Israel must be held to account for expanding occupation, says UN expert

The international community must hold Israel to account for its 54-year occupation of Palestine, a UN human rights expert said on Thursday, five years after the UN Security Council called for all settlement activities in Palestinian territories to end, Anadolu Agency reported.

“On the fifth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 2334 by the United Nations Security Council, the international community has to take its own words and its own laws seriously,” said Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

“Without decisive international intervention to impose accountability upon an unaccountable occupation, there is no hope that the Palestinian right to self-determination and an end to the conflict will be realized anytime in the foreseeable future,” Lynk said.

Resolution 2334, adopted by the Security Council on Dec. 23, 2016, designates Israeli settlements as “a flagrant violation under international law.”

The resolution says that all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”

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