Financial Times
March 10, 2007
The UN Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination said Israel's security measures to ward off suicide
bombings and other attacks must be re-calibrated to avoid discrimination
against Arab Israelis or Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied lands
such as the West Bank.
The committee specified that Israel should
ease roadblocks and other restrictions on Palestinians and put a stop to
settler violence and hate speech.
Its 18 independent experts, who
examined the records of 13 countries at a four-week meeting in Geneva,
also said Israel should cease building a barrier in and around the West
Bank and ensure its various checkpoints and road closures do not reinforce
segregation.
In its conclusions, the committee also voiced concern
at an unequal distribution of water resources, a disproportionate
targeting of Palestinians in house demolitions and the "denial of the
right of many Palestinians" to return to their land.
Differing
applications of criminal law between Jews and Arabs had caused "harsher
punishments for Palestinians for the same offence", said the committee,
whose recommendations are not legally binding.
A high number of
complaints by Arab Israelis against police officers are not properly
investigated and many Arabs suffer discriminatory work practices and high
unemployment, it said.
Excavations beneath and around the Al-Aqsa
mosque, Islam's holiest site in Jerusalem, should also be undertaken in a
way that will "in no way endanger the mosque and impede access to it", it
added.
Israel argues that the UN committee's remit, to ensure
compliance with a 1965 international treaty against racial discrimination
which the Jewish state has ratified, does not apply to the Palestinian
territories it has occupied since 1967. The committee rejects that
position.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva,
Itzhak Levanon, told the committee last month it was crucial to understand
the pressing security threats faced by his country.