“Israeli practices in the occupied territory are… in breach of the legal prohibition of apartheid.”
— study co-authored by international law professor and former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, John Dugard, 2013
“The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state,”
— architect of apartheid and prime minister of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, 1961
“make their life so bitter that they will transfer themselves willingly”
— Rabbi Benny Alon
(Minister for Tourism, former IDF Officer, Chaplain in the Artillery Corps)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/03/07/murder-under-the-cover-of-righteousness/
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
Article II
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term «the crime of apartheid», which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Gaza:
Today, some two million people in the Gaza Strip live under siege, facing what independent observers warn is imminent “catastrophe” due to a poisoned water supply and unemployment soaring over 60 percent.
— GAZA IN 2020: A LIVEABLE PLACE?
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/gaza-2020-liveable-place
…the 2009 report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (chaired by Goldstone and referred to by himself and others as the ‘Goldstone Report’) is in fact supportive of a finding of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory in respect of Article 2(a) and (c) of the Apartheid Convention. Without explicit recourse to the language of apartheid, the Report invokes evidence of ‘discrimination and differential treatment’ between Palestinians and Israeli Jews in fields including: treatment by judicial authorities; land use, housing, and access to natural resources; citizenship, residence, and family unification; access to food and water supplies; the use of force against demonstrators; freedom of movement; access to health, education, and social services; and freedom of association.‘
— Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, supra note 141, at paras 113, 206, 208, 938, 1427, 1577, 1579, and 1616 respectively.
To aggravate matters….targeted killings have often resulted in the killing of innocent bystanders as ‘collateral damage’. (apartheid South Africa did not practise systematic extrajudicial killings openly and with the public authorization of senior security and political officials as is done by Israel).
— ‘The Targeted Killing of Salah Shehadeh: From Gaza to Madrid’, 7 J Int’l Criminal Justice (2009) 617.
— The right to life is also violated by Israel in the course of the Israeli military’s regular raids into Palestinian territory during which militants and innocent civilians are often killed. Excessive and disproportionate force against civilian demonstrators, frequently resulting in death, is an unexceptional occurrence in Palestine.
There have been four major military campaigns, each coming after protracted unilateral ceasefires by Palestinian militant groups:
When Peace Leads to Massacre:
https://spanishhalyon.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/82/
2014 being the most brutal onslaught after 2 years of unilateral ceasefire and a series of lies to whip up tensions and hatred against Palestinians.
Did You Know?
https://spanishhalyon.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/did-you-know/
The Overall Picture
— Israel’s policies and practices in the West Bank include denial of the right to life through state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings of Palestinians opposed to the occupation, including the targeting of political leaders and militants at times when they were not participating in hostilities and were thus protected by international humanitarian law.
— https://www.btselem.org/search?gs=Extrajudicial
…..the purpose of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory is confirmed by its failure to facilitate the lives of Palestinians and the infrastructure of the occupied territory by constructing or maintaining hospitals, schools, and universities for the benefit of the protected population as arguably required by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
— Arts 50 and 55–56 oblige an occupying power to facilitate the proper working of educational institutions, ensuring proper medical supplies and maintaining hospitals and public health
Israel leaves the welfare of the occupied people to international donors and has created a cycle of aid dependency. Israel’s lack of regard for the needs of the Palestinian people stands in contrast to the action taken by South Africa’s apartheid regime to improve material living conditions in the Bantustans it created. Such failure, coupled with the commission of inhuman acts in a systematic, oppressive, and discriminatory manner, a fortiori provides evidence of an intention to maintain the domination of Jews over Palestinians.
— Richard Falk
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law — John Duggan and John Reynolds (2009)
and
Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC)(2007-2009):
Article 2(c) of the Apartheid Convention is a broad clause defining as acts of apartheid any measures calculated to prevent a racial group from participating in the political, social, economic, and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of the group, in particular through the denial of basic human rights and freedoms.
For our present purposes it is befitting to highlight the conclusions of the HSRC research pertaining to the nine rights and freedoms to which Article 2(c) refers:
Article II (c) is satisfied on all counts:
— Restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement are endemic, stemming from Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian territory border crossings, the wall in the West Bank, a matrix of checkpoints and separate roads, and obstructive and all-encompassing permit and ID systems.
