Israel committing crimes of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch says
Israel is committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Arabs in the occupied territories and Israel itself, Human Rights Watch says.
In a new report, it says Israel has a policy “to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”, including those who are its citizens.
את זה אמיר אוחנה לא רואה. pic.twitter.com/hdrGwkbYXk
— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) April 24, 2021
Apartheid amounts to state-sanctioned racial discrimination and is considered a crime against humanity.
HAPPENING NOW: Armed far-right Israeli civilians attack a Palestinian home while children cry.
These are the kinds of acts of blood-curdling violence that Israelis are committing en masse in Jerusalem tonight.
Keep your eyes on and your hearts with the Palestinians there. pic.twitter.com/1GKBXeoOcx
— JVP #SaveSheikhJarrah (@jvplive) April 22, 2021
Hundreds of right-wing Israeli Jews are roaming the streets of Jerusalem tonight, chanting “Death to Arabs” and searching for Palestinians to assault. Their actions echo the racist and violent rhetoric of Israeli government officials:pic.twitter.com/Ag9hHGAhNs
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) April 22, 2021
Israel’s foreign ministry has rejected the report as “preposterous and false”.
תיעוד: צעיר ערבי סוטר לבחור חרדי במהלך נסיעה ברכבת הקלה, סתם, בשביל הסרטון ואת התיעוד הוא פרסם בחשבון הטיקטוק האישי שלו pic.twitter.com/4EWaKAfdfv
— חיים גולדברג (@haim_goldberg) April 15, 2021
It accused the international campaign group of having a “long-standing anti-Israeli agenda” and carrying out an ongoing campaign “with no connection to facts or reality on the ground”.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the report.
“It is urgent for the international community to intervene, including by making sure that their states, organisations, and companies are not contributing in any way to the execution of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
Israel’s Arab minority comprises just over 20% of its population of 9.3 million, while at least 2.5 million Palestinians live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and 350,000 in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. About 1.9 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, which the UN considers to also be occupied by Israel.
Israel occupied the territories in the 1967 Middle East war. It pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but still controls most of its borders, as well as its airspace and waters off its coast.
More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Human Rights Watch’s 213-page report, entitled A Threshold Crossed, states that the present-day reality is that Israel is the sole governing power throughout most of those areas and that in the remainder it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule.
“Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians,” it says.
“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,” it adds.
“In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas… these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
