The Coalition of Civil Forces and the Independent Commission for Human Rights hold a workshop on supporting civil peace in Gaza

Gaza, Publication and Information Unit:
The Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, within the activities of the Coalition of Civil Forces and in coordination with the Independent Commission for Human Rights, held a workshop entitled "The foundations for developing and supporting the bases of civil peace in the Palestinian territories", with the participation of representatives of the Coalition of Civil Forces and attended by twenty young men and women at the Independent Commission's premises in Gaza.

At the start of the workshop, the director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, lawyer Salah Abdel Ati, spoke about the clear decline in the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, from the fragmentation of the social fabric and disorder to the absence of tolerance and the spread of poverty and unemployment, particularly among young people. He added: "We observe the confiscation of freedom of opinion and expression at the level of thought and the inability to build a bright future for society, given that the two largest factions on the Palestinian scene do not acknowledge the responsibility arising from the division, whether by apologising or by addressing the present problems at their roots."

Lawyer Abdel Ati called for the need to establish fact-finding committees to compensate those harmed and to hold trials for those who committed the acts if their identity is known, as he put it, and to seek to keep them away so that they do not stir up unrest and problems or any reaction destructive to the local community. He pointed to the need to exert popular and public pressure to bring about genuine and real positive change in society, in addition to activating the role of the Legislative Council and applying the Palestinian Basic Law to all groups in the local community.

For their part, the young people taking part in the workshop called for working to strengthen the rule of law and for everyone to fall under the law, and for organisations and centres of every specialism to be keen to spread a culture of tolerance and acceptance of others and to spread the concepts of civil peace and transitional justice in its effective sense, as well as to work on entrenching a genuine political partnership between the political forces and parties and its positive reflections on society.