This book is the first comprehensive examination of UN efforts to protect Palestinian human rights in the territories occupied by Israel more than 50 years ago in the 1967 War. Working through the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, three top international legal experts – Richard Falk, John Dugard and Michael Lynk – served for six consecutive years as unpaid Special Rapporteurs with a UN mandate to report on Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Being outside the discipline that controls UN bureaucrats, they enjoyed a high measure of political independence in carrying out their factfinding and reporting missions. Strikingly, despite their differences in background and political outlook, they came to a unanimous consensus confirming the routine and various Israeli violations of Palestinian basic rights.

This book recounts their frustrations, their trials, their experiences, and their conclusions. It provides an authoritative go-to resource, tracing in painstaking detail, in all its aspects, one of the most onerous, longstanding and abusive human rights situations facing the United Nations.

Foreword is by Francesca Albanese, the current UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestine Territory occupied since 1967.

“No one is better qualified than these three eminent authors, models of integrity and professionalism, to evaluate the facts and give the world an objective assessment of the legal and political conundrum ….” ALFRED DE ZAYAS, Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order