[News] Landmark Palestinian Coalition Report Launch: ‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

addameer.org <https://www.addameer.org/news/4938>
Landmark Palestinian Coalition Report Launch: ‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of
Zionist Settler Colonialism’
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30-11-2022

On 29 November 2022, Al-Haq launched its inaugural coalition report titled:
‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’. Together leading
Palestinian human rights organisations, Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support
and Human Rights Association, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (Al Mezan),
the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), the Palestinian
Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), and
the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), explore Israel’s settler
colonial and apartheid regime imposed on the Palestinian people.

Importantly, the report is the first major Palestinian publication to
expand the current international discourse on apartheid, and importantly,
examines apartheid as a structural element of furthering Zionist settler
colonialism on both sides of the Green Line. Further, the report
illustrates the additional need to end Israel’s settler colonialism and the
fulfilment of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The report adds
clear Palestinian voices and analysis to the wider international calls
demanding an end to Israel’s apartheid regime. Palestinian civil society
demand decolonisation and dismantling of Israel’s settler colonialism and
apartheid regime, the fulfilment of the inalienable right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination, systematically denied since the
British mandate, and the right of refugees and exiles in the diaspora to
return.

This ground-breaking apartheid report is the product of four years of
research and advocacy by the coalition of Palestinian human rights
organisations. In this time, and from the efforts of this coalition, there
has been growing acceptance of the reality that is Israel’s oppressive
apartheid regime by the international community. While Addameer is
encouraged by the growing global recognition of Israeli apartheid, we note
that Zionist settler colonialism and its eliminatory and population
transfer logic remain absent from recent analyses and reports on apartheid
by Israeli and international human rights organisations such as Yesh Din
<https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/>,
B’Tselem
<https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid>, Human
Rights Watch
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution>,
and Amnesty International
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>. It is this gap
that the present report seeks to fill.

This report aims to expand on the current apartheid discourse, and push for
the recognition of the colonial practices of Israel, both past and present,
and its consistent use of settler colonial policies against the Palestinian
people, recognising the connection between the Palestinian struggle for
self-determination and the wider, global movement of indigenous liberation
against both colonialism and other associated forms of structural and
institutionalised racism.

Since 1948, Palestinians have endured an ongoing *Nakba* (catastrophe) of
forced displacement, refugeehood, and exile; the denial of their right to
return to Palestine; and an ongoing process of domination, foreign
occupation, annexation, population transfer, and settler colonisation. It
is within this frame of both historic and ongoing violations that Al-Haq
analyses apartheid as a tool for the wider Zionist settler colonial
project, rather than in isolation from contextual facts. The contents of
the report explore all aspects of Israel’s institutionalised racist regime,
including its formational history, before and during the start of the *Nakba
*in 1948; the legal basis of maintaining apartheid in Israel’s
constitutional Basic Laws, other legislation and military orders; and the
importance of delivering the long promised self-determination of the
Palestinian people.

Among the many conclusions from this report, a key take away is how any
description of the situation in Palestine as a ‘conflict’ ignores the
reality of the situation. The unfair power dynamic, the prolonged
indefinite occupation, the exploitive nature of this occupation, and the
constant transfer and expulsion of population with complete disregard for
international law shows Israel’s policies are more than an apartheid
regime, they amount to a colonial-settler policy in the 21st century, with
the intention of uprooting and erasing the Palestinian people from their
homeland.

We stress that there can be no solution to the situation as long as the
international community continues to ignore Israel’s systematic human
rights abuses and settler colonial apartheid regime and through it, sustain
the illegal Zionist colonial settler project at the cost of Palestinian
liberation. This report calls on the international community, the United
Nations, states and communities worldwide to act against Israel’s settler
colonial apartheid regime through a series of recommendations, including:

   - For Third States to take steps towards completely decolonising
   Palestine. This must involve the dismantlement of all structures of
   domination, exploitation, and oppression and the realisation of the
   Palestinian people’s inalienable rights, including to self-determination
   and to return to their homes, lands, and properties;
   - Third States to recognise and condemn, including through regional and
   international organisations, Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies, and
   practices which have cumulatively established, and continue to maintain, an
   apartheid regime of systemic racial oppression and domination, over the
   Palestinian people as a whole;
   - Cooperate to bring the unlawful situation created by Israel’s settler
   colonial apartheid regime to an end by implementing economic sanctions
   nationally and multilaterally and by severing diplomatic, cultural, and
   trade ties with Israel as required by international law and suspend
   existing trade and cooperation agreements with Israel, including national
   and regional agreements;
   - For Member States of the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution to
   reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre
   against Apartheid to address Israeli authorities’ commission of the crime
   against humanity of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole and
   empower these bodies to proactively pursue the dismantlement of Israel’s
   settler colonial apartheid regime.
   - That the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
   expedite the current investigation into the Situation in Palestine without
   undue delay, including into war crimes and crimes against humanity,
   comprising, *inter alia*, the crimes of apartheid, population transfer,
   appropriation and destruction of property, pillage, persecution, wilful
   killing, murder, and torture carried out on the Palestinian territory.
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