Israeli apartheid

A Palestinian child sitting on a roadblock at Al-Shuhada Street within the Old City of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians have nicknamed the street "Apartheid Street" because it is closed to Palestinian traffic and open only to Israeli settlers and tourists.[1]
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Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel proper. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.

Since the 1948 Palestine war, Israel has been denying Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from what became its territory the right of return and right to their lost properties. And since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has been occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is now the longest military occupation in modern history, and in contravention of international law has been constructing large settlements there that separate Palestinian communities from one another and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements are mostly encircled by the Israeli West Bank barrier, which intentionally separates the Israeli and Palestinian populations, a policy called Hafrada. While the Jewish settlers are subject to Israeli civil law, the Palestinian population is subject to military law. Settlers also have access to separate roads and exploit the region's natural resources at its Palestinian inhabitants' expense.[2][3]

Comparisons between Israel–Palestine and South African apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.[4][5] Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in the 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law.[6] In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination[7] announced it was reviewing the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid.[8] Since then, several Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations have characterized the situation as apartheid, including Yesh Din, B'Tselem,[9][10][11] Human Rights Watch,[11][12] and Amnesty International. This view has been supported by United Nations investigators,[13] the African National Congress (ANC),[14] several human rights groups,[15][16] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.[17][18][19] The International Court of Justice in its 2024 advisory opinion found that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories constitutes systemic discrimination and is in breach of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid.[20][21] The ruling did not specify whether it was referring to racial segregation, apartheid, or both.[22][23][24]

Elements of Israeli apartheid include the Law of Return, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, the 2018 Nation-State Law, and many laws regarding security, freedom of movement, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset (legislature), education, and culture. Israel says its policies are driven by security considerations,[25][26][27][28] and that the accusation of apartheid is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel.[29][27][30][31] It also often calls the charge antisemitic, which critics have called weaponization of antisemitism.[32][33][34][35][36]