— The right of Palestinians to choose their own place of residence within their territory is severely curtailed by systematic administrative restrictions on residency and building in East Jerusalem, by discriminatory legislation that operates to prevent Palestinian spouses from living together on the basis of which part of the occupied Palestinian territory they originate from, and by the strictures of the permit and ID systems.
— Palestinians are denied the right to leave and return to their country. Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory are not allowed to return to their homes inside Israel, while Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles outside Israel and the territory are not allowed to return to their homes in either the territory or Israel. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have been prevented from returning. Many Palestinian residents of the occupied territory must obtain Israeli permission (often denied) to leave it; political activists and human rights defenders are often subject to arbitrary and undefined “travel bans”, and many Palestinians who travelled abroad for business or personal reasons have had their residence IDs revoked and been prohibited from returning.
— Israel denies Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory the right to a nationality, denying them citizenship of the State (Israel) that governs the land of their birth, and also obstructing the exercise by the Palestinians of the right to self-determination and preventing the formation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip).
— Palestinians are denied the right to freedom and residence through the cantonization of the West Bank, which confines them to designated areas on the basis of race; through bans on their returning to homes in the occupied Palestinian territory from which they were displaced by fighting and terror; and through restrictions on building permits that prevent them from establishing homes where they wish to live.
— Palestinians are restricted in their right to work through Israeli policies that severely curtail Palestinian agriculture and industry in the occupied Palestinian territory, restrict exports and imports, and impose pervasive obstacles to internal movement that impair access to agricultural land and travel for employment and business. Since the second intifada, access for Palestinians to work inside Israel, once significant, has been dramatically curtailed and is now negligible. The unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole has reached almost 50 per cent.
— Palestinian trade unions exist but are not recognized by the Israeli Government or by the Histadrut (the largest Israeli trade union) and cannot effectively represent Palestinians working for Israeli employers and businesses in the occupied Palestinian territory. Palestinian unions are not permitted to function at all in Israeli settlements. Although they are required to pay dues to the Histadrut, the interests and concerns of Palestinian workers are not represented by the Histadrut; nor do they have a voice in its policies.
— Israel does not operate the school system in the occupied Palestinian territory, but severely impedes Palestinian access to education on a routine basis through extensive school closures; direct attacks on schools; severe restrictions on movement, including travel to schools; and the arrest and detention of teachers and students. The denial by Israel of exit permits, particularly for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, has prevented thousands of students from pursuing higher education abroad. Discrimination in education is further underlined by the parallel and greatly superior Jewish Israeli school system in Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank, to which Palestinians have no access.
— Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are denied the right to freedom of opinion and expression through censorship laws enforced by the military authorities and endorsed by the Supreme Court. Palestinian newspapers must have a military permit and articles must be pre-approved by the military censor. Since 2001, the Israeli Government Press Office has drastically limited press accreditation for Palestinian journalists, who are also subjected to systematic harassment, detention and confiscation of materials, and in some cases assassination. The accreditation of foreign journalists working in the occupied territory may be revoked at the discretion of the Government Press Office Director on security grounds, which include writing stories that are deemed to “delegitimize” the State. Foreign journalists are regularly barred from entering the Gaza Strip.
— The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is impeded through military orders. Military legislation bans public gatherings of 10 or more persons without a permit from the Israeli military commander. Non- violent demonstrations are regularly suppressed by the Israeli army with live ammunition, tear gas and arrests. Most Palestinian political parties have been declared illegal and institutions associated with those parties, such as charities and cultural organisations, are regularly subjected to closure and attack.
— The prevention of full development in the occupied Palestinian territory and participation of Palestinians in political, economic, social and cultural life is most starkly demonstrated by the effects of the ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Article II (d) is satisfied in the following ways:
— Israeli policies have divided the occupied Palestinian territory into a series of non-contiguous enclaves (Areas A and B in the West Bank, as a whole separated from the Gaza Strip) in which Palestinians are allowed to live and maintain a degree of local autonomy. Land between those enclaves is reserved exclusively for Jewish and State use: the Jewish settlement grid, nature reserves, agro-industry, military zones and so forth. Land not already used is considered “State land” and administered by State institutions for the benefit of the Jewish people. Segregation of the populations is ensured by pass laws that restrict Palestinians from visiting Jewish areas without a permit and ban Jewish-Israeli travel into Palestinian zones. The wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent and “floating” checkpoints enforce those restrictions.
