TEL AVIV: Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that Israel is committing the crime of “apartheid” by seeking to maintain Jewish “domination” over Palestinians and its own Arab population, an explosive allegation Israel firmly rejected.
Currently under investigation by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, Israel blasted HRW’s accusations as “preposterous and false”, accusing the New York-based group of having “a long-standing anti-Israeli agenda”.
Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed the “remarkable” HRW report and said he hoped it might lead the international community to “bear its responsibilities” and hold Israel “accountable for its crimes.”
The 213-page report finds that the Israeli government is the “single authority” with primary control “over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea”.
That area includes the occupied West Bank, the blockaded Gaza Strip, annexed east Jerusalem as well as all the territory within Israel’s 1948 borders.
Within that territory, there is “an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians,” HRW said.
The rights group pointed to Israeli policies targeting Palestinians that include movement restrictions, land confiscation, forcible population transfer, denial of residency rights and suspension of civil rights.
Human Rights Watch said that while apartheid was initially coined with respect to institutional persecution of black people in South Africa, it is now a universally recognised legal term.
Israel’s foreign ministry told this agency the HRW report amounted to a “propaganda pamphlet” from an organisation that has been “actively seeking for years to promote boycotts against Israel”. — AFP
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