On Tuesday, international rights and advocacy organisation Human Rights Watch released a report titled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” drawing a whole range of reactions from individuals on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In fact, the report comes at a time when Hamas has been launching rockets into Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been targeting critical Hamas infrastructure in Gaza. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration has continued building settlements in the West Bank as part of his wider plan for the complete annexation of Palestinian territory.
The report asserts that laws, policies, and statements by the Israeli government are designed to restrain already “limited Palestinian self-rule” by “dispossessing, confining, forcibly separating, and subjugating” Palestinians to a degree that HRW describes as “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution”. It further seeks to dispel the notion that Israel is committed to the peace process and that it is an “egalitarian democracy”. The document notes that this point is evidenced by the fact that Palestinians in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) continues to be ruled by the military while Jewish Israelis in OPT are governed by “rights-respecting civil law”.
Jewish Israelis in OPT have superior access to civil rights and land, have greater freedom of movement, can more easily obtain building permits, and have the ability to “confer residency rights to close relatives”. On the other hand, Israeli forces continue to have an overbearing presence over borders, airspace movement of people and goods, security, and registration of identification documents in the region.
To this end, HRW labels the treatment of Palestinians as ‘apartheid’, which is recognised a crime against humanity under the 1973 Apartheid Convention, due to evidence of “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”, and the 1998 Rome Statute due to evidence of “severe deprivation of fundamental rights on racial, ethnic, and other grounds”.
The report asserts that this discrimination is grounded in Israeli law. In 2018, the Knesset passed a law that reaffirms the government’s belief that Israel is the ‘nation-state of the Jewish people” and that the right to self-determination within its territory is “unique to the Jewish people”. It has also only granted voting rights to Palestinians who “live within the borders of Israel as they existed from 1948 to June 1967” and restricted Palestinians from moving from OPT to Israel.
Simultaneously, Palestinians in the OPT have frequently had their land ‘confiscated’, been denied building permits in the West Bank, and forcibly been removed from their homes. As a result, 600,000 Israeli Jews now live in roughly 140 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are considered by many to be illegal establishments.
The report posits that all of this has precipitated in a situation where 6.8 Jewish Israelis are “free to live throughout Israel, East Jerusalem, and most of the West Bank”, while 6.8 Palestinians are “barred” from hundreds of towns in Israel and been crammed into 3% of the land. Furthermore, even within the OPT, Palestinians’ residency is often “conditional and revocable”.
HRW has also previously reported on how Israeli forces have used “excessive force” against Palestinians and failed to hold perpetrators accountable for those who violate codes of conduct.
Unsurprisingly, the latest report by HRW has been rejected by Israel, whose foreign ministry described it as “preposterous and fake” ‘propaganda’ and accused the organisation of harbouring a “long-standing anti-Israeli agenda” and putting out information that has “no connection to facts or reality on the ground.” It added, “Their decision not to share this report for review or comment with any Israeli authority is clear indication that it is a propaganda pamphlet, which lacks all credibility.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, said, “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.”
This week’s report comes against a backdrop of increased international scrutiny of Israel’s actions in OPT. In February, the International Criminal Court ruled that it has jurisdiction to launch a probe into war crimes committed on Palestinian territory.
You can read the full report here.