The following is based on a communication written by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and other UN experts to the Government of Israel on 26 March 2025. The communication remained confidential for 60 days before being made public, giving the Government time to reply. Regrettably, the Government did not reply within this timeframe. If a reply is received it will be posted on the UN Special Procedures communications database.
This is a shorter version of the original communication.
BACKGROUND
Topic: bombing in Gaza that resulted in the killing of Palestinian human rights defender Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal, a staff member of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and his family, as they sheltered in the house of Mr. Raji Sourani, the PCHR director. This was the second time Mr. Sourani’s house had been bombed by the Israeli Defence Forces and also the second time that Mr. Faisal and his family had been bombed.
Mr. Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal was a human rights defender working with the PCHR.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) is a non-governmental organisation based in Gaza. It was created in 1995 by a group of Palestinian lawyers and human rights defenders to protect human rights and promote the rule of law in accordance with international standards.
Mr. Raji Sourani is a human rights defender and the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The killing of PCHR staff and the destruction of its offices were the subject of a previous communication. In February 2024, indiscriminate Israeli bombing in Gaza resulted in the death of two PCHR staff members along with members of their families. The PCHR headquarters in a Gaza City building was badly damaged in a land offensive in late December 2023, and in early 2024, air raids and ground attacks damaged the PCHR office in Khan Younis. Regretfully, no reply was received regarding that communication.
ALLEGATIONS
On 7 September 2024, Mr. Faisal, his wife and two daughters were injured in an Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment building near the Abbas Junction in Gaza City where he was staying. His two brothers-in-law were killed in the attack.
On 16 January 2025, at approximately 02:00 an Israeli air strike hit the house that Mr. Faisal and his family were sheltering in, in the al-Rimal residential neighbourhood of Gaza City. Mr. Faisal, his wife and their two daughters, aged six and three, were killed. No other buildings were hit in that air raid. The house Mr. Faisal was sheltering in belongs to Raji Sourani, the director of the PCHR, and this was the second time that it was hit by Israeli shelling.
Previously, in late October 2023, Mr. Sourani’s three-story house already came under direct bombing by IDF for almost 30 minutes. He, his wife and son narrowly escaped death.
CONCERNS
In the communication, we express serious concern at Israeli acts that may violate international humanitarian law. These acts include the shelling that led to the killing of the human rights defender cited above – among the tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza. The facts give the impression that it concerns a “targeted killing” of a human rights defender, who is protected as a “civilian” under IHL, and whose targeting would constitute a grave human rights violation and violation of IHL and seriously hinders the rights to freedom of association and expression.
