In its annual report released on Wednesday, Amnesty International (AI) warned that the international community's failure to end the Israeli occupation and ensure a solution that guarantees the rights of Palestinians and Israelis "throws a dark shadow over the wider region, and remains a potential source of regional or global confrontation."

In 2007, the London-based group reported that Israeli forces killed more than 370 Palestinians, half of them civilians including 50 children; destroyed more than 100 Palestinian homes, and reinforced restrictions on the movement of the Palestinians.

The blockade Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip in June, following Hamas' takeover of the area, "virtually imprisoned its entire 1.5 million population, subjecting them to collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to date," according to AI, which added that 40 Palestinians had died after being refused passage out of Gaza for urgent medical treatment.

The report blamed Fatah and Hamas clashes for the deaths of hundreds of people in Gaza before Hamas' takeover, saying both sides "committed grave human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention and torture."

It added that Palestinian armed groups also killed 13 Israelis, including seven civilians, last year.

In the West Bank, the rights organization noted that the Israeli authorities continued to expand illegal settlements and build a 700-kilometer wall "in violation of international law," in reference to some of the obstacles that have prevented the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations from making any progress.

"Impunity remained the norm for Israeli soldiers and settlers who committed serious abuse against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, physical assaults and attacks on property," it said, adding that 9,000 Palestinians, including children, were still in Israeli jails.

The creation of the state of Israel 60 years ago in the midst of Arab countries had not only led to the dispossession of Palestinian refugees that had set off "a continuing state of war between Israel and its Arab neighbors," but the Israeli "threat" has apparently been used as a pretext for some Arab regimes, such as Syria and Egypt, to justify their decades-long states of emergency.

By the same token, AI said, the "threat" posed to Israel by its neighbors has been used to justify "Israel's militaristic policies and to secure its continuing Western support."

It stated that serious human rights abuses were widespread and "firmly entrenched" in many Middle Eastern and North African countries, noting that despite talk of greater democracy, most power remains in the grip of small elites: "the clerical oligarchy in Iran; civilians with close links to the military in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia; religious minorities in the Gulf states; secularist Baathists in Syria."

The organization added that most of these governments focus on "state security and public safety to the detriment of human rights and the lives of their citizens," and complained that "this has been exacerbated since the onset of the 'war on terror.'"

And Western governments are not innocent to the repression in the region. The human rights organization accused them of virtually allowing abuses to take place in the Middle East, saying that since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, "even their criticism has become muted."

"In pursuit of the 'war on terror,' the USA and other Western states have made allies among the security and intelligence services of some of the most repressive regimes in the region," it said. "They have secretly 'rendered' suspects to states such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria, so they can be detained, interrogated and tortured, or they have deported them to Algeria or Tunisia despite such risk.

"In doing so, they have not only breached international law, but helped entrench the abusive methods of the region's security apparatus," it blasted.

Commenting on the findings of the state of human rights in the world, Amnesty International's Secretary-General Irene Khan said 2007 "was characterized by the impotence of Western governments and ambivalence or reluctance of emerging powers to tackle some of the world's worst human rights crises, ranging from entrenched conflicts to growing inequalities which are leaving millions of people behind."

Khan added that "2008 presents an unprecedented opportunity for new leaders coming to power and countries emerging on the world stage to set a new direction and reject the myopic policies and practices that in recent years have made the world a more dangerous and divided place."

An Amnesty press statement called on world leaders to apologize for six decades of human rights failure, saying that this year's annual report – 60 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the U.N. – people were still being tortured and abused in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in more than 54 states and are banned from free speech in 77 nations.