On a tour throughout the West Asia region this week, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk spoke to reporters outside Egypt’s Rafah border crossing on Nov. 8. “We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue,” he warned. “Even in the context of a 56-year-old occupation, the current situation is the most dangerous in decades, faced by people in Gaza, in Israel, in the West Bank, but also regionally,” Türk said.
In an unusually strong fashion, the commissioner leveled accusations of war crimes against Israel. “The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts ... to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he said.
He went on: “I have just returned from the Rafah crossing—the symbolic lifeline for the last month for the 2.3 million people in Gaza. The lifeline has been unjustly, outrageously thin. In Rafah I have witnessed the gates to a living nightmare—a nightmare where people have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel.”
Türk emphasized the need for a ceasefire on the basis of “massive” humanitarian aid, the release of hostages, and the beginning of peace talks aimed at a durable solution which includes the existence of a Palestinian state.
