[News] Amnesty Report: ‘Israel’ imposing ‘apartheid’ on Palestinians

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Amnesty:
‘Israel’ imposing ‘apartheid’ on Palestinians
February 1, 2022
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Occupied Palestine (QNN)- ‘Israel’ is carrying out “the crime of apartheid
against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an
inferior racial group”, Amnesty International said in a new report.

Released on Tuesday, the 25-page report by the leading rights group details
how Israeli occupation authorities enforce a system of oppression and
domination against the Palestinians.

The damning investigation sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land
and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement
restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians
are all components of a system “which amounts to apartheid under
international law.”

Amnesty said that this system is maintained by violations which the rights
group found to “constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as
defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.”

Amnesty International has also called on the International Criminal Court
(ICC) to consider the “crime of apartheid in its current investigation in
the OPT” and called on all states to “exercise universal jurisdiction to
bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.”

Speaking at a press conference in occupied East Jerusalem, Agnès Callamard,
Amnesty International’s Secretary General called on the international
community to take “resolute action against the crime against humanity being
perpetrated in order to maintain the system of apartheid”.

“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime. Whether
they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel
itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and
systematically deprived of their rights.”

“We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and
exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to
apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act.”

“There is no possible justification for a system built around the
institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people.
Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make
allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

“Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from
accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining
the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the
Palestinian people.”

“The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s
apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully
unexplored.”

Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by
Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied
the apartheid framework to the situation in ‘Israel’ and/or the OPT.

*Identifying apartheid*

A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and
domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights
violation which is prohibited in public international law.

Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out
in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that ‘Israel’ enforces
such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices
which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.

In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed
within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of
maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.

These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute,
and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of
basic rights and freedoms.

Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid
Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas ‘Israel’ controls, although
they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in ‘Israel’.

It said that Israeli occupation authorities enact “multiple measures to
deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including
draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory
underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of
refugees’ right to return.”

The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention,
torture, and unlawful killings, in both ‘Israel’ and the OPT.

Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and
widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are
committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and
domination.

They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.

The unlawful killing of Palestinian protesters is perhaps the clearest
illustration of how Israeli authorities use proscribed acts to maintain the
status quo, the report said.

“In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the
border with Israel, calling for the right of return for refugees and an end
to the blockade. Before protests even began, senior Israeli officials
warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of
2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.”

In light of the systematic unlawful killings of Palestinians documented in
its report, Amnesty International is also calling for the UN Security
Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on ‘Israel’.

“This should cover all weapons and munitions as well as law enforcement
equipment, given the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been
unlawfully killed by Israeli forces.”

The Security Council should also impose targeted sanctions, such as asset
freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of
apartheid, it said.

Palestinians treated as a demographic threat

Since its establishment in 1948, ‘Israel’ has pursued a policy of
establishing and then “maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, and
maximizing control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis,”
Amnesty said.

In 1967, ‘Israel’ “extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

Today, all territories controlled by ‘Israel’ “continue to be administered
with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of
Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.”

Amnesty International recognizes that Jews, like Palestinians, claim a
right to self-determination, and does not challenge Israel’s desire to be a
home for Jews.

“Similarly, it does not consider that Israel labelling itself a “Jewish
state” in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate.”

However, Amnesty International’s report shows that “successive Israeli
governments have considered Palestinians a demographic threat, and imposed
measures to control and decrease their presence and access to land in
Israel and the OPT.”

“These demographic aims are well illustrated by official plans to “Judaize”
areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue
to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer,” the rights
group noted.

*Oppression without borders*

The 1947-49 and 1967 wars, Israel’s ongoing military rule of the OPT, and
the creation of separate legal and administrative regimes within the
territory, have separated Palestinian communities and segregated them from
Jewish Israelis, Amnesty said.

It added that Palestinians have been fragmented geographically and
politically, and experience different levels of discrimination depending on
their status and where they live.

“Palestinian citizens in Israel currently enjoy greater rights and freedoms
than their counterparts in the OPT, while the experience of Palestinians in
Gaza is very different to that of those living in the West Bank.”

Nonetheless, Amnesty International’s research shows that all Palestinians
are subject to the same overarching system. Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to
privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to
minimize the Palestinian presence and access to land.

Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli occupation authorities
“treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their
non-Jewish, Arab status.”

“This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians
across Israel and the OPT,” it said.

For example, Palestinian citizens of 1948-occupied Palestine “are denied a
nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In
the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry
since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered
stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in
the territories.”

“Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the
1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to
their former places of residence.”

Amnesty called Israel’s exclusion of refugees is a “flagrant violation of
international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced
displacement.”

Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence
instead of citizenship – though this status is permanent in name only, the
leading rights group noted.

Since 1967, Amnesty said, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their
residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior,
resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.

*Lesser citizens*

Palestinian citizens of the 1948 Israeli-occupied Palestine, who comprise
about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized
discrimination, according to Amnesty.

In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a
constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined ‘Israel’
exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”.

The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades
Arabic’s status as an official language.

The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing
on 80% of Israel’s state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a
web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.

Amnesty pointed out that the situation in the Al-Naqab region of southern
1948-occupied Palestine is “a prime example of how Israel’s planning and
building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians.”

Since 1948, Amnesty said, Israeli occupation authorities have adopted
various policies to “Judaize” the Al-Naqab, “including designating large
areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for
increasing the Jewish population.”

“This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of
Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.”

Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently
“unrecognized” by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national
electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions.

Amnesty said that as the villages have no official status, their residents
also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the
healthcare and education systems.

“These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages,
in what amounts to forcible transfer.”

“Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of
Israel have left them consistently economically disadvantaged in comparison
to Jewish Israelis.“

Amnesty added that this is “exacerbated by blatantly discriminatory
allocation of state resources: a recent example is the government’s
Covid-19 recovery package, of which just 1.7% was given to Palestinian
local authorities.”

*Dispossession*

Amnesty said that the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from
their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel’s apartheid system.

Since its establishment in 1948, the Israeli occupation state has “enforced
massive and cruel land seizures against Palestinians, and continues to
implement myriad laws and policies to force Palestinians into small
enclaves.”

Since 1948, ‘Israel’ has demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian
homes and other properties across all areas under its jurisdiction and
effective control, Amnesty noted.

As in the Al-Naqab, Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the OPT
live under full Israeli control.

The occupation authorities deny building permits to Palestinians in these
areas, forcing them to build illegal structures which are demolished again
and again.

In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements
exacerbates the situation, Amnesty said, adding that the construction of
these settlements in the OPT has been a government policy since 1967.

Settlements today cover 10% of the land in the West Bank, and some 38% of
Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.

Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem are frequently targeted by
settler organizations which, with the full backing of the Israeli
government, work to displace Palestinian families and hand their homes to
settlers.

One such neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, has been the site of frequent
protests since May 2021 as families battle to keep their homes under the
threat of a settler lawsuit.

*Draconian movement restrictions*

Since the mid-1990s, Amnesty said, Israeli occupation authorities have
imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the
OPT.

A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures
controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their
travel into the occupied territories or abroad.

A 700km fence, which ‘Israel’ is still extending, has isolated Palestinian
communities inside “military zones”, and they must obtain multiple special
permits any time they enter or leave their homes, Amnesty noted.

In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade
which has created a humanitarian crisis.

“It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the
OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.”

“For Palestinians, the difficulty of travelling within and in and out of
the OPT is a constant reminder of their powerlessness. Their every move is
subject to the Israeli military’s approval, and the simplest daily task
means navigating a web of violent control, said Callamard.

“The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel’s brazen
discrimination against Palestinians. While Palestinians are locked in a
blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit
to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they
please.”

Amnesty International examined each of the security justifications which
‘Israel’ cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians.

The report shows that, while some of Israel’s policies may have been
designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been
implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which
fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no
reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to
oppress and dominate.

“The international response to apartheid must no longer be limited to bland
condemnations and equivocating. Unless we tackle the root causes,
Palestinians and Israelis will remain locked in the cycle of violence which
has destroyed so many lives,” said Agnès Callamard as Amnesty International
provides numerous specific recommendations for how the Israeli occupation
authorities can dismantle the apartheid system and the discrimination,
segregation and oppression which sustain it.

“Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians
as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and
security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians
alike.”
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