Occupation and oppression in Palestine

An emergency international delegation of legal experts, human rights defenders and legislators was in Palestine for one week in October–November to look into the worsening conditions in the Occupied Territories. Their report, reproduced partially below, documents systematic violations of international law by Israel, ranging from torture within prison walls to displacement and dispossession in the towns and villages – all as the carnage in Gaza continues.

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ON 28 October 2024, an emergency international delegation landed in Palestine to amplify evidence of the Israeli regime’s systematic violations of international law since the start of its genocide in Gaza one year ago.

Delegates arrived in Palestine amid sustained efforts by Israeli authorities to prevent access to the Occupied Territories and obscure the conditions of deprivation, detention, apartheid and annexation endured by the Palestinian people.

The delegation – coordinated by the Progressive International, the National Lawyers Guild of the United States, and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers – brought together legal experts, human rights defenders and parliamentary representatives to hear witness testimony, conduct site visits and gather evidence of these violations of international law.

The evidence is clear: the genocide in Gaza and the systematic nature of the abuse of Palestinian detainees recall the worst historical abuses committed by colonial powers against indigenous populations.

Informed by their direct observations, the delegation echoes the urgent demand for states to sever all ties with the Israeli regime – not only to end the genocide and occupation but also to defend the very integrity of international law.

Systematic violations

Over the course of a week in the field, the delegation met a wide range of civil society organisations, political representatives and local communities to compile a wide-ranging set of findings about the conditions of the Occupied Territories and their changes since October 2023.

The delegation found clear evidence of what Palestinian citizens and organisations have been telling the world for years: Israel relies on systematic violations of international law against the Palestinian people to advance its project of settler colonialism.

For decades, Palestinian human rights organisations and international observers have documented the systematic use of land grabs, settlements, surveillance, harassment, executions, administrative detention, imprisonment and torture as tools of control in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, over 800,000 Palestinians have been subjected to military detention since 1967, affecting as many as 40% of Palestinian men in the Occupied Territories. Many of those arrested are held without trial.

These assaults have intensified since the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza. As Inès Abdel Razek, of the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, told the delegation: ‘There is no going back to 6 October. We live in a new reality. But that reality is one layer upon other layers of colonisation, occupation and dispossession.’

Time and again, delegates heard the same message from Palestinians: ‘The world has failed us.’ They face executions, expulsions, torture and incarceration – all atop the rubble of a genocide in Gaza.

Genocide in Gaza

From the early days of Israeli forces’ 2023 assault on Gaza, experts, human rights organisations, lawyers and genocide scholars have been clear: the actions and stated intentions of the occupying force point to a deliberate campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people carried out with the full support of the United States.

As of 9 October 2024, the official death toll in Gaza was over 44,000. Some half of those killed were children. At least 126 of them have been journalists, and evidence points to the deliberate targeting of them and their families. Over 1,000 of them were health workers – doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others who were systematically targeted to disable Gaza’s health system.

But the official count of those killed is likely to be significantly constrained by Gaza’s degraded administrative capacities. In July, a letter in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the death toll could now exceed 180,000, as Israeli forces systematically destroy all life-sustaining infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Starvation, disease, a lack of access to healthcare, a lack of clean water, and myriad other factors are contributing to a cataclysmic situation for the Palestinian people.

‘There is a systematic destruction of the medical system. Hospitals destroyed, doctors killed, drones assassinating surgeons,’ Palestinian political leader Mustafa Barghouti told the delegation. ‘This is biological warfare: they make us sick, pollute our water and allow infections to spread.’

The widespread use of hunger as a weapon of war is now threatening all the remaining residents of Gaza. ‘There is so much destruction of basic supplies that people are starving – not only in the North but also in the South,’ Barghouti told the delegation. ‘A chicken today is 600 shekels; that’s 160 dollars. There is no food, no medicine and no showers. There are people who have been displaced not once, not twice, but 10 times.’

