Johannesburg – Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, says the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ECSWA) in a new report released on Wednesday.
The authors of the report stated that 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 United Nations (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, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention): The term "the crime of apartheid", which includes similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as was practiced in South 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.
Although the term “apartheid” was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law, as outlined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). 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 or groups 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),” the report stated.
The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 percent of the land within the internationally recognised borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews.
Most well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country, the report explained.
The World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and the Jewish Agency are vested with legal authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish statehood.
Israeli law normally allows spouses of Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied territory or beyond.
“Furthermore, Israel rejects the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to territory under Israeli control.”
Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial domination must be present to qualify the regime as an instance of apartheid.
First this involves the identification of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific “racial group”.
The report argues that in the geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can be considered “racial groups”.
The second attribute is the boundary and character of the group or groups involved.
“This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime."