[News] ‘Israel’ is an apartheid regime, former AG of ‘Israel’ says

[Anti-Imperialist News]

qudsnen.co <https://qudsnen.co/34539-2/> ‘Israel’ is an apartheid regime,
former AG of ‘Israel’ says
February 15, 2022
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A participant holds up a sign reading 'Stop Israeli Apartheid' during a
protest in solidarity with the Palestinians on 15 May 2021 [WOJTEK
RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Former Attorney General of ‘Israel’, Michael
Benyair, said he agrees with Amnesty International’s recently-issued report
on Israeli apartheid against Palestinians, concluding that “my country is
now an apartheid regime.”

Writing in The Journal, the former acting judge in Israeli Supreme Court
referred to the public debate as to whether the actions the Israeli
occupation government is enacting in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
can be classified as apartheid under international law.

He also pointed out to Amnesty International’s new report that classed
‘Israel’ as an apartheid
<https://qudsnen.co/amnesty-israel-imposing-apartheid-on-palestinians/>,
becoming the latest NGO to call it as apartheid and ‘a cruel system of
domination and a crime against humanity’.

Benyair wrote, “I have spent my career analysing Israel’s most pressing
legal questions. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem was a fundamental dilemma during my tenure and beyond.”

“Israel’s ongoing domination over these territories is a gross injustice
that must be urgently rectified,” Benyair said.

“I must also conclude that my country has sunk to such political and moral
depths that it is now an apartheid regime. It is time for the international
community to recognise this reality as well.”

Since 1967, Benyaid noted, Israeli occupation authorities have “justified
the occupation by claiming that it is temporary until a peaceful solution
can be found between Israelis and Palestinians.”

“However, five decades have now passed since these territories were
conquered and Israel shows no interest in rescinding this control.”

“It is impossible to conclude otherwise: the occupation is a permanent
reality. This is a one state reality, with two different peoples living
with unequal rights.”

Violating international law, the former AG said, ‘Israel’ has transferred
more than 650,000 of its Jewish citizens to live in settlements in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem.

“These settlements are established in areas that surround Palestinian
villages, intentionally fragmenting Palestinian communities from each
other, to ultimately prevent the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian
state. In East Jerusalem, discriminatory property laws are forcing
Palestinians out of their homes in a state-backed policy of Judaising the
city,” he said.

“In Area C of the West Bank, discriminatory planning laws are being used to
drive Palestinian communities from their land. These communities face a
deluge of settler violence from unauthorised outposts (illegal even under
Israeli law), the perpetrators of which face little to no consequences.”

“Any attempts to resist apartheid are heavily surveilled or criminalised,
exemplified by the spurious designation of Palestinian civil society groups
as terrorists by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.”

Successive Israeli governments including the recent coalition government
which billed itself as a shift away from Netanyahu’s intransigence has
consistently and publicly affirmed that they have no intention of
establishing a Palestinian state, Benyair stated.

However, Benyair added, “much of the discussion in the international
community operates as if Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories can
be distinguished from the liberal democracy that exists within the Green
Line. This is a mistake.”

“You simply cannot be a liberal democracy if you operate apartheid over
another people. It is a contradiction in terms because Israel’s entire
society is complicit in this unjust reality.”

“It is the Israeli ministerial cabinet for settlements that approves every
illegal settlement in the occupied territories.”

Benyair said it was him, in his role as the Attorney General “who approved
the expropriation of private Palestinian land in order to build
infrastructure such as roads that have entrenched settlement expansion.”

Benyair added that it is the Israeli courts that “uphold discriminatory
laws geared to expel Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem and
their land in the West Bank. Its healthcare providers operate over the
Green Line. And Israeli citizens ultimately pay taxes that subsidise the
government’s entrenchment of control and domination in these territories.”

Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it is Israel that is
permanently depriving millions of Palestinians of their civil and political
rights, Benyair stressed.

“This is Israeli apartheid,” he wrote.

Benyair said that the delay by the international community in taking
“meaningful steps to hold Israel accountable for the apartheid regime it is
perpetuating is unacceptable.”
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