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UNITED
NATIONS
E
        Economic and Social Council
Distr.
GENERAL
E/CN.4/2003/G/6
18 September 2002

Original: ENGLISH
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-ninth session
Item 8 of the provisional agenda





QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE
OCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES, INCLUDING PALESTINE


Letter dated 9 September 2002 from the Permanent Observer for Palestine
to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Israeli occupation army continues its large-scale military campaign of terror against the Palestinian people and their land, imposing a total siege on most Palestinian towns, villages and camps; conducting military incursions into Palestinian homes, destroying houses and popular and official institutions ; bulldozing hundreds of dunums of agricultural land and trees; detaining hundreds of Palestinian civilians; deliberating killing and wounding others and confiscating thousands of dunums of Palestinian land to serve their increasing settlements and military interests.

On Friday, 6 September, in an act which reveals the bad intentions of the Israeli forces in targeting the Palestinian Ministry of Health and its working crews along with other Palestinian health institutions, medical staff and ambulances, Israeli forces broke into the Palestinian Ministry of Health offices in Nablus and deliberately destroyed the offices’ possessions.

The city of Nablus has been under curfew for 80 continuous days; people there have been living under constant curfew for almost three months and are now being denied access to medical treatment. The humanitarian situation in Nablus is growing increasingly critical, as all medical services are currently paralysed by the Israeli army. Israeli tanks are surrounding and blocking all access to the Rafidia hospital, the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Palestinian Medical Relief.

Herewith enclosed for further information are memorandums issued by the Palestinian National Authority on the daily Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, for the period from Sunday 1 to Sunday 8 September 2002.

The Ministry of Health appeals to the international community, to the United Nations specialized agencies, humanitarian institutions, the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross to condemn and denounce such Israeli acts which violate and infringe all humanitarian and international conventions, to urge the Government of Israel to refrain from its campaign of destruction against the health institutions as well as all private and popular institutions in Palestine, to withdraw immediately from the premises of the Palestinian Ministry of Health and to allow ambulances and medical personnel freedom of movement so that they can undertake their mission, transport patients to hospital and provide them with the necessary medical treatment.

I would be most grateful if you could arrange to have this letter and its enclosure* distributed to the members of the Commission on Human Rights as an official document of the fifty-ninth session of the Commission.

(Signed ) Nabil RAMLAWI
Ambassador
Permanent Observer

___________

* Reproduced as received, in the language of submission only.


ecn4-03G6.pdf
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