UN brands Israel ‘apartheid state’
Report says regime systematically dominates Palestinians
ISRAEL has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia said in a new report released this week. The authors of the report stated they were aware of the seriousness of this allegation, but concluded that available evidence established “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law”.
“The analysis in this report rests on the same body of international human rights law and principles that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter of the UN (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965),” the report added.
The report relies for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973).
The term “the crime of apartheid”, which includes similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, applies to all 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.
The term “apartheid” was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, but it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law, as outlined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
This involves inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
“Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia),” it said.
The Israel Lands Authority manages state land, accounting for 93% of land in the internationally recognised borders of Israel, which is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews.