The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is fuelling "unrealistic" hopes of return after 70 years of exodus and is therefore helping keep the Mideast conflict alive, Switzerland's foreign minister has said.
The UN rights office said on Tuesday it seemed that any Palestinian protesting in Gaza, regardless of whether they pose an imminent threat, is "liable" to be killed by Israeli forces.
The UN expert on the human rights situation in
the occupied Palestinian territories resigned on Monday, complaining that Israel had never granted him access to the areas he is meant to monitor.
Evidence showed both Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during last year's Gaza war, a widely anticipated United Nations report says, decrying "unprecedented" devastation and human suffering.
Israel's representative was conspicuously absent from a UN Human Rights Council special session in Geneva on Monday on the situation in the Palestinian territories and the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Israel on Friday condemned Switzerland's plan to host a conference on respect for international human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, charging it was a deviation from the country's traditional neutrality.
Former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis was appointed on Monday to a UN commission probing Israel's Gaza offensive and the actions of Islamist militant group Hamas, the world body's Geneva-based Human Rights Council said.
Hollywood star George Clooney's fiancee Amal Alamuddin is to join fellow human rights experts probing Israel's Gaza offensive, the United Nations said in Geneva on Monday.
<p>Israeli security forces stopped a group of 20 pro-Palestinian activists who arrived on a flight from Switzerland on Friday and were expected to expel them, police said.</p>
<p>Some 50 passengers who described themselves as "pro-Palestinian" were prevented from embarking on a flight to Israel from Geneva airport on Friday, officials said, prompting flight delays.</p>
