Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of "apartheid" against Palestinians

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday (April 27) called

Israel's policy towards Arabs on its soil and Palestinians in the occupied territories

"

apartheid

". accusation fiercely contested by the Hebrew state.

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Even before the publication of the NGO's report, the Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted by qualifying it to AFP as a "

propaganda leaflet

" unrelated "

to the facts or the truth on the ground

" and written by a organization driven "

for a long time by an anti-Israel agenda

".

In recent months, Israeli NGOs like B'Tselem had started to use the term "

apartheid

" to refer to Israel's policies towards Israeli Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land after the establishment of the state. Hebrew, and Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. But this is the first time that a large international NGO for the defense of human rights has qualified this policy as “

apartheid

”. "

Based on its research, Human Rights Watch concludes that the Israeli government maintains a deliberate domination of the Israeli Jewish population over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Territories

," the report said.When this "

deliberate domination

", Adds to a"

systematic oppression

"and"

inhuman acts

","

it is about the crime of apartheid

", concludes HRW which says it is based on the legal definition of apartheid and not on a comparison with the former racial politics of South Africa.

"

For years we have been saying that we are close to apartheid (in Israel / Palestine), and I believe it is now clear that the threshold has been crossed,

" Omar Shakir, author of this 200-page report.

This "

threshold

" has been crossed in recent years with the rise of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, the eastern portion of the Holy City annexed by Israel, and in the occupied West Bank, where a total of nearly 700,000 settlers now live, underlines Omar Shakir. , considering that the Israeli settlements which were to be "

temporary

" have become "

permanent

"

constructions

for

lack of agreement on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Investigation opened by the International Criminal Court

HRW's decision to use a term as loaded as "

partheid

", but also to label

Israeli policies towards its Arab minority and the Palestinians

as "

persecution

", comes weeks after the ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC ) to initiate an investigation into alleged crimes committed by Israel since 2014 in the Occupied Territories. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called

the ICC decision “

anti-Semitic

”. Claiming to take "

all precautions to minimize civilian casualties

" in its fight against armed Palestinian groups, Israel is also leading a diplomatic campaign to convince Western countries to support it against the ICC.

The decision of the ICC to go ahead or not with this investigation, which includes a component on the expansion of the settlements, is now in the hands of the future prosecutor Karim Khan who is to succeed Fatou Bensouda in mid-June. .

HRW called on the future prosecutor to "

stick to the facts

", "

conduct an independent investigation

" and "

bring to justice those implicated in serious crimes, including those of apartheid and persecution,

" Omar Shakir said, currently in Jordan, where he spoke to AFP by videoconference, after being expelled from Israel in November 2019.

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The NGO, headquartered in New York, also urges the UN to set up an "

international commission of inquiry

" on the situation in Israel and the Territories, and foreign states "

not to be complicit.

Of the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, without however calling them to boycott the Jewish state, underlines Omar Shakir.

In this regard, HRW also calls on the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas to "

cease its security coordination

" with the Hebrew state, in order not to be itself "

complicit

" to "

apartheid

". President Abbas suspended his security cooperation with Israel for months last year, leading to a freeze on transfers of customs taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which was left private. funds to pay the salaries of its officials.