 | |
| Established | 2008  (16 years ago) |
|---|---|
| Types | advocacy group |
| Headquarters | Hebron |
| Country | State of Palestine |
Youth against Settlements (YAS) is a Palestinian activist group based in Hebron. It states that it organizes actions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine through non-violent popular struggle and civil disobedience. [1]
The group is represented as NGO in the United Nations Human Rights Council. [2]
Since 2012, Youth against Settlements has been coordinated by Issa Amro. [3] [4] In March 2014, Amro gave a presentation at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. [5]
In October 2024, Amro and YAS were distinguished with the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, "for their steadfast nonviolent resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation, promoting Palestinian civic action through peaceful means." [6]
Youth Against Settlements (YAS) has been leading the Open Shuhada Street Campaign (OSC), a global campaign to re-open Shuhada Street. [3] [4] Besides the international Annual Open Shuhada Street demonstrations, YAS also organizes the weekly protests throughout the Occupied Palestinian territories. In May 2012, Akram Natsheh spoke at a United Nations International Meeting in Paris. [7]
During the spate of violence in late 2015, YAS activist Sohaib Zahda published an editorial in the International Business Times criticising the ongoing occupation of Palestine as the cause of the violence, as well as the complicity of the Palestinian Authority with Israel. [8]
In 2012, Amro was arrested and detained 20 times, and in 2013 until August 6 times. In August 2013, United Nations independent human rights experts expressed deep concern at actions directed against Amro. Right before the session, which was attended by Amro, Israel sent a summon for him to appear at a Military Court on 30 December 2013, without indication of any charges. On 8 July 2013, the month before the UN meeting, Israeli soldiers took away his identity documents. He was tortured by soldiers and ended up in a hospital. [2]
Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish identity or ethnicity, and have been constructed on lands that Israel has militarily occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967. The international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel's occupation was illegal and ruled that Israel had "an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers" from the occupied territories. The expansion of settlements often involves the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities and creating a source of tension and conflict. Settlements are often protected by the Israeli military and are frequently flashpoints for violence against Palestinians. Furthermore, the presence of settlements and Jewish-only bypass roads creates a fragmented Palestinian territory, seriously hindering economic development and freedom of movement for Palestinians.
The occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. These territories make up the State of Palestine, which was self-declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988 and is recognized by 145 out of 193 UN member states.
The State of Palestine is a country in the southern Levant region of West Asia recognized by 145 out of 193 UN member states. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Occupied Palestinian territories, within the broader geographic and historical Palestine region. The country shares most of its borders with Israel, and it borders Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million people. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its administrative center. Gaza City was its largest city until 2023.
Issues relating to the State of Israel and aspects of the Arab–Israeli conflict, and more recently the Iran–Israel conflict, occupy repeated annual debate times, resolutions and resources at the United Nations. Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations Security Council, has adopted 79 resolutions directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict as of January 2010.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.
Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. It previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to 1967, the Palestinian territories was split between the Gaza Strip controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan, while the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights are parts of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, where Israel had transferred its parts of population there and built large settlements, is the longest military occupation in modern history.
Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.
Christopher John Robert Dugard is a South African professor of international law. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has served on the International Law Commission, the primary UN institution for the development of international law, and has been active in reporting on human-rights violations by Israel in the Palestinian territories.
Issues relating to the State of Palestine and aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict occupy continuous debates, resolutions, and resources at the United Nations. Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations Security Council, as of January 2010, has adopted 79 resolutions directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Richard Anderson Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor's Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In 2004, he was listed as the author or coauthor of 20 books and the editor or coeditor of another 20 volumes. Falk has published extensively with multiple books written about international law and the United Nations.
Tel Rumeida, also known as Jabla al-Rahama and Tel Hebron is an archaeological, agricultural and residential area in the West Bank city of Hebron. Within it, lies a tell whose remains go back to the Chalcolithic period, and is thought to constitute the Canaanite, Israelite and Edomite settlements of Hebron mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple period literature.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Christine Chanet is a French lawyer and judge who is a long-term member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, serving as its chairperson in 1997-98 and 2005–06. She also sits on the UN Committee Against Torture.
The International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements was a United Nations fact-finding mission created in March 2012 by the Human Rights Council, an agency of the United Nations, to "investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The mission was composed of Christine Chanet from France, Asma Jahangir from Pakistan, and Unity Dow from Botswana.
Al-Shuhada Street, nicknamed Apartheid Street by Palestinians and King David Street by Israeli settlers, is a street in the Old City of Hebron.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Hebron, West Bank, Palestinian territories.
Jewish Israeli stone-throwing refers to criminal rock-throwing activity by Jewish Israelis in Mandatory Palestine, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. It includes material about internecine stone-throwing, in which Haredi Jews throw stones at other Jews as a protest against what they view as violations of religious laws concerning Shabbat, modest clothing for women and similar issues, and material about stone-throwing by extremists in the settler movement.
Issa Amro is a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator (2007–2018) of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Amro advocates the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to fight the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In 2010, he was declared "human rights defender of the year in Palestine" by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern for his wellbeing and safety due to numerous accounts of harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests. At present, Amro is being indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him. In May 2017, Bernie Sanders along with three U.S. senators and 32 congressmen wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to urge Israeli authorities to reconsider the charges against Amro.
Anti-Palestinianism or anti-Palestinian racism refers to prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination directed at the Palestinian people for any variety of reasons. Since the mid-20th century, the phenomenon has largely overlapped with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians today are Arabs and Muslims. Historically, however, anti-Palestinianism was more closely identified with European antisemitism, as far-right Europeans detested the Jewish people as undesirable foreigners from Palestine. Modern anti-Palestinianism—that is, xenophobia with regard to the Arab people of Palestine—is most common in Israel, the United States, and Lebanon, among other countries.
Following the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted on 27 May 2021 to set up a United Nations fact-finding mission to investigate possible war crimes and other abuses committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.