A/HRC/34/39 I. Introduction 1. The present report is being submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 31/36 and covers the period between 1 November 2015 and 31 October 2016. It should be read in conjunction with previous reports of the Secretary-General on Israeli settlements submitted to the General Assembly and the Council. 1 2. The report illustrates the persistence of the Israeli settlement enterprise, which includes settlement expansion and efforts to exert control over land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory enters its fiftieth year and as that of the occupied Syrian Golan enters its forty-fourth year. 3. The report highlights how the policies relating to settlement activities remain at the core of a range of human rights violations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It examines how such policies create a coercive environment in areas under Israeli control, placing affected Palestinian communities at risk of forcible transfer. Pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 31/36, the report includes an analysis of the human rights and international law violations involved in the production of settlement goods and the relationship between trade in those goods and the maintenance and economic growth of settlements. II. Legal background2 4. Israel bears responsibility for implementing in the Occupied Palestinian Territory the human rights obligations enshrined in the seven core human rights treaties and conventions it has ratified. International humanitarian law imposes obligations on Israel as the occupying power. It is obliged to respect the fundamental rights of the protected population in all circumstances.3 Transfer of the population of the occupying power to the territory it occupies 5. In its resolution 70/89, the General Assembly reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan. 6. The same determination has been made by both the Security Council, in its relevant resolutions,4 and the International Court of Justice, as regards settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. 5 Settlements amount to the transfer of the population of Israel into the territory it occupies, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. The transfer of an occupying power’s population to a territory it occupies amounts to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved. 6 Prohibition against the forcible transfer of protected persons 7. International humanitarian law prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers” of protected persons within the occupied territory, as well as deportations outside of the 1 2 3 4 5 6 2 See A/HRC/28/44, A/HRC/31/43 and A/71/355, which covers the first months of the period under review, and A/69/348 and A/70/351. See A/HRC/28/44, paras. 5-6, A/HRC/31/43, para. 4, A/69/348, paras. 4-5, and A/HRC/25/38, paras. 4-5. Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), art. 27. Security Council resolutions 465 (1980) and 2334 (2016). Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004, p. 134. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 8 (2) (b) (viii).