Israel is not a democracy, but an ‘apartheid regime’ that enforces Jewish sovereignty over all the countries it controls, a leading domestic rights group claimed in a statement that would provoke fierce controversy.
“One organizational principle underlies a wide range of Israeli policies: promoting and maintaining the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’Tselem, an organization that documents human rights violations. said.
Ohad Zemet, the spokesman for Israel’s British embassy, dismissed the report as a ‘propaganda tool’. He adds: “Israel rejects the false allegations in the so-called report, as it is not based on reality, but on a distorted ideological view.”
B’Tselem said he rejected the dominant assumption that Israel operates two separate systems of government simultaneously, a democracy within its sovereign territory, while maintaining a half-century military grip on Palestinians in the occupied territories.
“Israel is not a democracy with a temporary occupation,” said Hagai El-Ad, the body’s executive director. “This is one regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and we need to look at the whole picture and see what it is: apartheid.”
These areas include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during a 1967 war, and the Gaza Strip, which he took out of Egypt in the same conflict and where his army remained until 2005.
The shift in perception towards apartheid demands is part of a movement led by activists who have gained momentum following Israeli annexation threats that they say prove the occupation is permanent, as well as recent laws that entrench extra political rights for Jews over Arabs.
Another Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, last summer published a legal opinion claiming that apartheid was being committed in the West Bank.
However, B’Tselem’s report goes further and claims that Israel created a system over the entire territory in which Jewish citizens have full rights. Meanwhile, it claims that Palestinians are divided into four levels with different levels of rights, depending on where they live, but always among Jewish people.
According to the report, the approximately two million Palestinians are in the deeply impoverished Gaza Strip, which is ruled by the militant group, Hamas, but which is blocking Israel in a policy that, according to B’Tselem, gives it ‘effective control’.
B’Tselem said above them, the approximately 2.7 million Palestinian ‘subjects’ in the West Bank, living in ‘dozens of decoupled enclaves, are under rigid military rule and without political rights’.
According to agreements signed in the 1990s, Palestinians on the West Bank have limited self-government, although B’Tselem said the Palestinian Authority “is still subordinate to Israel and can exercise its limited powers only with Israel’s permission”.
Next on his hierarchy are the approximately 350,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. Israel offered civilians to these residents, although many refused in principle and for those who tried, the process has a high rejection rate.
At the highest level of B’Tselem are Palestinian citizens of Israel, also called Arab-Israelites, who have full citizenship and make up about one-fifth of the Israelites. Nevertheless, B’Tselem said that they are also held among Jewish citizens, which points to land discrimination, immigration laws that benefit Jews, and a law that gives Jews extra political rights.
In response, Israeli diplomat Zemet said all Israeli citizens had full rights, with Arabs’ representatives in all branches of government – in the Israeli parliament, in the courts (including the Supreme Court), in the civil service and even in the diplomatic corps. where they represent the State of Israel around the world ”.
In 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia became the first UN body to accuse Israel of apartheid, a crime under international law, a move taken by Israel’s former foreign affairs spokesman. compare with Nazi propaganda.
Last year, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he intended to annex parts of the West Bank, 47 UN experts warned that it would ‘crystallize an already unjust reality: two peoples living in living in the same space, ruled by the same state, but with deeply unequal rights ”.
They added: “This is a vision of a 21st century apartheid.”
Netanyahu has suspended his annexation ambitions. However, several Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, including B’Tselem, claim that Israel is already enforcing a ‘de facto’ annexation of the West Bank, with more than 400,000 Jewish settlers living there and enjoying the same rights, and many of the same services , like other Israelites.