hamas to end its control over Gaza.