Coordinated and edited by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen’s Right (PICCR)

Israel has traditionally argued before UN treaty monitoring bodies that it has no obligation to ensure compliance with the major human rights conventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israel usually bases this argument on several grounds. First, Israel argues that the majority of the Palestinians living in the OPT reside in the "A Areas," which under the Oslo process have ostensibly been transferred to the security and administrative control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and accordingly that these are areas “which are not subject to its sovereign territory and jurisdiction”. Secondly, Israel argues that human rights law generally does not apply in the OPT and that only international humanitarian law applies.1

Major UN bodies, including treaty-monitoring bodies, have uniformly rejected such arguments by Israel.