“[The Israeli] system, which operates with varying levels of intensity and repression based on Palestinians’ status in the separate enclaves where Palestinians live today, and violates their rights in different ways, ultimately seeks to establish and maintain Jewish hegemony wherever Israel exercises effective control” - Amnesty International.
CONSENSUS WITH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S FINDINGS?
In a report which came out earlier this year, Amnesty International called Israel’s treatment of Palestinians apartheid. The report, entitled "Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity,” alleges that the Israeli state is conducting “an institutionalised regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis”. The report calls on states to “recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and other international crimes”.
The Palestinian foreign ministry stated that the report was a “detailed affirmation of the cruel reality of entrenched racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and attempted erasure that the Palestinian people have endured”.
The report claims that Amnesty International is not the only organisation to denote Israel’s actions as an apartheid regime; “research conducted by Palestinian human rights organisations, and more recently some Israeli human rights groups, has contributed to broader international recognition of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid”. Human Rights Watch called the regime apartheid and released an article claiming that their research shows that the Israeli government has “demonstrated an intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the [Occupied Palestinian Territory]”. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, dubbed the conflict “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea:… apartheid”.
OBJECTIONS TO THE REPORT
Israel has expressed its anger towards Amnesty International, with various politicians calling for the report to be withdrawn and rejected. The US Ambassador, Michael Herzog, said that the report “contradicts the notion of promoting human rights” whilst the Israel Foreign Ministry tweeted that “[t]he State of Israel absolutely rejects all the false allegations that appear in the report”. Furthermore, Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, condemned Amnesty International as antisemitic, saying “I hate to use the argument that if Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare argue against it, but in this case, there is no other possibility”.
Israel’s ally, the United States, has rejected the report, with U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price stating that “it is important, as the world's only Jewish state, that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn’t a double standard being applied”. The Jewish Federations of North America also expressed their discontentment with the report, citing it as antisemitic and stating that it is “ignoring or whitewashing violence, terror and incitement committed by Palestinians”.
ISRAEL’S POSITION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Apartheid is expressly prohibited in international law under article 3 of the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). If Amnesty International’s allegations are true, Israel could be found to have committed a crime against humanity under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, and be in contravention of the ICERD. Often, for an offending State to improve their protection of human rights, other states need to express their discontentment with the offending state’s actions, pressuring them to improve. If states felt that Israel was violating human rights and were to call out the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, this pressure may force the government to change their approach to the conflict with Palestine.
Although Amnesty International is not alone in making allegations of apartheid against the Israeli government, it is currently unclear whether these claims will be addressed under international law. If international law does not intervene, human rights defenders such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will undoubtedly continue to campaign for the peace and security of the Palestinian people, and to call on nations to hold Israel accountable.
Annie Barber is an undergraduate student at the University of Aberdeen where she is studying Scots Law with English Law. She is particularly interested in human rights and civil liberties, and hopes to work in these fields in the future.