The United Nations Council for Human Rights (UNCHR) criticized Israel Tuesday for impeding the dispatch of a special investigation team to the occupied Palestinian territories to inspect the Israeli crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
The UNHRC, during two emergency sessions, expressed concern over the Israeli decision and requested that the UN high commissioner for Human Rights, Louis Arior, brief the council in June 2007 on the UN verification of Israel’s compliance with the investigation.
The UNHRC voted in June 2006 for dispatching an investigation team to the Gaza Strip, right after an Israeli massacre in Beit Hanoun city in which 19 members of the Palestinian Atamna family were killed.
The said team, headed by Nobel peace price winner, Desmond Tutu, was not granted access by Israel into the Gaza Strip. In June 2006, the Israeli army fired five tank shells at a Palestinian neighborhood in the Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun, killing 19 civilians including women and children from the same family, as mentioned above.
