Israeli human rights group marks apartheid state

In a report released Tuesday, B’Tselem says that while Palestinians live under various forms of Israeli control in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and within Israel itself, there is more they have fewer rights than the claims in the whole region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

“One of the key points in our analysis is that this is one geopolitical area governed by one government,” D’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad said.

“It’s not about democracy, it’s not about function. This is a division between the river and the sea. “

That Israeli prestigious group adopts long-seen taboo term even with many Israeli critics point to a broader movement in the debate as its half-century control of war-winning land slows down on and the hope that a two-state solution will disappear.

Israel has proven itself as a thriving democracy in which Arab citizens have equal rights, making up about 20% of their population of 9.2 million. Arabs are in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, in the police and even serving as officers in the IDF.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six Day War – a land that is home to nearly 5 million Palestinians and what the Palestinians want for a future state.

Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but stopped it after the Hamas terrorist group seized power there two years later.

He is considering “controversial” land of the West Bank, the position of which should be determined in peace talks.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 in an internationally unknown movement and considered the whole city as a unified capital. Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem are “residents” of Israel, but they are not citizens with voting rights.

B’Tselem argues that by dividing the territories and using different methods of control, Israel is hiding the underlying truth – that about 7 million people and 7 million Palestinians live under one a system with very unequal rights.

“We are not saying that the level of discrimination that Palestine must have is the same if one is a citizen of the state of Israel or if one is under siege in Gaza,” El-Ad said.

“The point is that there is not one square inch between the river and the sea in which Palestine and Jew are equal.”

Israeli critics have been using the term “apartheid” for decades, sparking a system of white rule and racial segregation in South Africa that was abolished in 1994. The Court International Crime defines apartheid as “an established regime of harassment and systematic control by a single racial group. “

“There is no country in the world that is clearer in its apartheid policies than Israel,” said Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “It is a state based on racist decisions aimed at disposing of land, evicting indigenous peoples, demolishing homes and controlling towns.”

In the last few years, as Israel has introduced its rule over the West Bank, Israeli writers, former generals and politicians who opposed its right-wing government quickly accepted the term.

But so far B’Tselem, founded in 1989, has only been used in specific contexts.

Israel strongly rejects the term, saying the restrictions it imposes in Gaza and the West Bank are the temporary measures needed for security.

Most Palestinians on the West Bank live in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, but these areas are surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and Israeli troops can go to war. enter at any time. Israel has full control of 60% of the West Bank.

Itay Milner, a thinker for Israel’s consulate general in New York, dismissed the B’Tselem report as “another tool for them to advance their political agenda,” which he said was based on “a divided ideological view.”

He pointed out that Israeli Arab citizens are represented throughout the government, including the diplomatic group.

Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, says the Palestinians’ own government makes any speech about apartheid “inappropriate,” calling the B’Tselem report “Extremely weak, dishonest and deceitful.”

Palestinian leaders agreed with the existing territorial regions in the Oslo treaties in the 1990s, and the Palestinian Authority is recognized as a state by dozens of countries.

That, Kontorovich says, is far from the areas designated for South Africans under apartheid – known as bantustans – to which many Palestinians compare the areas ruled by and PA.

Kontorovich said the use of the word “apartheid” instead was aimed at demonizing Israel in a way that “responds to racial vulnerability and debates in America and the West.”

Alon Pinkas, the former Israeli Consul General in New York, is rejecting the term. Call, yes. Apartheid, absolutely not. “

But he acknowledged that critics of Israel who had stopped using the term, or who had used it and were attacked, “now conveniently say, ‘Hey, know you, the Israelites say themselves. ‘”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reformed Judaism, which estimates that it reaches more than 1.5 million people in 850 congregations across North America, says the situation in the Bank is West and Gaza a “moral failure” and a “career,” but not apartheid.

“The point of saying that is, for many in the international community, because Israel has no right to exist,” he said. “If the allegation is apartheid, that’s not just strong criticism, it’s a verbal critic.”

El-Ad marks two recent developments that have changed the thinking of B’Tselem.

The first was a controversial law passed in 2018 that defines Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Critics say it has reduced Israel ‘s Arab minority to second – class citizenship and formalized the widespread discrimination that has been inflicted on them since Israel was founded in 1948.

Supporters say he only recognized the Jewish character of Israel and that similar laws can be found in many Western countries.

The second was Israel’s announcement in 2019 that it planned to deploy up to a third of the West Bank, including all Jewish settlements, which are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis .

These plans were postponed as part of a normalization agreement reached with the United Arab Emirates last year, but Israel has said the peace is only temporary.

B’Tselem and other rights groups argue that the borders separating Israel and the West Bank have long since disappeared – at least for Israeli settlers, who can travel freely back and forth forward, while their Palestinian neighbors demand permits to enter Israel.

There have been few peace talks in more than a decade.

“Fifty more years, isn’t that enough to understand the stability of Israeli control over the occupied areas?” El-Ad said.

“We think people need to wake up to reality, and stop talking in the future about something that has already happened.”