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THE ABSURD TIMES
Illustration: I've missed the prolific Carlos Latuff. Anyone know what happened to him? Did Bolinsonaro get after him? Just miss his work.
APARTHEID AGAIN RECOGNIZED IN ISRAEL
BY
HONEST CHARLIE
We honestly thought we had said about all we needed to or could about Israel as hey have kept on providing only more and moor examples of a fascist state, never missing a beat or opportunity, We realize, however, that our readership has expanded and some have joined since the last time we mentioned the Zionist State and become tired of their only response to anything negative: "That's anti-Semitic" or, the tired (and erroneous) statement "Israel has a right to defend itself." The first ignores the fact that the Arabs are also Semitic, and the second used to justify invasions, killings, attacks, arbitrary incarcerations, and any other form of outrage one can point to[i].
I've read people I trust who actually went there and left with disgust as the other young soldiers demeaned the indigenous population. Also, they didn't want any holocaust survivors to have say in what happened as they would "be too soft" having known what they were doing. Finally, they (the invaders) would never accept the Kantian position that one should act as he would will others to act, and that the Axiom was reciprocal.
Well, now Amnesty International has decided Israel is an apartheid state. Israel, of course, points out (can you hear it coming?) that Amnesty International is Anti-Semitic. Well, here is the background on that:
Amnesty International has become the third major human rights organization to accuse Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians in a new report released on Tuesday. Amnesty finds Israel's system of apartheid dates back to the country's founding in 1948 and has materialized in abuses including massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians — all of which constitute apartheid under international law. We speak with Amnesty International USA's executive director Paul O'Brien, who calls on the United States to "put pressure on the Israeli government to dismantle this system of apartheid," despite both the Biden administration and the Israeli government rejecting the report's findings.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights organization, has for the first time accused Israel of committing "the crime of apartheid against Palestinians." Amnesty becomes the third major human rights group to decry Israel's apartheid system over the past year, joining Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B'Tselem. In its report, Amnesty says the roots of the apartheid system date back to Israel's founding in 1948. Amnesty unveiled their findings in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday. This is Amnesty's Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
AGNÈS CALLAMARD: We are here today to call on the international community to take resolute action against the crime of humanity being perpetrated in order to maintain the system of apartheid.
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has joined the Israeli government in rejecting Amnesty's findings. Israel called the report "false and biased." The U.S. ambassador to Israel called the report "absurd."
In a moment, we'll be joined by Paul O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, but first we turn to an excerpt of a new video produced by Amnesty.
NARRATOR: When you hear the word "apartheid," what do you think of? Probably the disturbing images of racial segregation between whites and Blacks in South Africa, where a regime ruled by a racist white minority declared themselves officially superior to the Black majority, then proceeded to dominate them. South Africa's apartheid system officially ended in the mid-1990s, but that doesn't mean apartheid can't happen elsewhere.
Here, in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Palestinians are being forced off their land and out of their homes, separated and segregated by laws, walls and checkpoints. They live in a constant state of fear and insecurity, and deliberately impoverished, while, on the other hand, Israeli authorities have given the Jewish Israeli population privilege over Palestinians in just about every facet of life. The question is: Does this all amount to the crime of apartheid?
First, the definition of "apartheid": The crime against humanity of apartheid is perpetrated when particular serious human rights violations are committed with the "purpose of establishing and maintaining" a system of "domination by one racial group … over [another] and systematically oppressing them."
But does this system exist in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories?
PHILIP LUTHER: There's been a growing debate about whether the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is apartheid. And now is the time for us, as the world's largest human rights organization, to offer up our analysis. Our findings and criticism are directed not at the Jewish people, but at the Israeli state. It's the Israeli state that put in place the policies that implement the laws and the practices that oppress Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Amnesty International's Philip Luther. Amnesty's video goes on to detail a history of the Israeli state, then document how Israel has implemented its apartheid system today.
NARRATOR: One way to understand this segregation and oppression is to look at the ID system. Jewish Israelis have only one ID card, with a status that grants them the rights to live almost anywhere they wish in the country. They can move freely with access to healthcare and vast resources. Palestinians, on the other hand, have four types of ID cards, if any at all. The kind of ID card you are given determines the level of rights you can enjoy and controls where you can go and what you can do.
