Violations of Human Rights in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

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Since the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict there have been countless human rights violations committed by both sides, but the majority of violations have been carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. In looking at the conflict, one may believe that every attack has featured a human rights violation, but in order to be able to properly determine what human rights violations are, one must know the history of human rights and how they are protected.

The idea of human rights started with a man named Henri Dunant, who was a merchant present during the Battle of Solferino in Italy. In viewing this battle from a distance, Henri was disturbed by the mass amounts of dead and injured soldiers that were left without treatment. He could not stand by and watch, so he helped many of the injured soldiers. From this experience he wrote The Memory of Solferino, which became the basis for the International Committee of the Red Cross and ultimately became the basis of human rights. The next time human rights were addressed in a very significant manner was after all of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II. These atrocities led to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. This declaration features 30 articles in which lay out the rights that all human beings are entitled to on a global scale. Some of the main articles which address some of the violations occurring in the Arab-Israeli conflict include: Article 3, right to life, liberty, and security of person; Article 5, no torture or cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and Article 9, not subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile.

Since these articles were ...

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