The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that these actions forced the displacement of 181 people and affected almost two thousand more.

According to the institution, in the first eight months of 2021 the number of demolitions is 40 percent higher than that reported in the same period last year.

The criticisms coincide with the call of more than 200 organizations and personalities from different parts of the world to implement a total embargo on the purchase and sale of arms to Israel for its continuous violations against the Palestinian people.

The signatories of the letter, released this week, include members of civil society, academics, artists, journalists, businessmen, politicians and religious leaders.

We urge States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty to act decisively to end Israel’s notorious use of military equipment against the Palestinians, they say.

The message states that this ‘systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the last seven decades of colonialism, apartheid, illegal occupation, persecution and blockade (…) is only possible thanks to the complicity of some governments and companies’.

It also calls for an end to the occupation, the Jewish colonies, the apartheid regime and the institutionalized persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people.

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