If you hold a green card, you are subject to military rule. And if you have a green card with a Gaza address, it means you're trapped in a 365-kilometer-square open-air prison under Israeli military blockade in place since 2007. Israel controls what goes in and what goes out, from children's toys to medical supplies. Ninety percent of the people have no access to safe drinking water. Forty-seven percent are unemployed. Fifty-six percent live in poverty. Palestinians with a Gaza ID are forbidden from going to Jerusalem and the West Bank even if they have family there. Some people in the West Bank are considered to live there illegally and can be deported immediately to Gaza if found by the army, even if they have been in the West Bank for decades, whereas if you hold a green card which has a West Bank address, then you live here.
This green card means you can live within specific enclaves surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements. And there's a separation wall and fences built around you since 2002, which Palestinians call the "apartheid wall." It's eight meters high in places and 700 kilometers long. That's twice the height of the Berlin Wall and more than four times its length. Eighty percent of it is built inside the West Bank, occupying even more Palestinian land. There are separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians, hundreds of checkpoints scattered throughout, not to mention the 54 years of occupation which has devastated the lives of millions of Palestinians. Palestinians with a West Bank ID can travel to Gaza or East Jerusalem, but only if they receive a permit from the military to do so.
This blue ID is for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. They can travel to the occupied West Bank, as well as to Israel, but they are not citizens of Israel. They have only been granted a residency status. This means that they cannot vote in Israeli national elections. And if they leave East Jerusalem for too long — for example, to study or work abroad or in other parts of the occupied West Bank — their residency is revoked, so they can't return. Since 1967, Israel has revoked the residency status of more than 14,600 Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
If this complex ID system wasn't enough to segregate the Palestinian community, in 2002 Israel introduced a law that prohibits family unification. That's right, denying Palestinians the right to live with their loved ones if their ID cards are different. And this woman is one of thousands of Palestinians who Israel will not issue any ID card. She can't travel, can't hug her family, only see them meters away across the border.
Putting down roots, the family home, these are crucial parts of what make a strong community. To make sure Palestinian communities can't develop any further, Israel has made it almost impossible to grant building permits for Palestinian homes. So, Palestinians live in a Catch-22 situation: In order to have shelter, to develop their communities, they must build without a permit, and if they do so, Israel can demolish the structures on the basis that it was built without a permit. Right now there are over 150,000 Palestinians currently living under the constant threat of demolition and forced eviction, many of them for the second or third time. In the West Bank, an average of 18 Palestinian structures were demolished every week in 2020, the same year Israel issued 1,094 building permits for Jewish applicants and only one for a Palestinian.
This goes back to the heart of the issue: To maintain the state's character as Jewish, Israel systematically disadvantages Palestinians while privileging Jewish Israelis. This racist privilege has been enshrined in laws, policies and practices, and it enables Palestinian resources to be taken in order to economically benefit Jewish Israeli citizens.
Amnesty International and other rights organizations have been documenting patterns of human rights violations and international crimes for decades. These are the most visible and violent part of this system. At the end of May 2020, 4,236 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons. And 352, including two children, were held without charge or trial. Between September 2000 and February 2017, Israeli forces killed 4,868 Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including 1,793 children, outside the context of armed conflict. And Amnesty International is not aware of any case in which an Israeli soldier has been convicted of willfully causing the death of a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories since 1987.
This imbalance of rights, justice and accountability is never more clear than when a Jewish Israeli life appears to have more value than a Palestinian's. Israel's apartheid and its cruel and prolonged strategies deliberately disadvantage Palestinians wherever they live. They cannot claim and enjoy equality with Jewish Israelis.
AMY GOODMAN: That's an excerpt of a video produced by Amnesty International, released this week along with a major report accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians. The Biden administration has rejected Amnesty's findings. On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price was questioned by Associated Press journalist Matthew Lee about the Biden administration's criticism of the Amnesty report.
