UN Experts: Israeli Ground Operations in Jenin May Constitute War Crime

Palestinian woman walks on damaged road in Jenin refugee camp in West Bank, Wednesday, July 5 2023 - AP
Palestinian woman walks on damaged road in Jenin refugee camp in West Bank, Wednesday, July 5 2023 - AP
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UN Experts: Israeli Ground Operations in Jenin May Constitute War Crime

Palestinian woman walks on damaged road in Jenin refugee camp in West Bank, Wednesday, July 5 2023 - AP
Palestinian woman walks on damaged road in Jenin refugee camp in West Bank, Wednesday, July 5 2023 - AP

UN experts said that Israeli air strikes and ground operations in the occupied West Bank targeting the Jenin Refugee camp may constitute a war crime.

“Israeli forces’ operations in the occupied West Bank, killing and seriously injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands, amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime,” the experts said, OHCHR reported.

“The attacks were the fiercest in the West Bank since the destruction of the Jenin camp in 2002,” the UN experts noted.

They highlighted multiple reports about ambulances being prevented from accessing Jenin Refugee Camp to evacuate the wounded, hampering their access to medical assistance.

Around 4,000 Palestinians reportedly fled the Jenin Refugee Camp overnight on Monday and Tuesday after the deadly air strikes.

“It is heart-breaking to see thousands of Palestinian refugees originally displaced since 1947-1949, forced to march out of the camp in abject fear at the dead of night,” the experts said.

Denouncing so-called “counter terrorism” operations by Israeli forces, the experts said the attacks found no justification under international law.

“The attacks constitute collective punishment of the Palestinian population, who have been labelled a “collective security threat” in the eyes of Israeli authorities,” they said.

They also expressed grave concern about military weaponry and tactics deployed by Israel’s occupation forces at least twice over the last two weeks against Jenin’s population.

“The Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are protected persons under international law, guaranteed of all human rights including the presumption of innocence,” the experts said.

“They cannot be treated as a collective security threat by the occupying Power, all the more while it advances the annexation of occupied Palestinian land, and displacement and dispossession of its Palestinian residents.”

The experts said Israel’s operations in Jenin were amplifications of the structural violence that has permeated the occupied Palestinian territory for decades.

“The impunity that Israel has enjoyed for its acts of violence over decades, only fuel and intensify the recurring cycle of violence,” they said, according to OHCHR.

The UN experts called for Israel to be held accountable under international law for its illegal occupation and violent acts to perpetuate it.

“For this relentless violence to end, Israel’s illegal occupation must end. It cannot be corrected or improved in the margins, because it is wrong to the core,” they said.



UNRWA Lebanon Says Not Impacted by US Aid Freeze or New Israeli Law

 Head of UNRWA in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus speaks during a press conference in her offices in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2025. (Reuters)
Head of UNRWA in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus speaks during a press conference in her offices in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2025. (Reuters)
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UNRWA Lebanon Says Not Impacted by US Aid Freeze or New Israeli Law

 Head of UNRWA in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus speaks during a press conference in her offices in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2025. (Reuters)
Head of UNRWA in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus speaks during a press conference in her offices in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2025. (Reuters)

The director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon said on Wednesday that the agency had not been affected by US President Donald Trump's halt to US foreign aid funding or by an Israeli ban on its operations.

"UNRWA currently is not receiving any US funding so there is no direct impact of the more recent decisions related to the UN system for UNRWA," Dorothee Klaus told reporters at UNRWA's field office in Lebanon.

US funding to UNRWA was suspended last year until March 2025 under a deal reached by US lawmakers and after Israel accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.

The UN has said it had fired nine UNRWA staff who may have been involved and said it would investigate all accusations made.

Klaus said that UNRWA Lebanon had also placed four staff members on administrative leave as it investigated allegations they had breached the UN principle of neutrality.

One UNRWA teacher had already been suspended last year and a Hamas commander in Lebanon - killed in September in an Israeli strike - was found to have had an UNRWA job.

Klaus also said there was "no direct impact" on the agency's Lebanon operations from a new Israeli law banning UNRWA operations in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that "UNRWA will continue fully operating in Lebanon."

The law, adopted in October, bans UNRWA's operation on Israeli land - including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally - and contact with Israeli authorities from Jan. 30.

UNRWA provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Its commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that UNRWA has been the target of a "fierce disinformation campaign" to "portray the agency as a terrorist organization."