On July 15 and 16, 1998 Israel presented its initial report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the U.N. body of independent experts responsible for monitoring implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its two Optional Protocols. Other U.N. expert bodies have evaluated Israel’s fulfillment of its obligations under human rights treaties prohibiting discrimination against women, racial discrimination, and torture, but this review marks the first time Israel has reported on the full range of civil and political rights guaranteed by international law. Already more than five years overdue, the 369-page report should have included detailed information on the measures Israel had adopted to give effect to the rights recognized in the covenant, and on the progress made in the enjoyment of those rights. Instead, as Human Rights Watch argued in its submission to the Human Rights Committee, Israel’s report failed to give sufficient information on the implementation of the covenant in practice, left out any discussion of Israel’s implementation of the covenant in the territories it controlled in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and South Lebanon, and misrepresented Israeli practice on important issues including torture and administrative detention. This report examines Israel's report in the context of its human rights record. |