Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR) is a legal charity in the UK that works on projects focused on protecting and promoting Palestinian human rights.

Earlier this week, the San Francisco-based company, Airbnb, announced that it will remove from its popular accommodation bookings website all properties (currently around 200 Airbnb listings) in illegal Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank. This positive development is a demonstration of the necessary disengagement action that responsible companies should be taking so as to comply with their business and human rights responsibilities in the context of settlement-related activities in the occupied Palestinian territory. (more…)

In the summer of 2014, during the military offensive on Gaza that Israel code-named ‘Operation Protective Edge’, at least five Palestinians in Gaza, including a child, had their lives endangered when used as human shields by Israel’s military forces. (more…)

At the start of last week, the Government of Israel imposed a series of severe restrictions on the movement of goods through Kerem Shalom, the main commercial crossing to and from the occupied Gaza Strip, which will remain in place until further notice.

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The United States NGO, Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), has detailed the recent steps taken by the Israeli government to systematically apply Israeli domestic law to illegal settlements. These developments critically build upon practices already in existence that are raising deep concerns, as summed up in a statement on 1 June by the UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, that Israel’s ‘illegal settlement activity promotes the de facto annexation of the West Bank’.

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