Amnesty International has said that Israel is subjecting Palestinians to an apartheid system based on “segregation, dispossession, and exclusion” practices that amounted to crimes against humanity.
According to the London-based rights group, its findings are based on research and legal analysis included in a 211-page study on Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and property, illegal executions, forceful relocation of persons, and denial of citizenship.
Restriction on Palestinian mobility in land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the prohibition on the return of Palestinian refugees were among the policies enacted.
Apart from forcible transfers, torture, and illegal executions, which Amnesty says were used to sustain a system of “oppression and rule,” they constitute “apartheid’s crime against humanity.”
Israel accuses Amnesty of adopting double standards
According to Israel, the report, the second by an international rights group in less than a year accusing it of following an apartheid policy, “consolidates and recycles falsehoods” from hate groups and is intended to “throw fuel on the fire of antisemitism.”
According to Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, “Israel is not flawless, but it is a democracy devoted to international law and open to inspection with a free press and a powerful Supreme Court.”
“I hate to use the argument that if Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare to talk against it,” he continued, “but there is no other option in this circumstance.”
