• Amnesty International said the investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control
• The report is dubbed, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, and documents
Image: JOHN CHESOLI
Amnesty International has accused Israeli authorities of apartheid against Palestinians in a new report.
In a statement released on February 1, Amnesty International said the investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights.
“This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries,” it said.
The report is dubbed, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, and documents “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”.
“This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention,” it said.
“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 amount to apartheid. The international community should act," Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General
It also called on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
Last year in April, Human Rights Watch also accused Israel of apartheid in a report titled “A Threshold Crossed: Israel Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”.
Human Rights Watch said laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy.
“Across these areas [‘Occupied Palestinian Territory made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip’] and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians,” the report said.
A summary of the report said widely held assumptions, including that the occupation is temporary, that the “peace process” will soon bring an end to Israeli abuses, that Palestinians have meaningful control over their lives in the West Bank and Gaza, and that Israel is an egalitarian democracy inside its borders, have obscured the reality of Israel’s entrenched discriminatory rule over Palestinians.
Amnesty International said it is calling on the International Criminal Court to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT.
The Embassy of Palestine in Nairobi welcomed the report by Amnesty International.
“Amnesty International joins a long list of distinguished Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations and in exposing Israel's colonial occupation for what it is: an institutionalized system of oppression and domination over the Palestinian people, designed to legitimize its colonial settlement expansion, deny the Palestinian people their inalienable right to Self-determination. and erase history. present, and future in their homeland,” it said in a statement.
The mission asked United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly to heed the evidence presented by Amnesty and other leading human rights organizations and hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinians, including through sanctions.
“Equally and urgently. the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must investigate Israel's crime against humanity of apartheid without delay,” it said in the statement.
They added Palestinians will continue to exercise their “legitimate right to oppose and resist all forms of occupation, colonization, dehumanization, racism, and apartheid” until they achieve justice and realize their rights to self-determination, return, freedom, and independence.
The claims of apartheid in Palestine have also affected Israel relations with the Southern African Development Community, whose members have opposed its admission to the African Union.
Member countries have accused Israel of not meeting basic principles of the AU.
Namibian international relations minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told Namibian Sun the approval did not meet the basic principles of the AU.
“We are rejecting that approval because it does not meet the basic principles of the African Union, which includes the right to self-determination,” Nandi-Ndaitwah said last year.
Namibia accused Israel of illegally occupying Palestine.
The South African Embassy in Ethiopia asked AU Commission chairman Moussa Faki to explain the rationale behind the decision following rejections in 2013, 2015, and 2016.
“South African recalls that the union has consistently reiterated its support for the Palestinian people in security an independent and sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital and called on Israel to respect its international law obligations,” the South African government said.
In a previous interview with then Israel Ambassador Oded Joseph last, the envoy denied Israel is practising apartheid.
"So I do not understand the logic of those countries, mainly two, saying that preventing Israel to be a part of the African Union as an observer helps the Palestinian cause," Oded said in September.