“More than 14 million people, about half Jews and half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under one rule,” said B’Tselem in a new analysis entitled: “A Jewish supremacy regime of from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid. “
The human rights group says the traditional view of Israel as a democracy operating side by side with a temporary Israeli occupation in the territories “imposed on about five million Palestinian subjects … has distanced itself from reality”.
“Most importantly, the distinction overshadows the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under one principle: to advance and cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” B ‘Tselem said in his controversial analysis.
Years of injustice against the Palestinians, culminating in laws that have rooted discrimination, mean that “the barrier to labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met,” said B’Tselem.
The claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” has often been dismissed by right-wing Israelis and their support groups as anti-Semites. But that argument will be more difficult to make now that Israel has been labeled that way by such a respected Israeli institution, although one that enjoys only the support of a minority in its home country.
The Israeli embassy in London considered the report “not based on reality, but on a distorted ideological view”.
“The fact that B’Tselem chose not to submit the report to the Israeli government for comment attests to the fact that this is nothing more than an propaganda tool. Israel rejects the false claims in the so-called report … Israel is a strong and vibrant democracy that gives full rights to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race or sex.The Arab citizens of Israel are represented in all branches of government – in the Israeli parliament, in the courts (including the Supreme Court), in public service and even in the diplomatic corps, where they represent the State of Israel around the world ”.
In the past decade, there have been growing concerns among Israel’s traditional allies, especially in Europe, that the relentless loss of Palestinian territory to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law, was not only undermining a peace process. long term but Israel’s moral position.
These concerns were brought into focus with the approval of the “Basic Law: Israel – the nation-state of the Jewish people” in 2018 – which permanently enshrined Israel as a Jewish state in its constitution – and reinforced by promises from Israeli politicians, notably the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to unilaterally annex large areas of the West Bank.
Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the first of which was signed in 1993, were expected to lead to a “two-state solution” by establishing a Palestinian state independent living next to Israel.
Twenty-eight years later, there are no signs of this result.
B’Tselem argues that Israel has instead consolidated discrimination against non-Jews in the areas under its control.
This includes less rights for Palestinians living in Israel with Israeli citizenship (17% of the population). The most obvious example, says B’Tselem, is the fact that non-Jews cannot emigrate to Israel. Palestinians who marry an Israeli need official Israeli permission to move to Israel.
In the West Bank, Jewish settlements are under continuous construction, while building permits for Palestinians in areas officially under Israeli security control are almost impossible to obtain and “illegal” structures are often demolished.
Freedom of assembly and expression is also severely restricted for Palestinians in the West Bank, argues the human rights group, while it is largely unrestricted for Jews.
B’Tselem Executive Director, Hagai El-Ad: “Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it: it is a regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the whole picture and see for what it is: apartheid. This sober look at reality need not lead to despair, but quite the opposite. It is a call for change. After all, people created this regime and people can change it. ”
Between 1948 and 1994, South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation and “separate development” was designed to confine non-whites to “autonomous Bantustans”, depriving them of their citizenship and placing them under the administration of regimes puppets that resembled discontinuous paint stains on a map.
The Palestinian Authority, established under Oslo, administers the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, but they are largely confined to urban areas separated by Israeli-controlled territory and mainly prevented from traveling on roads reserved predominantly for Jewish and other Israeli settlers.
B’Tselem officials said they want the international community to “take action” on Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.
But they refused to know whether the “action” included calls for international economic and cultural sanctions of the kind that were imposed on apartheid in South Africa before it gained freedom with a series of steps that led to the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 .