In this context, the Israeli regime’s decision to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) is clear in its intent: to cut off the final lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people facing imminent starvation and in dire need of humanitarian assistance. ‘We have never seen worse conditions than today in North Gaza. It is truly apocalyptic,’ Roland Friedrich, Director of UNRWA Affairs, West Bank, told the delegation. ‘No aid, all air strikes, and no journalists left to cover what kinds of devastation are taking place there.’

Detentions, disappearances and political prisoners

The delegation heard harrowing testimony from Palestinian detainees and human rights advocates, exposing a pattern of systematic abuse and humiliation inflicted upon Palestinian prisoners by occupation authorities. While some aspects of detainees’ suffering have been documented, much remains shrouded in secrecy, with countless cases of abduction, detention and even killings going unreported.

Sahar Francis, co-director of Addameer, described a disturbing pattern of psychological and physical abuse, with Israeli regime authorities aiming to crush detainees’ spirits. ‘Almost every prisoner in Gaza has faced torture, sexual harassment or assault. They strip them, tase them, take pictures to humiliate them. They treat us worse than they treat dogs and cats,’ she told the delegation. Francis explained that while past abuses have left detainees physically harmed, many retained a sense of dignity. Now, however, ‘humiliation’ has become a deliberate tactic of torture, intended to erode the very core of their humanity. This abuse is so extreme, she argues, that detainees are being broken ‘in soul as well as body’.

Accounts from former detainees underscore the intensity of abuse within Israeli facilities. Issa Amro, a human rights activist from Hebron, described being arrested on 7 October, saying, ‘I was arrested on 7 October, and 50 soldiers laughed and danced and tortured me for 11 hours – and they did not even take my ID.’ Amro, who has no affiliation with Hamas, believes his treatment exemplifies the arbitrary and retaliatory nature of detentions following the 7 October operation.

Since 7 October 2023, the number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons has doubled to over 10,100, with more than 3,000 held under administrative detention – a policy permitting imprisonment without charge or trial. Under Military Order 1651, Israeli military commanders are empowered to impose six-month detention terms, renewable indefinitely, based on undisclosed evidence. This opaque legal process limits detainees’ access to legal representation and denies them a fair trial, effectively sanctioning prolonged detention with no oversight. By mid-2024, 4,781 detainees were held without trial, many for vague accusations like ‘sympathising’ with Gaza.

Qaddura Fares, Head of the Commission of Detainee Affairs, spoke to the delegation about the persistent abuses he believes are institutionalised in Israeli detention facilities. ‘We are witnessing torture, every day,’ he said. ‘They break the hands of the prisoners, they starve the prisoners. And these are only the 10,000 political prisoners that we could register. From Gaza, we do not even know their names.’ The true scope of detentions, especially from Gaza, remains concealed due to restricted access and communication.

Fares explained that ‘On the first day of this war – just two hours after the attacks of 7 October – Israel began a revenge war against Palestinian prisoners. Every right that they succeeded to achieve was stripped from them on that day. Those rights, all of a sudden, became “privileges” – privileges to be taken away at their will.’ Since then, more than 40 Palestinian prisoners have reportedly died under detention, incidents which Israeli officials have classified as ‘assassinations’.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and various independent commissions have documented widespread cases of torture, including forced starvation, physical assault and the denial of medical care. Reports indicate that detainees are frequently subjected to torture within facilities such as Sde Teiman, where international inspectors, lawyers and journalists have been denied access. As one detainee reported to Addameer, conditions include confinement in metal cages with jagged stones, forced exposure to extreme cold, and relentless beatings by guards.

These abuses are not incidental but rather indicative of standard procedures under occupation. Sahar Francis and others argue that administrative detention has evolved into a weaponised policy aimed at destabilising Palestinian society by detaining individuals on tenuous or non-existent grounds, erasing due process and stifling resistance. Fares summarised the prisoners’ predicament: ‘The message of the prisoners is that conditions are getting worse. Each day we get news of prisoners’ deaths. We worry these will accelerate month by month.’

