Press Releases
24 May 2003 |Reference 21/2003
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The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) will forcibly transfer five Palestinian detainees at the Ofra detention center near the West Bank city of Ramallah to the Gaza Strip.
The victims have seven days to appeal the decision.
The transfer of these five detainees is consistent with Israel’s decades-old practice of forcibly deporting Palestinians from their land, a practice that received international attention last year with the deportation of the Ajouri brothers on 3 September 2002.
Such actions, approved by the Israeli Supreme Court, constitute a form of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment and, as such, are strongly condemned by the Mezan Center for Human Rights.
The policy of Transfer breaches Human Rights Law, specifically Article 12 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR) and Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War which prohibits all forcible individual and mass transfer of civilians regardless their motives.
Al Mezan calls upon the international community to immediately and effectively intervene to end Israel’s war crimes from which it is supposed to protect the civilian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
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The Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR)
Goldstone Report
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