“More than 14 million people, about half of them Jewish and the other half Palestinian, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single standard,” B’Tselem said in a new analysis titled, “A regime of Jewish supremacy of the Jordan River in the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid. “
The human rights group says the traditional view of Israel as a democracy operating alongside a temporary Israeli occupation of the territories “imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects … has divorced itself from reality.”
“The most important thing is that the distinction hides the fact that the whole area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: to advance and consolidate the supremacy of one group – the Jews – over another – the Palestinians “, B Tselem said in his controversial analysis.
Years of injustice against the Palestinians, culminating in laws that have consolidated discrimination, mean that “the bar has been filled to label the Israeli regime as apartheid,” B’Tselem said.
The claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” has often been rejected by right-wing Israelis and their support groups as anti-Semites. But this argument will be more difficult to make now that Israel has been labeled this way by such a respected Israeli institution, even though it only enjoys minority support in its home country.
The Israeli embassy in London rejected the report as “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 testifies that this is nothing more than a propaganda tool. Israel rejects the false claims in the so-called report … Israel is a strong and vibrant democracy that gives rights to all its citizens regardless of religion, race or gender.Arab citizens of Israel are represented in all branches of government, in the Israeli parliament, in the courts (including the Supreme), in the public service, and even in the diplomatic corps where they represent the State of Israel around the world. ”
Over the past decade, Israel’s traditional allies, especially in Europe, have grown 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 process of long-term peace. but the moral position of Israel.
These concerns were highlighted with the 2018 adoption of the “Basic Law: Israel – the nation-state of the Jewish people” – which permanently enshrined Israel as a Jewish state in its constitution – and was strengthened. with the promises of Israeli politicians. , in particular Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for unilaterally annexing large areas of the West Bank.
Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the first of which was signed in 1993, would allegedly lead to a “two-state solution.” establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Twenty-eight years later there are no signs of this result.
B’Tselem argues that Israel has rather consolidated discrimination against non-Jews in areas under its control.
These include fewer 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 bulldozed.
Freedom of assembly and expression is also severely curtailed for Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the human rights group, while Jews are largely unrestricted.
Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem: “Israel is not a democracy linked to a temporary occupation: it is a regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we need to look at the full picture and see why “This worrying view of reality should not lead to despair, but 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 limit non-whites to “self-governing Bantustans,” stripping them of their citizenship and placing them under the ‘administration of puppet regimes resembling discontinuous ink stains. on a map.
The Palestinian Authority, established under Oslo, administers the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, but is largely limited to urban areas separated by Israeli-controlled territory, and is primarily prohibited from traveling on roads intended primarily for Jewish settlers and other Israelis. .
B’Tselem officials said they wanted the international community to “take action” on Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.
But they refused to say whether the “action” included international economic and cultural sanctions such as those imposed on apartheid South Africa before it gained freedom with a series of steps that led to the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994.