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Israeli authorities act in violation of the fundamental right to assemble, demonstrate, and protest peacefully. Violent and aggressive measures are used repeatedly in violation of international law. Palestinian activists risk arrest, interrogation, long detentions, kangaroo trials, imprisonment, torture and other forms of abuse. Nonetheless, they persist, and according to one interviewee:
"The army has created a lot of obstacles but it hasn't prevented the protests." Those arrested do it again, at times more cautiously, but others with a determination to prevail.
The entire judicial process is racially biased and blatantly discriminatory. Indiscriminate arrests are made. Demonstrators are intimidated and targeted. Popular committee leaders and youths are most vulnerable. State terror is common practice, and in detention humiliation, torture and other abuses are employed for extended periods - to break their spirit, crush their will to resist, make them docile and submissive, or simply give up and leave. For over four decades under occupation, Palestinians, on their own, have continued their struggle to live freely on their own land, in their own country as international law affirms.
Recommendations
-- on July 20, 2004, the ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and called for its demolition; the UN General Assembly endorsed the decision; it's time for the UN "to follow through on its mandate to develop relevant measures to ensure the implementation of the ICJ decision;"
-- Israel should be pressured by targeted sanctions, including an arms embargo;
-- the UN Human Rights Council and Special Rapporteur for Human Rights should address these issues;
-- the international community should:
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