A growing number of Israelis and international groups have accused the country of operating apartheid-like conditions in its treatment of Palestinians both with the country and in occupied areas, The New York Times reported.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth told The Times that the “oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a performance that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.”
The paper reported Palestinians have been making the claim about the conditions there since the 1960s. President Jimmy Carter agreed with this back in 2006, and there is a growing number of Jewish human-rights groups that also make the claim.
While not comparing Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, Human Rights Watch said according to standards imposed by the international community, when one racial group dominates over another via inhumane acts of oppression, that, too, is apartheid.
Predictable
Israel rebuffed the allegations, with an adviser for President Benjamin Netanyahu telling The Times the “apartheid slur is indicative of an organization that has been plagued for years by systemic anti-Israel bias.”
The country’s U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan told the paper the allegations approach blatant anti-Semitism, and the apartheid term was falsely used, which, in turn, nullifies “the legal and social status of millions of Israeli citizens, including Arab citizens who are an integral part of the state of Israel.” Other defenders say using the term “apartheid” threatens the existence of the Israeli state.
In our 5 February article, “ICC TO PROBE ISRAELI WAR CRIMES,” we reported that Israel has recently faced international scrutiny over allegations of war crimes during the 2014 Gaza War (“Operation Protective Edge.”) Israel called the International Criminal Court’s decision to investigate in February a politically-motivated move. Palestinians praised the move. The Biden administration also criticized the ICC’s move.
Muhammad Shtayyah, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, called the decision to investigate a “message to the perpetrators of crimes, that their crimes will not be subject to a statute of limitations, and that they will not go unpunished.”
The Times’ reported that Human Rights Watch noted the West Bank is a good example of living under a two-tiered system. Palestinians in some areas live under military rule, unlike Israelis, the report said. The report accused Israel of forcibly moving Palestinians from their homes and refusing to provide basic civil rights to millions.
Human Rights Watch said its goal was not to undermine Israel but simply wants the country to correct its ways.
TRENDPOST: As for continually labeling those who criticize Israel for being in violation of international law as “anti-Semites,” some 20 years ago, its attorney general accused the state of imposing apartheid measures:
“We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one – progressive, liberal – in Israel; and the other – cruel, injurious – in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”— Israel’s former Attorney General Michael Ben Yair, 3 March 2002
TRENDPOST: Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Since then, in addition to destroying Palestinian houses and buildings on the land they seized, they have been, and continue, to build massive “settlements.”
As reported by Bloomberg in January 2020:
“Almost a tenth of Israel’s Jews live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, outside their country’s recognized borders. The population of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has grown four times faster than Israel’s itself since 1995. Settlers regard themselves as inhabiting land that is rightfully theirs. A different view is held by the International Court of Justice, a branch of the United Nations, which Israel regards as biased against it. The court concluded in a 2004 opinion that Jewish settlements in what it calls occupied Palestinian territory are illegal.”
Under international law, Israeli settlements are illegal. They violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 that states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
The U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice, and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention have all affirmed the Fourth Geneva Convention applies, that this is occupied territory, and Israeli settlements there are illegal.
As for Israel’s “settlement” intentions, they were made clear by one of the nation’s respected leaders:
“We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise solution. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism.”
— Chief of Intelligence General Yehoshafat Harkabi, Ma’ariv, 2 November 1973
