‘Systematic suffocation’ of rights
Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the findings reveal “a systematic suffocation of Palestinian rights in the West Bank.”
“Whether it’s accessing water, going to school, rushing to the hospital, visiting family or friends or harvesting olives, All aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank are controlled and restricted by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.“, said.
“This is a particularly serious form of racial discrimination and segregation, resembling the type of apartheid system we have seen before.”
Widespread oppression
According to the report, Israeli authorities treat Israeli settlers and Palestinians residing in the West Bank under two separate bodies of laws and policies, resulting in unequal treatment on a range of critical issues, including movement and access to resources such as land and water.
He concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that separation, segregation and subordination are intended to be permanent, to maintain oppression.
“Acts committed with the intention of maintaining such a policy amount to a violation of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid,” it says.
New deterioration since October 7
Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups from Gaza attacked communities in southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage, the situation has deteriorated further, the report added.
It cites increased use of illegal force, arbitrary detentions, torture, severe movement restrictions, repression of civil society and the media, and settlement expansion.. It says this is compounded by the continuation and escalation of settler violence, in many cases with the acquiescence, support and participation of Israeli security forces.
The report also documents trends in unlawful killings and other forms of state and gun violence and contains numerous examples of lethal force that has been deliberately used without justification, in a discriminatory manner against Palestinians, and with the apparent intent to kill.
It highlights, among others, the assassination of 10-year-old Saddam Hussein Rajab in January 2025, and the shooting of Sondos Shalabi, eight months pregnant, in February 2025, and notes that both victims were unarmed.
Widespread impunity
Impunity remains widespread, the report notes. Of the more than 1,500 murders of Palestinians recorded between January 2017 and last September, Israeli authorities opened 112 investigations, which resulted in just a conviction.
Türk called on Israel to repeal laws and policies that “perpetuate systemic discrimination,” adding that illegal settlements must be dismantled, the occupation ended and Palestinians’ right to self-determination respected.