Each year, Israeli regime forces arrest some 500–700 children, showing clearly that the intention is not ‘self-defence’ or ‘fighting terrorism’, but intimidation and dehumanisation. Children are held for an average of 16.5 days, a period during which 75% suffer physical violence, and nearly all suffer other forms of psychological or physical torture.

Violence, displacement and apartheid

While the formal focus was on the plight of political prisoners, the delegation’s meetings throughout the West Bank exposed the wider architecture of occupation – a relentless assault on Palestinian life and heritage that extends beyond the prison walls and into towns, villages and olive groves.

Sahar Francis from Addameer explained: ‘Few people understand the chilling effects of this Israeli repression. Everyone is terrified to speak out; no one is organising civic actions against the war – marches or demonstrations – because they will be arrested and disappeared.’ Israeli forces wield control through pervasive intimidation, rendering public resistance nearly impossible.

In Ramallah, Mayor Issa Kassis described how Israeli forces make their presence constantly known, entering the city at will. ‘The Israeli army wants to make its presence felt in Ramallah. So they come, slowly; they shoot if they want. Their goal is to demean us, to threaten us, and above all to degrade the social fabric of an otherwise peaceful, civil city,’ he told the delegation.

These arbitrary intrusions serve not just as demonstrations of power but as acts of psychological warfare, intended to destabilise and fragment Palestinian communities.

In Jerusalem’s Silwan neighbourhood, Fakhri Abu Diab recounted the brutal demolition of his home by Israeli settlers. ‘They have not only demolished the walls and windows. They have demolished my past, my memories,’ he said. The destruction is often abrupt, leaving families homeless – without recourse or compensation.

Abu Diab added, ‘Before, they would come with a demolition order. Now, they just demolish.’ Palestinians are even forced to pay for the demolition, should they choose not to tear down their homes themselves, covering the lunch and coffee breaks of the soldiers overseeing the process.

On 5 November – just days following the departure of the delegation – Israeli bulldozers and police again arrived to the house of Abu Diab. In total, they destroyed five homes in the neighbourhood of Silwan, without warning and without court order.

This systematic dispossession extends across the West Bank. For decades, the Palestinian olive harvest has been marred by violence. Settlers have long burnt entire olive groves to the ground, blocked Palestinians from accessing their land, cut off water access and attacked farmers. In 2023, at least 96,000 dunums of olive-cultivated lands across the West Bank were left unharvested due to this repression: economic ruin for the farmers and the Palestinian economy at large.

This year, this brutality has intensified. Less than two weeks before the delegation arrived in Palestine, UN experts demanded Israel stop violent settler attacks on Palestinian farmers that threaten their olive harvest. ‘If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them,’ wrote Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, ‘their oil would become tears.’

‘In the West Bank, it’s lawlessness,’ said Mustafa Barghouti during a meeting with the delegation in Ramallah. ‘You have 700 checkpoints and the military can do whatever it likes to the people who pass through them. The settlers have been distributed over 100,000 weapons, and they work day and night to terrorise us: shoot, burn, kill, evict.’

In the village of Qusra, our delegation witnessed exactly this kind of systematic violation of international law as these weapons were turned on our delegation as it sought to document the crimes of apartheid.

On the morning of 29 October, our delegation arrived in Qusra to accompany the olive harvest. Immediately upon entering the fields, delegates were bombarded with tear gas and stun grenades by both settler armed forces and the Israeli army that accompanied them.

Fields were torched, farmers arrested, and delegates threatened with immediate and permanent expulsion from the country. ‘Israel has turned the olive harvest into an act of war,’ said lead delegate and former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, as she faced off with the masked soldiers across the field.

