Launching its involvement in the 38th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, the London-headquartered Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) laid forward two statements as part of the council’s program of work for June 21 and 22.

The first statement, delivered on Thursday, June 21, during a discussion spotlighting women’s rights, tackled the hostile backlash unleashed by Israel’s far-rightist Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich against the 17-year-old soldier-slapping girl Ahed Tamimi, whom he said deserved to be shot in the knee at the very least instead of being sentenced by Israel’s Ofer military court.

PRC condemned, in the strongest terms, Bezalel’s incitements, which it said are signs of deep-seated misogyny and extreme abhorrence against Palestinian women and girls.

In the second statement, covering the human rights of the internally displaced persons, PRC raised alarm bells over the preplanned schemes of dislocation and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian Bedouin communities and unrecognized villages in territories occupied in 1948, most notably in the Negev desert’s Araqeeb Village, reduced to rubble dozens of times.

PRC called on the UN Human Rights Council and international community to take urgent action vis-à-vis such illegal Israeli practices against the Palestinians.

PRC’s Chairman, Mr. Majed Al-Zeer, has taken part in the event, which comes as part of Agenda Item 3 of the UNHRC’s 38th session, dedicated to the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development.