JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel said it will not cooperate with a United Nations fact-finding mission on how Israel’s West Bank settlements affect Palestinians.
The U.N.’s Human Rights Council on Friday appointed three independent experts to conduct the mission.
"The establishment of this mission is another blatant expression of the singling out of Israel in the UNHRC and of the uncandid approach that characterizes the Council’s dealing with Israel," Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, also on Friday.
"This fact-finding mission will find no cooperation in Israel, and its members will not be allowed to enter Israel and the Territories. Its existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UNHRC treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non-democratic countries. The latter, unbothered by and dismissive of human rights, are taking advantage of their political and numerical weight in order to distort systematically the proceedings and rules of the UNHRC and to empty its workings of all moral content."
Israel suspended its ties with the Human Rights Council in March after the council voted to establish the fact-finding mission on the settlements.
The president of the Human Rights Council, Uruguay Ambassador Laura Dupuy Lasserre, said the members of the fact-finding panel will look at how the Israeli settlements affect “the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people,” The Associated Press reported.
The delegates are Christine Chanet of France, Unity Dow of Botswana and Asma Jahangir of Pakistan.