— Israel has extensively appropriated Palestinian land in the occupied Palestinian territory for exclusively Jewish use. Private Palestinian land comprises about 30 per cent of the land unlawfully appropriated for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Approximately 40 per cent of the West Bank is completely closed to use by the Palestinians, and significant restrictions are placed on access by them to much of the rest.
……[There is a] system of military law imposed on approximately 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory, 2.7 million of them in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip. The territory is administered in a manner that fully meets the definition of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention: except for the provision on genocide, every illustrative “inhuman act” listed in the Convention is routinely and systematically practiced by Israel in the West Bank. Palestinians are governed by military law, while the approximately 350,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is further confirmed by the fact that all West Bank Jewish settlers enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime when coupled with the racially discriminatory management of land and development administered by Jewish-national institutions, which are charged with administering “State land” in the interest of the Jewish population.
The authors of this report concur with those scholars who have concluded that Gaza remains under military occupation. Although governed entirely by Palestinians, key elements of apartheid as defined by the Apartheid Convention remain. In particular, Israel has exclusive control of the borders of Gaza and, since 2007, has imposed a blockade, which translates into draconian restrictions on Palestinian movement that affect trade, work, education and access to health care (article II (c)), and repression of any resistance to those conditions (article II (f)).
[…]
[The]… “inhuman acts” listed in the Apartheid Convention was undertaken for the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) report issued in 2009. The findings of that study….were conclusive: except for the provision on genocide (which was not practiced in southern Africa either), every “inhuman act” listed in the Apartheid Convention is practiced by Israel in the West Bank.
— Update to the ESCWA Report of 15 March 2019
“Legal Inquiry into Israel as an Apartheid State” by Richard Falk & Virginia Tilley
Israel already administers the occupied Palestinian territory in ways consistent with apartheid, given that the territory has not one population but two: (a) Palestinian civilians, governed by military law; and (b) some 350,000 Jewish settlers, governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is evidenced by the fact that all West Bank settlers are administered by Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, occupation in the eyes of the United Nations. whether they are Israeli citizens or not.
Thus, Israel administers the West Bank through a dual legal system, based on race… Secondly, the character of this dual legal system, problematic in itself, is aggravated by how the State of Israel manages land and development on the basis of race. By denying Palestinians essential zoning, building and business permits, Israeli military rule has crippled the Palestinian economy and society, leaving Palestinian cities and towns (outside the Ramallah enclave) increasingly under- resourced and suffocating their growth and the welfare of their inhabitants. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has resulted in even worse living conditions for the entrapped Palestinian population there.
— Limor Yehuda and others, One Rule Two Legal Systems: Israel’s Regime of Laws in the West Bank (Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), October 2014), p. 108.
https://law.acri.org.il//en/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Two-Systems-of-Law-English-FINAL.pdf
Full credits go to:
Update to the ESCWA Report of 15 March 2019
“Legal Inquiry into Israel as an Apartheid State”
Richard Falk & Virginia Tilley
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law.
— John Duggan* and John Reynolds** (2009)
Emeritus Professor of International Law, University of Leiden; Honorary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria; member of the International Law Commission 1997–2011; Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the Commission on Human Rights/Human Rights Council 2001–2008; judge ad hoc International Court of Justice. Email: john@dugard.nl.
** EJ Phelan Fellow in International Law, National University of Ireland, Galway; Adjunct Lecturer, School of Law & Government, Dublin City University.
http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/24/3/2421.pdf
ESCWA (2017)
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
Richard Falk & Virginia Tilley
— From 2008 through 2014, he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. He is author or editor of some 60 books and hundreds of articles on international human rights law, Middle East politics, environmental justice, and other fields concerning human rights and international relations.
— From 2006 to 2011, she served as Chief Research Specialist in the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa
and from 2007 to 2010 led the Council’s Middle East Project, which undertook a two-year study of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.
spanishhalyon 