Israeli government commits apartheid against Palestinians, says Amnesty International

Amnesty International released a report on Tuesday (1st) condemning recent Israeli actions involving Palestinians, in what the organization characterizes as “apartheid resulting from public policies”. In the 280-page document, the institution cites cases in which the Israeli government is oppressing the Arab community by restricting civil and economic rights.

In April, the NGO Human Rights Watch also accused Tel Aviv of committing a kind of apartheid and promoting the persecution of Arabs and Palestinians – which, in international law, would amount to crimes against humanity.

According to Amnesty, Israel imposes “a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians in all areas under its control”, with the aim of “benefiting Israeli Jews”. The report points out four government strategies to achieve this objective: fragmentation into domains of control; expropriation of land and properties; segregation; and deprivation of economic and social rights.

The institution points out that Israel, throughout its history (the state was established in 1948), expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the territory and destroyed hundreds of villages, “in what amounts to an ethnic cleansing”. Palestinians today live mainly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories surrounded by barriers —, not counting the 20% of the Israeli population made up of Arabs.

“This has had the effect of undermining family, social and political ties between Palestinian communities and suppressing dissent against the apartheid system; it also helps to maximize Israeli-Jewish control over the land and maintain a Jewish demographic majority,” Amnesty said. .

According to the organization, this apartheid can also be seen in civil policies, such as the refusal to grant citizenship to Palestinians married to Israelis. Prior to 2003, when the legislation was adopted, Arab-Israeli couples were entitled to freely access cities outside the West Bank once their spouses gained citizenship.

“Israel also imposes severe limitations on the civil and political rights of Palestinians, to suppress dissent and maintain the system of oppression and domination. Millions of Palestinians in the West Bank remain subject to […] to the draconian military orders adopted since 1967,” the document reads.

The report also points out that, for more than 73 years, Tel Aviv has forcibly displaced Palestinian communities. According to the organization, hundreds of thousands of homes have been demolished and more than 6 million Palestinians remain refugees – with 168,000 of them “at imminent risk of losing their homes, many for the second or third time”.

In October, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government published a bid to build new homes in the West Bank and signaled that authorities would discuss authorization for another 3,000 properties. Most Western nations consider settlements in the region illegal.

This Israeli apparatus, according to Amnesty, would be responsible for the economic problems faced by the Palestinians. “Millions of Palestinians within Israel and East Jerusalem live in densely populated areas that are often underdeveloped and lack adequate essential services such as garbage collection, electricity, public transport, and water and sanitation infrastructure,” the document reads. With this, the chances of getting a good job and improving financially fall.

Added to this is the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, now controlled by Hamas — a group considered terrorist by Tel Aviv. According to Amnesty, there is a serious shortage of housing, drinking water, electricity, medical care, food, educational equipment and construction materials in the region. In 2020, Gaza had the highest unemployment rate in the world and more than half of its population lived below the poverty line, the report points out.

The director of the Brazil-Israel Institute, Daniel Douek, agrees with Amnesty’s findings that Palestinians suffer from a lack of rights in regions controlled by the Israeli government in the West Bank. He discards, however, the hypothesis that practices similar to those of an apartheid are taking place throughout the area and defends that the Arab portion that lives in Israeli cities is supported by social rights.

“When Amnesty seeks to equate Palestinians with citizenship with those without citizenship, it ends up giving ammunition to Israelis who disregard discriminatory practices by the State and present only examples of the experience of this first group”, he says. “It’s a complex situation, and the risk is using this report to mix up symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects of a decades-old conflict.”

He adds that in Israel there are several pro-human rights organizations and personalities who condemn the exclusions of public policies for Palestinians. “This debate is set in society. It is important to remember that Israel was created in the name of human rights and concerns of this kind are there, just as they are in any other country.”

For Douek, it is possible to compare the situation of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship with those of blacks in Brazil. “Formally, they are citizens like any other, but informally, there are differences in resources used in cities with an Arab majority in relation to those with a Jewish majority”, she says. “There are international organizations that call attention to the human rights violations of the Jair Bolsonaro government, but there is also a Brazilian civil society mobilized against these practices.”