Israeli energy minister will ‘personally’ oversee cutoff of utilities to UNRWA offices
Israel’s energy minister, Eli Cohen, says he will “personally” oversee the cutoff of water and electricity to the offices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem. Speaking to Israel’s Radio 103FM, Cohen said he was heading to East Jerusalem to witness the disconnection of utilities to UNRWA-run facilities.
Israeli authorities have long accused the UN agency of having ties with Hamas, a claim UNRWA has repeatedly denied. Late last year, the Knesset made a decision to cut water and electricity to UNRWA facilities in East Jerusalem after a decision at the end of 2024 to bar the agency from operating in the occupied city and in Israel.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by a vote of the UN General Assembly and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
HRW found it ‘inconvenient’ to publish a report on the Palestinian refugees’ right of return
The former Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Omar Shakir, has told Al Jazeera that the reasons given by the organisation for blocking a report accusing Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” in its denial of Palestinian refugees’ right of return are “completely bogus”.
“It was completely reviewed and finalised. We briefed external partners. I’ve been in HRW for a decade, a report like that doesn’t reach that stage … without it being fully signed off and approved,” Shakir said following his resignation.
“I think at the end of the day, senior leadership found it inconvenient to have a report that was focused on the right of return.”
He said the issue “remains the third rail in many ways, in progressive Western institutions, organisations like HRW, which have called the genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, when it comes to the right of return, hesitate and in this case … willing to upend decades of human rights, watches, policies and practices because they were afraid of the consequences.”
Conditions in Israeli prisons inhumane with overcrowding, shackling, deliberate starvation: Report
More than 9,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to a report by the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem that describes the inhumane treatment they endure.
The report said at least 84 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention centres since October 2023. Israel has yet to hand over 80 of the bodies.
According to testimonies gathered by B’Tselem, Palestinians face systematic physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The organisation described Israeli prisons as a network of torture camps.
It said the denial of medical care for prisoners is a method of torture itself and leads to irreversible harm, such as amputations and loss of hearing and eyesight.
The report stated living conditions in Israeli prisons remain inhumane with overcrowding, prolonged shackling, deliberate starvation and the denial of basic hygiene.