  1. ^ "Hebron road renamed "Apartheid Street"". Ma'an News Agency. Hebron. Reuters. 2 November 2011. Archived from the original on 2 November 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2023.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference :5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Peteet, Julie (2016). "The work of comparison: Israel/Palestine and apartheid". Anthropological Quarterly. 89 (1): 247–281. doi:10.1353/anq.2016.0015. ISSN 0003-5491. JSTOR 43955521. S2CID 147128703.
  5. ^ Peteet, Julie (2017). Space and Mobility in Palestine. Indiana University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-253-02511-1. Archived from the original on 20 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  6. ^ Baconi, Tareq (5 November 2021). "What Apartheid Means for Israel". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  7. ^ Schuller, Kiera (13 December 2019). "UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination publishes findings on Cambodia, Colombia, Ireland, Israel and Uzbekistan" (Press release). Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Archived from the original on 19 December 2019.
  8. ^ Times of Israel staff (24 December 2019). "Report: UN anti-racism panel to probe claims of Israeli apartheid in West Bank". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  9. ^ "A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid". B'Tselem. 12 January 2021. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2021. A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.
  10. ^ Sfard, Michael (9 July 2020), "The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion" (PDF), Yesh Din, archived (PDF) from the original on 11 January 2024
  11. ^ a b Sfard, Michael (3 June 2021). "Why Israeli progressives have started to talk about 'apartheid'". The Guardian (Opinion). Archived from the original on 4 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  12. ^ Holmes, Oliver (27 April 2021). "Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights group says". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 February 2022. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  13. ^ White, Ben (18 March 2017). "UN report: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime'". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 24 March 2017.
  14. ^ Ahren, Raphael (15 May 2018). "South African leaders tell country's Jews to reject 'Nazi-like' Israel". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2020. Tuesday's lengthy ANC statement accused Israel of 'crude viciousness,' comparing it to South Africa's past apartheid regime.
  15. ^ Davis, Uri (2003). Apartheid Israel: possibilities for the struggle within. Zed Books. pp. 86–87. ISBN 1-84277-339-9.
  16. ^ Shimoni, Gideon (1980). Jews and Zionism: The South African Experience 1910–1967. Cape Town: Oxford UP. pp. 310–336. ISBN 0-19-570179-8.
  17. ^ Nichols, John (20 July 2023). "Why do Americans get attacked for saying what Israelis say about Israel?". The Nation. Archived from the original on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  18. ^ Hasan, Mehdi (22 March 2017). "Top Israelis have warned of apartheid, so why the outrage at a UN report?". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 2 September 2019. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  19. ^ Quigley, John B. (1990). Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice. Duke University Press. pp. 145–150. ISBN 978-0-8223-1011-2. Archived from the original on 20 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  20. ^ "Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legal Consequences of Israel's Policies and Practices in the "Occupied Palestinian Territory"". January 2024.
  21. ^ Jeßberger, Florian; Mehta, Kalika (19 September 2024). "The Inadvertent Protagonist". Verfassungsblog. doi:10.59704/27788635acf1f7b5 – via verfassungsblog.de.
  22. ^ "The Limits of the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Israel's Occupation and the West Bank".
  23. ^ "ICJ Delivers Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Territories". 20 July 2024. The Court then moves to examining whether there is also a violation of Article 3 of CERD, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. This, of course, is a totemic issue in terms of the competing narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And here the Court, seeking internal consensus, opted for a more ambiguous approach …. but the bottom line of the Court's approach seems clear – at best Israel's actions amount 'only' to racial segregation, but they could also be apartheid. And the reason for this ambiguity is again the need to maintain consensus within the Court
  24. ^ Keane, David (31 July 2024). "'Racial Segregation and Apartheid' in the ICJ Palestine Advisory Opinion". this is not the right reading. Article 3 refers to racial segregation and apartheid, and a breach of Article 3 could refer to racial segregation, apartheid, or both. This is seen in the Separate Opinions, some of which considered the finding of a breach of Article 3 as a finding of apartheid; others believing the Court had not made such a finding.
  25. ^ Peteet (2016, p. 249) also argues that there is an Israeli narrative of exceptionalism which works to 'exempt' it from such comparisons.
  26. ^ Adam & Moodley 2005, pp. 19ff., 59ff..
  27. ^ a b Sabel, Robbie (2009), The campaign to delegitimize Israel with the false charge of apartheid (PDF), Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, ISBN 978-965-218-073-5, archived (PDF) from the original on 24 February 2023
  28. ^ Zilbershats, Yaffa (1 August 2013). "Apartheid, international law, and the occupied Palestinian territory: A reply to John Dugard and John Reynolds". European Journal of International Law. 24 (3): 915–928. doi:10.1093/ejil/cht043. ISSN 0938-5428.
  29. ^ Dershowitz, Alan (29 September 2008). The case against Israel's enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and others who stand in the way of peace. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 20–25, 28–29, 36, 44–48. ISBN 978-0-470-37992-9. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  30. ^ Matas, David (2005). Aftershock: Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semitism (in Italian). Toronto: Dundurn Press. pp. 53–55. ISBN 978-1-55002-894-2. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
  31. ^ Klein, Zvika (28 February 2022). "France's Macron comes out against claims of Israeli apartheid". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 11 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  32. ^ Geddie, Eve (20 March 2024). "EU needs to acknowledge the reality of Israeli apartheid". Amnesty International. 12 Israeli human rights organizations have since expressed "grave concern" about attempts to associate Amnesty's report with antisemitism, and they have rejected the Commission's failure to recognize Israel's apartheid. These organizations argue that weaponizing antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism actually undermines attempts to address rising antisemitism. Republished from Geddie, Eve (13 March 2023). "EU needs to understand the realities in the West Bank". Politico. Retrieved 19 April 2024. Eve Geddie was writing as the director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
  33. ^ Roth, Kenneth [@KenRoth] (29 February 2024). "This weaponizing of the charge of "antisemitism" to try to stop such perfectly legitimate and accurate criticism of Israel's apartheid in the Palestinian occupied territory is cheapening, and hence harming, the important fight against antisemitism" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  34. ^ Jeff Handmaker (18 February 2022). "Opinion – The Silencing of Amnesty International's Report on Israeli Apartheid". E-International Relations. Amnesty's report is important and for many advocates it is affirming of what they have been stating all along is a racist regime of systemic discrimination. However, for many longstanding critics of Israel, accusations of Israeli apartheid are not new, nor is the predictable backlash against them whereby antisemitism has been weaponized by Israel and its supporters. This backlash is now been directed against Amnesty International
  35. ^ "How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel's Critics". The Nation. 27 December 2023. As Human Rights Watch noted, the first example opens the door to reflexively labeling as antisemitic human rights organizations and lawyers who argue that current Israeli government policies constitute apartheid against Palestinians
  36. ^ "I Regret to Report There's a New Antisemitism Controversy at Harvard". Slate. 26 January 2024. There have been a few lines of attack on Penslar, and there are thus a few issues at hand. First, there is the notion that he called Israel a regime of apartheid. & What makes the series of events at Harvard so disheartening is not that the attack on Penslar is unique but that it transparently gives the game away: There is no set of credentials that can prevent a person who is earnestly trying to do work in this space from getting sucked into the politicization and, yes, weaponization of antisemitism. This is the way that current public debates over antisemitism tend to go, in Congress and on debate stages, on social media and between friends, within families and within organizations. But when fact and understanding and nuance of the issue are all considered secondary, what gets sacrificed isn't just an individual's career or standing or time, but comprehension of the actual issue that is antisemitism.