Introduction

This is the second quarterly field report of 2006 by Al-Haq's Monitoring and Documentation Department, covering the period from April to June 2006. Al-Haq’s field reports cover human rights abuses committed by the Israeli Occupying Power and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Each field report highlights a particularly important and disturbing trend observed by the Monitoring and Documentation Department during the reporting period.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, together constituting the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), since June 1967, despite binding United Nations Security Council resolutions ordering it to withdraw. Consequently, Al-Haq's monitoring and documentation activities have traditionally been directed towards the violations committed by the Occupying Power. However, following the creation of the PNA in 1994, Al-Haq also monitors and documents human rights violations perpetrated by the PNA.

The field reports are based on first-hand information gathered by Al-Haq's Monitoring and Documentation Department, covering a broad range of human rights abuses, including comprehensive coverage of killings, house demolitions, curfews, and deportations. Al-Haq’s specially trained fieldworkers visit sites of alleged human rights violations, draw maps, draft reports and take sworn witness statements (affidavits) from victims and eyewitnesses. All affidavits excerpted or referenced in field reports can be found on Al-Haq’s web site. The field reports do not cover the Gaza Strip, since Al-Haq has no fieldworkers there.

The Human Rights Situation since the Outbreak of the Second Intifada
The human rights violations committed during the reporting period must be analysed in the broader context of the deteriorating general human rights situation since the outbreak of the second intifada on 29 September 2000, and Israel’s persistent failure to apply international human rights and humanitarian law in the OPT.

According to Al-Haq's documentation, from the outbreak of the second intifada until the end of June 2006, 1,635 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, 313 of whom were children, and 90 of whom were women and female children. It is estimated that 257 Palestinians were killed in targeted assassinations. During the same period, Al-Haq documented the demolition, for punitive reasons, of 470 homes in the West Bank (whereof 444 were totally demolished and 26 were partially demolished), leading to the displacement of 3,330 people. Israel has also carried out a large number of administrative house demolitions on the pretext that the houses were built without the required licence. Since 2004, 369 houses have been demolished for lack of licence, 163 of which were in East Jerusalem.

Since the outbreak of the second intifada, the Occupying Power has nearly eliminated the already limited authority of the PNA in the OPT. After the establishment of the new Palestinian government in March 2006, Israel’s withholding of PNA tax revenues, arrests and revocations of ID of PNA officials and destruction of ministerial buildings, as well as major international donors’ cessation of aid to the PNA, have rendered the Authority unable to pay the salaries of its civil servants and carry out its basic functions. These factors have aggravated the PNA’s inability to uphold law and order in the OPT.