Bern - Saba:
A spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry has said that Switzerland has invited 196 countries that are party to the Geneva Conventions to participate in a conference this week on the situation of civilians living in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Based on this invitation from the United Nations General Assembly, I confirm that a conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention will be held in Geneva on March 7,” ministry spokesman Nicolas Bideau said in an email in response to Reuters’ questions on Saturday.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, part of a series of international treaties agreed upon in 1949 after World War II, sets out humanitarian protection for civilians living in areas of armed conflict or occupation.
The UN General Assembly had asked Switzerland to organize this meeting last September when the aggression on Gaza was still raging. The Swiss Foreign Ministry said similar meetings were held in 1999, 2001 and 2014.
The Zionist occupation has evacuated tens of thousands of residents from camps in the West Bank in the past few weeks, raising fears of a possible future annexation.
The Zionist Minister of Defense, Yisrael Katz, ordered forces to prepare for a “long-term stay,” saying that the camps were evacuated “for the coming year” and that residents would not be allowed to return.
Yesterday, Saturday, the Zionist enemy forces continued their aggression on the city of Tulkarm and its camp for the 34th consecutive day, and on the Nour Shams camp for the 21st day, coinciding with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, and escalated the forced displacement of citizens after forcing them to leave their homes at gunpoint.
The United Nations expressed “grave concern” about the situation throughout the West Bank, saying that conditions had already reached the emergency stage.
“It is no longer a question of sounding the alarm about a state of emergency or violence and violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the West Bank,” Ajith Sunjay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory, told the UN News website.
He pointed out that 40,000 displaced persons from the Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas camps have been forcibly displaced by the “Israeli” forces, which he said are “using so-called methods and means of warfare, including heavy weapons such as fighter jets, and more recently tanks, and shoulder-fired missiles.”
The Israeli occupation army launched a large-scale military aggression in the northern West Bank more than a month ago, the largest and longest in nearly two decades.
Last Sunday, the occupation forces announced that they had displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from three refugee camps in the northern West Bank, without the possibility of returning to their homes.
Since October 7, 2023, the Zionist enemy has launched a war of genocide on the Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyrdom of 48,365 citizens, most of whom are children and women, and the injury of 111,780 others, in an incomplete toll, as a number of victims are still under the rubble, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them.
It is noteworthy that the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip entered into force on January 19, and since its entry into force, a number of Palestinian citizens have been martyred and injured in various parts of the Strip.
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