United Nations (UN) human rights chief Louise Arbour faces the assembly during a Session of the Human Rights Council, at the UN Office in Geneva. Arbour warned of a "climate of impunity" operating in the Palestinian territories and urged Israel to carry out credible and transparent probes into civilian deaths resulting from military action.(AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
Wed Nov 29, 1:54 PM ET
UN human rights chief Louise Arbour warned of a "climate of impunity" operating in the Palestinian territories and urged Israel to carry out credible and transparent probes into civilian deaths resulting from military action.
Arbour told the UN Human Rights Council that Israel had both the right and the duty to defend its population against rocket attacks but it must do so within the bounds of human rights and humanitarian law.
"The human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is grave and worsening, within a general climate of impunity," Arbour said in a verbal report on her recent mission to the region.
"Overall I was struck throughout my visit by the sense of vulnerability and abandonment that was expressed to me by virtually all the civilians that I met, both in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories," she added.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said she had urged Israel to ensure "transparent, credible and independent investigations" in cases where lethal force had resulted in the sort of civilian casualties suffered in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun.
"This would be central to break the culture of impunity and contribute to solidify the rule of law," she told the UN Human Rights Council.
Nineteen Palestinians were killed on November 18 in Israeli shelling of private homes in Beit Hanun, which Israel blamed on a technical malfunction.
The UN's human rights office announced Wednesday that South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, who headed that country's Truth and Reconciliation after the end of the apartheid regime, will lead a fact-finding mission into the Beit Hanun incident set up by the Council.
The mission is meant to recommend ways "to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli attacks."
The mission was supported by 32 countries mainly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, but opposed by eight including Canada, Britain and Germany while six more, including France, Switzerland and Japan, abstained.
Arbour said that during her meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, she had stressed the need for the Palestinian Authority to stop rocket attacks by militants on Israeli communities and prosecute those responsible.
"Every effort must be made to enable the Palestinian Authority to discharge that responsibility," she told the 47 member states in the Council.
"At the same time I stressed that as long as the rockets continue to hit its territory, Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its population and to ensure the protection of its citizens," Arbour said.
"However, this must be done in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law," she added.
Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, praised Arbour's approach as "balanced" and urged the Council to adopt the same outlook.
"The High Commissioner's initiative to visit both sides, Palestinians and Israelis, permitted her to see firsthand that human suffering is the monopoly of neither side, that human distress is equal on both sides of the divide, and also that placing blame on one-side only is a distortion of reality," he said.
An Israeli television network reported last week that authorities had been secretly in contact with the families of Palestinian victims about possible compensation should the relatives agree not to bring the shelling before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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