MATTHEW LEE: Ned, it may be true that you don't offer public comprehensive evaluations of outside reports, but you certainly cite them quite a bit in your own human rights report. And I went back and looked, and, you know, in terms of — just the last human rights report cited Amnesty International on Ethiopia, on Cuba, on China and Xinjiang, on Iran, on Burma, on Syria, on Cuba. And that — those references are endorsements of what this group, Amnesty, and then other groups, as well, that are cited, have found. Why is it that — without taking a stand or making a judgment about the findings of this particular report, why is it that all criticism of Israel is — from these groups is almost always rejected by the U.S., and yet accepted, welcomed and endorsed when it comes — when it comes out, when the criticism is of other countries, notably countries with which you have significant policy differences?
NED PRICE: Matt, I would make a couple points. Number one, when we include a footnote in something like —
MATTHEW LEE: These aren't footnotes, Ned. These are —
NED PRICE: When we —
MATTHEW LEE: These are —
NED PRICE: When we —
MATTHEW LEE: These are —
NED PRICE: When we cite —
MATTHEW LEE: — full-on citations, yes.
NED PRICE: When we cite, which it's a game of semantics, I suppose, but whether you call it a citation or a footnote —
MATTHEW LEE: Well, when it says in the report, Amnesty International found this, X —
NED PRICE: Yes.
MATTHEW LEE: — in Xinjiang with the Uyghurs, and we — and we determine that we think that it's a genocide, and you guys come out and cite that, and say, "Well, we also agree that it's a genocide" —
NED PRICE: That is a far cry, Matt, from saying —
MATTHEW LEE: I'm not saying it's the same thing.
NED PRICE: — from saying that we have —
MATTHEW LEE: But —
NED PRICE: — comprehensive agreement with a third-party report that was produced by an outside group.
MATTHEW LEE: So, it's just — so, it's just when — so, it's just when it's criticism of Israel that you feel free to disagree? Where have you ever disagreed with an Amnesty report or a human rights report on a country such as Iran or China?
NED PRICE: This is not — Matt, this is not about any outside group. This is about our vehement disagreement with a certain finding in a report by an outside group.
AMY GOODMAN: That's State Department spokesperson Ned Price being questioned by the AP reporter Matthew Lee.
We're joined now by Paul O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, who's just recently returned from a trip to Israel and the Occupied Territories.
If you could respond to the U.S. rejection of this report, along with the state of Israel, and also the significance of this multiyear project that Amnesty International has just released?
PAUL O'BRIEN: Thanks, Amy. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for your coverage.
You're right: It's taken us four years. The report itself is 280 pages long. And because we are a human rights organization, not a political organization, it focuses on what is the international law now and what is the evidence on the ground. Through hundreds of interviews and looking in depth at laws, policies and practices, is this international legal standard met?
This administration has already said — and these are their precise words — that "Israelis and Palestinians should enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy." In our view, as a human rights organization, the only way that Israelis and Palestinians can enjoy precisely what this administration has said is to dismantle the system of oppression and domination that currently exists now. You can't get there any other way. I think, frankly, that what his administration is responding to is the word and not the legal analysis and not the evidence on the ground.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Paul, explain why Amnesty came to the decision to call it apartheid now.
PAUL O'BRIEN: Well, firstly, why apartheid? People, I think — it is a word that emerges from a particular sociopolitical history, as our video shows. But it also became, in 1965, an international legal standard, enshrined in the Convention of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — which the United States signed, which Israel signed. It was then defined further in two other documents: the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute. It has particular elements.
What we have done is to take a look at that international legal standard, that crime against humanity that is now enshrined in human rights, and compare the evidence that we found on the ground to that, that legal standard. And we found, with respect to every element: Is it a system of oppression and domination? Yes. Are there widespread crimes that are inhumane or inhuman? Yes. Does it lead to one racial group being oppressed and dominated by another? Yes. Is there an intent to maintain that system of domination and oppression? Yes. And so, across all of these areas of rights violations, we found the crime of apartheid to be in place.
