There is nothing new about Amnesty International finding fault with the Jewish state, but amid the criticisms of Israel in its just-released annual report on human rights violations around the world, the charity acknowledged – in positive terms - the prosecution of an IDF soldier who killed an injured Palestinian attacker last year.
The organisation’s report highlighted the trial of Elor Azaria, who was jailed this week for 18 months for killing a wounded assailant in Hebron.
However, the report added: “Most members of the Israeli forces who committed unlawful killings of Palestinians faced no repercussions.”
The report went on to criticise Israel for “extensive human rights violations in 2016”. Among those was the claim that almost 700 Palestinians are being held without charge under Israeli administrative detention orders – most of them in Israeli prisons. According to Amnesty, this is the highest number in the last 10 years.
Entitled ‘The State of the World’s Human Rights’, the report documents human rights violations in 159 countries. Israel features on a list of 36 countries which, according to Amnesty, broke international law by returning refugees to countries where their safety was at risk.
The report makes reference to the demolition of 1,089 homes and other structures built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem without permits and said that 1,600 people were forcibly evicted from their homes.
Among 110 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces last year, some posed no threat to life, according to the human rights NGO. It accused Israel of continuing to “use excessive force against Palestinian protesters, killing 22 and wounding thousands last year with rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition”.
Nevertheless, Palestinian governing bodies were not spared from criticism either.
The report stated: “Neither the Palestinian government nor the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza took steps to ensure accountability for crimes committed by Palestinians armed groups in previous conflicts, including indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and summary killings of alleged ‘collaborators’.”
According to Amnesty, Palestinians killed 16 Israelis, most civilians, and one foreign national in stabbings, car-rammings, shootings and other attacks last year.
Summing up human rights abuses in the past year, Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general, wrote in the report: “From the worsening plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar to mass unlawful killings in South Sudan, from the vicious crackdowns on dissenting voices in Turkey and Bahrain to the rise of hate speech across large parts of Europe and the USA, the world in 2016 became a darker and more unstable place.”
