A/HRC/8/18 page 7 Persons in Time of War, in its advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice concluded that the Fourth Geneva Convention was applicable in the Palestinian territories, which before the conflict in 1967 lay to the east of the Green Line and which, during that conflict, were occupied by Israel.10 III. PROGRESS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF RESOLUTION 6/19 A. Observance of religious rights by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 1. Religious demography 13. The total number of Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is approximately 3.8 million.11 Islam is the religion of around 97 per cent of the Palestinian population, while Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip are estimated to range between 1.5 and 3 per cent.12 The Occupied Palestinian Territory is also home to the small Samaritan religious community. 2. Access of Palestinians to religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Closure regime 14. The elaborate Israeli regime of closures in the West Bank before and during the reporting period included the designation of roads as reserved primarily for Israeli nationals; settlements, many of which were constructed within areas with a traditionally high Palestinian population; and a system of physical obstacles, such as checkpoints, closed areas, road barriers, earth walls, roadblocks and trenches, etc.13 These physical obstacles, combined with the Wall, flying 10 This fact has not been altered by Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal of its forces from the strip, as confirmed repeatedly since then by the United Nations General Assembly (most recently in its resolution 62/107 of 17 December 2007) and the United Nations Secretary General (notably in the Secretary-General’s message to the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People, Amman, Jordan, 19 February 2008; and in the Secretary-General’s message to the opening of the 2008 session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, New York, 14 February 2008). 11 Palestinian Bureau of Statistic, Preliminary results, 2007 Population, Housing and Establishment Census. 12 Historically the number of the Palestinian Christian population has been higher however. According to British mandate census in 1931, Christian Palestinians were 9 per cent of the total population. 13 The relevant reporting period is 28 September 2007 (the day of the adoption of Human Rights Council resolution 6/19) to 4 April 2008. In its reply to the OHCHR request to provide comments and observations on resolution 6/19, the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine included detailed information regarding the road and settlement constructions around the city of Jerusalem which disrupt “the fabric of life of more than 250,000 Palestinians”.