Amnesty report: Israel’s policies towards Palestinians are apartheid (photos)

A new report on the situation In the Middle East’s worst conflict, the state is said to be “maintaining an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population, to the benefit of Israeli Jews.”

The apartheid system is considered a crime against humanity by the international community.

Israel says it “absolutely rejects all false claims” of the report, writes the British network BBC.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman accused Amnesty International of recycling “lies and inaccuracies spread by anti-Israel organizations.” in a statement.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry welcomed the reportsaying it was “a detailed confirmation of the cruel reality, the deep racism, the exclusion, the oppression and the attempted extermination that the people of Palestine have endured.”

‘Apartheid’ is the policy of racial segregation and discrimination exercised by the white minority in South Africa against the African majority, from 1948 to 1991.

Three major international conventions prohibit apartheid, including the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

The convention defines apartheid as “Inhumane acts committed with the aim of dominating one racial group of people over another racial group of people and systematically suppressing them.”

Only 20% of Israel’s population of 9.45 million are Arabs, most of whom define themselves as Palestinians.

2.9 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the latter occupied by Israel after the 1967 war.

1.9 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 but the UN still considers it occupied.

Most Palestinians in the West Bank are governed by the Palestinian Authority, while those in Gaza are ruled by the Palestinian militant movement Hamas.

More than 600,000 Jews now live in the newly built colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the international community considers illegal.

Israel denies the allegations.

Officially, Israeli citizens have equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity, but the Amnesty International report states that Israel “considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior, non-Jewish racial group.”

“This segregation is carried out in a systematic and highly institutionalized way through laws, practices and policies which all aim to prohibit the rights of Palestinians in the territory of Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories, ie aim at suppressing and “The domination of the Palestinian people,” the report said.

“This is being done through the crimes of denying Palestinian refugees the right to reside or returning to their homes.”

The number of Palestinians displaced by the war to create Israel in 1948-49 amounts to 5.3 million, according to the UN.

The report adds that the “territorial fragmentation” of the Palestinian population “serves as the main element of the regime’s oppression and domination.”

Other aspects of the policy include denial of nationality and residence, severe restrictions on freedom of movement, discriminatory seizures and denial of access to natural resources.

Amnesty Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said: “There is no other possible justification for a system based on the racist, prolonged and institutionalized oppression of millions.”

“The international community must face the reality of Israeli apartheid, following the paths of international justice, which shamelessly remain unexplored,” she added. / BBC /

‘Apartheid’ is the policy of racial segregation and discrimination exercised by the white minority in South Africa against the African majority, from 1948 to 1991.