Why now? It took us a long time to do the research. We build off the work of so many Palestinian organizations that have been asking for this legal analysis, frankly, for more than a decade. As you said, we build off the work of other human rights organizations. We wanted to get it done as soon as possible, because the fragmentation, the expulsion, the dispossession of land and property, the deprivation of economic and social rights, it's ongoing, and we need it to stop. And it won't stop without a serious conversation in these United States around what this country can do to put pressure on the Israeli government to dismantle this system of apartheid.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Paul, how do you respond to those who say, even if it is the case that there is a system of apartheid in place in Israel vis-à-vis Palestinians, that a similar argument could be made with respect to China's treatment of its Muslim minority, in particular, in Xinjiang? And Amnesty has done a lot of work in China.
PAUL O'BRIEN: We've documented extensively structural deprivations of rights in Xinjiang. And we've done it elsewhere. We've applied the standard of apartheid elsewhere. In 2017, we applied it in Myanmar, because that's what we found was being experienced by the Rohingya people. It's an international legal standard. We haven't applied it everywhere that it could possibly be found. I hope that we will. But based on the calls of Palestinian activists, that have been going on for a decade, on the human rights work of other groups that have already documented it, there is a human rights conversation now going on around whether apartheid exists in Israel, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and we add our human rights voice to that discussion.
AMY GOODMAN: When you put out your report, you took a series of questions. One of them was: Does Amnesty oppose Israel's military occupation of Palestine? Your response, Paul O'Brien?
PAUL O'BRIEN: We don't take a position on political issues, Amy. We don't take a position on the two-state solution, on the one-state solution. We are an organization that maintains our credibility by focusing on human rights standards and the evidence that supports them. Is it the case that the occupation that is ongoing has led to systemic human rights abuses? It is absolutely. I was in Gaza on my last overseas work trip. I witnessed many of the things that you saw. I saw the restriction of movement. I saw the deprivation of economic and social rights and the failure to get even basic services. I've been in Hebron a number of times. I was in Ramallah last week. I see the checkpoints that we have to go through when we visit the West Bank. It is absolutely the case that the occupation is leading to systemic human rights violations. That's where our focus is.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul O'Brien, I want to thank you for being with us, executive director of Amnesty International USA. We'll link to Amnesty's new report, "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity," and to the full video that accompanies it.
When we come back, we go to Moscow to look at the crisis in Ukraine. Stay with us.
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Related:
Israel's apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity
Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. 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.
The comprehensive report, Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out 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.
Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
Our report reveals the true extent of Israel's apartheid regime. 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 clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General
"There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel's apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored."
Amnesty International's findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.
Identifying apartheid
A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights violation which is prohibited in public international law. Amnesty International's extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that Israel enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.
In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute, and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.
Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas Israel controls, although they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in Israel. Israeli authorities enact multiple measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of refugees' right to return. The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, and unlawful killings, in both Israel and the OPT.
Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and domination. They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.
The unlawful killing of Palestinian protesters is perhaps the clearest illustration of how Israeli authorities use proscribed acts to maintain the status quo. In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the border with Israel, calling for the right of return for refugees and an end to the blockade. Before protests even began, senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of 2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.
In light of the systematic unlawful killings of Palestinians documented in its report, Amnesty International is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. This should cover all weapons and munitions as well as law enforcement equipment, given the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces. The Security Council should also impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.
Palestinians treated as a demographic threat
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and then maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, and maximizing control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis. In 1967, Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.
Amnesty International recognizes that Jews, like Palestinians, claim a right to self-determination, and does not challenge Israel's desire to be a home for Jews. Similarly, it does not consider that Israel labelling itself a "Jewish state" in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate.
However, Amnesty International's report shows that successive Israeli governments have considered Palestinians a demographic threat, and imposed measures to control and decrease their presence and access to land in Israel and the OPT. These demographic aims are well illustrated by official plans to "Judaize" areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer.
Oppression without borders
The 1947-49 and 1967 wars, Israel's ongoing military rule of the OPT, and the creation of separate legal and administrative regimes within the territory, have separated Palestinian communities and segregated them from Jewish Israelis. Palestinians have been fragmented geographically and politically, and experience different levels of discrimination depending on their status and where they live.
Palestinian citizens in Israel currently enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their counterparts in the OPT, while the experience of Palestinians in Gaza is very different to that of those living in the West Bank. Nonetheless, Amnesty International's research shows that all Palestinians are subject to the same overarching system. Israel's treatment of Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to minimize the Palestinian presence and access to land.
Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT.
For example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence. Israel's exclusion of refugees is a flagrant violation of international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced displacement.
Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence instead of citizenship – though this status is permanent in name only. Since 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.
Lesser citizens
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized discrimination. In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the "nation state of the Jewish people". The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic's status as an official language.
The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing on 80% of Israel's state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.
The situation in the Negev/Naqab region of southern Israel is a prime example of how Israel's planning and building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians. Since 1948 Israeli authorities have adopted various policies to "Judaize" the Negev/Naqab, including designating large areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for increasing the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.
Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently "unrecognized" by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions. As the villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages, in what amounts to forcible transfer.
Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel have left them consistently economically disadvantaged in comparison to Jewish Israelis. This is exacerbated by blatantly discriminatory allocation of state resources: a recent example is the government's Covid-19 recovery package, of which just 1.7% was given to Palestinian local authorities.
Dispossession
The dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel's apartheid system. Since its establishment the Israeli state has enforced massive and cruel land seizures against Palestinians, and continues to implement myriad laws and policies to force Palestinians into small enclaves. Since 1948, Israel has demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other properties across all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control.
As in the Negev/Naqab, Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the OPT live under full Israeli control. The authorities deny building permits to Palestinians in these areas, forcing them to build illegal structures which are demolished again and again.
In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements exacerbates the situation. The construction of these settlements in the OPT has been a government policy since 1967. Settlements today cover 10% of the land in the West Bank, and some 38% of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.
Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem are frequently targeted by settler organizations which, with the full backing of the Israeli government, work to displace Palestinian families and hand their homes to settlers. One such neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, has been the site of frequent protests since May 2021 as families battle to keep their homes under the threat of a settler lawsuit.
Draconian movement restrictions
Since the mid-1990s Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the OPT. A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their travel into Israel or abroad.
A 700km fence, which Israel is still extending, has isolated Palestinian communities inside "military zones", and they must obtain multiple special permits any time they enter or leave their homes. In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade which has created a humanitarian crisis. It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.
For Palestinians, the difficulty of travelling within and in and out of the OPT is a constant reminder of their powerlessness. Their every move is subject to the Israeli military's approval, and the simplest daily task means navigating a web of violent control
Agnès Callamard
"The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel's brazen discrimination against Palestinians. While Palestinians are locked in a blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they please."
Amnesty International examined each of the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians. The report shows that, while some of Israel's policies may have been designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate.
The way forward
Amnesty International provides numerous specific recommendations for how the Israeli authorities can dismantle the apartheid system and the discrimination, segregation and oppression which sustain it.
The organization is calling for an end to the brutal practice of home demolitions and forced evictions as a first step. Israel must grant equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and the OPT, in line with principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived, and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity with full reparations.
The scale and seriousness of the violations documented in Amnesty International's report call for a drastic change in the international community's approach to the human rights crisis in Israel and the OPT.
All states may exercise universal jurisdiction over persons reasonably suspected of committing the crime of apartheid under international law, and states that are party to the Apartheid Convention have an obligation to do so.
The international response to apartheid must no longer be limited to bland condemnations and equivocating. Unless we tackle the root causes, Palestinians and Israelis will remain locked in the cycle of violence which has destroyed so many lives
Agnès Callamard
"Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike."
Please see the full report for detailed definition of apartheid in international law.
For more information please contact press@amnesty.org
Topics
· NEWS
· ISRAEL AND OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
So, excuse me, but I need a good, long break. I made it to February, at least, who know how much longer? I'm just too busy coming up.
Take care all of you and I'll be checking in from time to time, I think. :)
[i] The fact that Arabs are Semitic is explained too many ways, including language going back to Sanskrit and surprise, Persians, or Iranians can trace their origins through Pharisee back to the indo-European Family of languages.
I do think I need a rest, but I'll be in touch. I'll be here and you can subscribe for free at the Substack and WP sites. Right now, Substack affords me better quality while WP seems to have kept everything I've ever posted. No, I won't even ask for a cent.
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