‘This is apartheid,’ Israeli human-rights group condemns government – Morning Star Online

ISRAEL is an apartheid state,increasing its oppression of Palestinians in a system entrenched via military occupation and racist laws,Israeli human-rights group BTselemsaid today.

It published a new paper warning: A regime of Jewish supremacy exists from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. This is apartheid.

The reportdismisses notions that Israel is a democracy representing some sixmillion people while simultaneously holding a further five millionPalestinians under temporary military occupation.

BTselem insiststhere are not two parallel systemsbut a single one governing all the people that live under it.

It reports thatthe situation for Palestinians has worsened with the implementation in 2018 of Israels Nation State Basic Law,legislation that received global condemnation after affirming that national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people.

The law permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture, BTselem says, and has legalised the second-class status of Palestinians.

The report explainsthat Israeli illegal settlement structures have expanded to construct a Jewish-only statewithout building a single community for Palestinians,instead destroying their homes.

Since the 1948 establishment of the state ofIsrael, Tel Avivhas taken over 90 per cent of the land encompassed bythe so-called Green Line, the pre-1967border between Israel and the occupied territories.And since 1967, Israel has expanded into the occupied West Bank, building more than 280 illegal settlements for more than 600,000 Jewish Israeli citizens in breach of international law and UN resolutions.

BTselemconcludes: The bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.

BTselem spokesman Hagai el-Ad said: Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it: it is one regime between the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.

This sobering 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.

View post:

'This is apartheid,' Israeli human-rights group condemns government - Morning Star Online