APPLICATION OF MARTIAL LAW IN THE WEST BANK

That this House notes that martial law has now been in place in the West Bank for almost 50 years and that the human rights organisation Military Court Watch has lodged submissions with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention relating to the continuing practice of detention and transfer for Palestinian adults and children from the West Bank to prisons located inside Israel in violation of both the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; recognises that this practice is classified under international law as a war crime; further notes that between 7,000 to 8,000 Palestinians are subject to transfer each year, including children; and calls on the Government to make representations to the UN to contest this practice and to ensure that relevant international standards and relevant international legal instruments accepted by both Israel and Palestine as signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention are fully and timeously addressed.