Israel’s ‘oppression’ of Palestine is ‘apartheid’, Amnesty claims
ISRAEL HAS maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians since its establishment in 1948 in an alleged persecution which meets the international definition of apartheid, Amnesty International has claimed.
The London-based human rights group has joined Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem in accusing Israel of apartheid, both within its borders and in the occupied territories.
Its findings in a 278-page report compiled over four years form part of a growing international movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute.
Those efforts have gained strength in the decade since the peace process ground to a halt, as Israel has consolidated its control over the occupied territories and soured on the idea of a Palestinian state.
A spokesperson for Amnesty International said: “Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximising its control over land to benefit
Jewish Israelis while restricting the rights of Palestinians and preventing Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes.
“Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it has occupied ever since.”
Israel has rejected any allegation of apartheid, saying its own Arab citizens enjoy equal rights.
It granted limited autonomy to the Palestinian Authority at the height of the peace process in the 1990s and withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005.
But Amnesty International and the other groups have maintained the fragmentation of the territories in which Palestinians live is part of an overall regime of control designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
They point to discriminatory policies within Israel and in annexed east Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by the Hamas militant group since 2007.
They also highlighted its de facto annexation of the West Bank, where it exerts overall control and is actively building and expanding Jewish settlements that most of the international community considers illegal.
Palestinians have accused Israel of apartheid for decades. The Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank and co-operates with Israel on security, welcomed the report.
Amnesty International traces such policies back to the establishment of Israel in 1948. About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the Arab-Israeli war surrounding Israel’s creation.
They accounted for 80 per cent of the Palestinian population in what is now Israel. Israel barred the refugees from returning in order to maintain its Jewish majority.
Israel dismissed the previous reports as biased, but has adopted a far more adversarial stance toward Amnesty International, accusing the group of antisemitism and of delegitimising Israel’s existence even before the report was published yesterday.
“Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonise Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism,” the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Spokesperson for Amnesty International.