Human Rights

20 Feb 2023; MEMO: The UN Security Council issued a formal statement on Monday denouncing Israel's plan to expand settlements on Occupied Palestinian Territory, the first action the United States has allowed the body to take against its ally, Israel, in six years, Reuters reports.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: A group of Egyptian human rights organisations are demanding that the government stop forcible disappearances and that authorities carry out independent investigations into perpetrators.

Between 2013 and January 2023 the Stop Enforced Disappearance Campaign documented that over 3,600 people were forcibly disappeared.

20 Feb 2023; MEMO: A group of Israeli settlers yesterday threw stones at a mosque in the Old City of Hebron, smashing its windows and damaging its yard, local sources said.

Sunia Mosque, located in the Al-Sahla area close to the vegetable market, was targeted as part of settler "attempt to intimidate the worshippers and spread an atmosphere of fear and terror among them," Director General of the Hebron Endowment, Nidal Al-Jabari, said.

17 Feb 2023; MEMO: African Union's political affairs, peace, and security commissioner on Friday urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to acknowledge and rectify the "historical injustices" that have affected the African continent.

16 Feb 2023; MEMO: The Arab League has condemned the Israeli Knesset's [Parliament] approval of a law allowing the Israeli government to revoke "citizenship or residency" from Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jerusalemites and deport them to the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, if they obtained financial assistance from the Palestinian National Authority.

In a statement issued Thursday, the League described the law as "unfair and racist, and constitutes a dangerous escalation and ethnic cleansing".

17 Feb 2023; MEMO: A heated crisis is reported to have erupted between Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, which prompted Levin to threaten with submitting his resignation and dissolving the government, over the state of the judiciary reform plan.

15 Feb 2023; MEMO: The administration of US President Joe Biden has withdrawn the nomination of leading law professor James Cavallaro for an international human rights post because he called Israel an "apartheid state". Cavallaro is a law professor at Wesleyan University and the executive director of its Network for Human Rights.

15 Feb 2023; MEMO: Israel is hurtling towards fascism, Holocaust historian Daniel Blatman has said in an interview with Haaretz. Blatman is a professor at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University. His fields of interest are the Holocaust, Nazism, fascism, genocide and East European Jewry during the Holocaust. He is currently involved in establishing the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2025.

14 Feb 2023; MEMO: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated last night that, "All of Israel's settlements are illegal under international law and a substantial obstacle to peace."

Guterres made his comment as he expressed his deep concern about the Israeli government's announcement that it is "legalising" nine settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank. Such outposts are illegal under international and even Israeli law.

14 Feb 2023; MEMO: Israel's Finance Minister has announced that the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu will lift all restrictions on the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and Palestinian territories, in a move which blatantly defies international law and Washington's displeasure.