A/HRC/20/32 I. Introduction 1. As with previous reports,1 the Special Rapporteur needs to note the continuing noncooperation of Israel with this mandate. As earlier, the Special Rapporteur, as well as others associated with the Human Rights Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Government of Israel to adopt a more constructive posture that accords with its treaty obligations as a State Member of the United Nations. Since the beginning of the Special Rapporteur’s tenure in May of 2008, despite repeated efforts, there has not been any alteration of the refusal of Israel to cooperate with this mandate. This has made it impossible for the Special Rapporteur, in his periodic reports, to take into fuller account the official explanations of Israel for the occupation policies and practices that it adopts, especially those that are found to be in violation of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. Despite this non-cooperation, the Special Rapporteur has made every effort to represent the positions of Israel fairly in relation to controversies associated with alleged Israeli violations of human rights relating to its occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967. The recent formal announcement by Israel of a complete refusal to cooperate with the Human Rights Council with respect to the totality of its activities underscores the difficulties confronting this mandate. 2. The Special Rapporteur has attempted in various ways to mitigate the impact of these limitations on his mandate arising from being excluded from the occupied Palestinian territory, and thus unable to meet with Palestinians living under occupation and communicate with Israeli officials administering the territory. Official missions of the mandate in these years have been designed to encourage those with knowledge and experience of the conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory to meet with the Special Rapporteur in neighbouring countries. The Special Rapporteur has relied on welldocumented reports and data on various aspects of the occupation from generally reliable sources to identify trends bearing on human rights issues, such as expansion of settlements, settler violence, and house demolitions. 3. In this regard, a mission was undertaken between 10 and 20 February 2012. The principal purpose of the mission was to assess the degree to which conditions of life for refugees residing in neighbouring countries are relevant to the realization of the rights of those subject to the occupation regime within the territory occupied in 1967. This encompasses their efforts to realize the Palestinian right of self-determination. It should be noted that the mission did not investigate whether the refugees were being treated in accordance with international law by their host Governments, as such an inquiry would exceed the geographic scope of the mandate. The Special Rapporteur, especially in the light of the denial of access to the occupied Palestinian territory, believes that it is vitally important to assess to what degree refugee rights are relevant to any negotiated peace arrangement reached between Israel and the designated representatives of the Palestinian people and to any other internationally sanctioned effort to realize Palestinian rights. The intention of the mission was to also visit the Gaza Strip, with an offer of assistance from the Government of Egypt, and also to include visits to refugee camps in Jordan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Lebanon. However, regional conditions gave rise to a number of impediments: security conditions in northern Sinai made travel from Cairo to the Rafah Crossing insecure at the time of the mission, which required the Special Rapporteur to forego the planned visit to Gaza; the civil strife in the Syrian Arab Republic made it impractical to visit Palestinian refugee camps in that embattled country; and the 1 See, for example, A/HRC/16/72 and A/HRC/13/53. 3