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Concept
Israel and apartheid
Summary
Israel's policies and actions in its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn accusations that it is committing the crime of apartheid. Leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have said that the totality and severity of the human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and by some in Israel proper, amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israel and its western allies have rejected the accusation, with the former often labeling the charge antisemitic.
Comparisons between Israel-Palestine and South African Apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law. In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination announced commencing a review of the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid. Soon after this, two Israeli human rights NGOs, Yesh Din (July 2020), and B'Tselem (January 2021) issued separate reports that concluded, in the latter's words, that "the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met." In April 2021, Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights body to say Israel had crossed the threshold. It accused Israel of apartheid, and called for prosecution of Israeli officials under international law, calling for an International Criminal Court investigation. Amnesty International issued a report with similar findings on 1 February 2022.
The issue is debated by scholars and lawyers, United Nations investigators, the African National Congress (ANC), human rights groups, and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures. Israel and a number of Western governments and scholars have rejected the charges or objected to the use of the word "apartheid". The European Commission considers the term "not appropriate" to use "in connection with the State of Israel".
Official source
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