In Qusra, the delegation witnessed the crimes committed against Palestinian farmers as they tended to their land. But the vast majority of Palestinians do not own any land at all; whether in 1948, 1967 or decades since, tens of thousands have been forced from their historical communities and into refugee camps that have since become the highest-density urban areas in the world.

After visiting Qusra, the delegation travelled to the Balata refugee camp. Here, decades of dispossession have left a dense, underfunded community regularly subjected to military raids. ‘We are just a training ground for Israel's youngest soldiers – to harass, and to kill,’ one resident told the delegation. With the recent Knesset (Israeli parliament) vote to expel UNRWA, the sole agency supporting Palestinian refugees, the outlook for Balata’s residents is dire. ‘Our classrooms now have 50 students at minimum. We will lose a generation to this crisis of education,’ a teacher warned.

In Nablus, young activists with the NGO Seeds echoed this despair. ‘How could they think our lives are so cheap?’ one young woman asked. ‘It’s as if this thing called the “world” does not exist.’ This frustration lingers long after each encounter with checkpoints or soldiers, which form a labyrinthine network that traps residents and visitors alike. As one young person described, ‘The army can kill you at the checkpoint, or the settlers can kill you on the road, and even if you make it to your destination, it will have taken you an entire lifetime to reach it.’

Winding through the West Bank – on a fresh road paved for settlers in the wake of 7 October – the delegation saw brand new gates at the entrance to Palestinian villages, closed at whim by the Israeli army. The result is a new geography of the occupation – an archipelago of ‘little Gazas’, as one of our hosts described them: open-air prisons with no control over the entry and exit of goods or people.

The Governor of Nablus Ghassan Daghlas described the process bluntly: ‘Nablus is systematically targeted by Israeli forces – outposts, checkpoints, gates, settlements – designed to restrict our movement and repress our people. Settlers have closed the roads – and they control the roads – that connect Nablus from its surrounding regions.’

Area C is the key site of this advanced annexation. At Ummar al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills, Israeli soldiers have conducted searches and demolitions every single day and night since 7 October last year. ‘They say it’s a “security issue” that Palestinians cannot farm their land or tend their animals. Meanwhile, the settlers take thousands of acres – slowly, surely and illegally.’

Meanwhile, in Al-Khalil – the old city of Hebron – Israeli settlers advance the construction apartheid with increasing violence against the existing Palestinian population. ‘We are not Gaza. But in Hebron, too, we are fighting for our very existence,’ Issa Amro told us. ‘For 1,000 Palestinian families in H2’ – Hebron’s area seized by Israeli armed forces – ‘there is no life now: professional, social or familial. We cannot see our aunts and uncles, but we cannot even see our electrician.’

Area C is not alone. In Jerusalem, municipal authorities have also moved fast to implement their vision of a Palestinian-free Holy City. That ambition is longstanding and publicly declared. The Jerusalem 2020 master plan set out explicit demographic targets for a mega-majority Jewish population – and the expropriation of Palestinian properties to get there.

Lead delegate Ada Colau summarised the situation: ‘Apartheid is the reality – and it is advancing.’

Implications

The ongoing genocide in Gaza – coupled with the systematic nature of Israel’s abusive and illegal practices across the Occupied Territories – speak to a concerted effort to collectively punish, humiliate, dehumanise and break the will of the Palestinian people.

The Israeli regime’s actions recall the worst historical abuses committed by colonial powers against indigenous populations seeking their liberation – from the concentration camps used by Britain against the national liberation movement in Kenya to the internment of millions of Algerians by France.

Any government providing arms, energy, economic or diplomatic support to Israel is complicit in these crimes against humanity – and threatens the basic integrity of the international order.

The Israeli regime must urgently be subject to total isolation on all fronts – economic, military, cultural, political and diplomatic – to lay the groundwork for the end of the genocide and the dismantling of  the  colonial  occupation  in Palestine.                                     

The full report of the delegation is available on the website of the Progressive International.

*Third World Resurgence No. 361, 2024/4, pp 43-46