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April 27th, 2021 
Awake Goy Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the global leaders in documenting and combating human rights abuses around the world, released a report on Tuesday accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid.
The 213-page report, entitled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” found that Israel is responsible for committing “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” in the entire territory under its control, from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.
Echoing the findings of leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which released its own report accusing Israel of apartheid earlier this year, the HRW report claims that through discriminatory policies that “methodically privilege” Israeli Jews over Palestinians under the state’s control.
“Human Rights Watch concludes that the Israeli government has demonstrated an intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the oPt” the group said.
While the term apartheid was coined in reference to the system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa up until the 1990’s, the HRW report defines Israeli apartheid along the lines of international law, which defines apartheid as “a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements”:
- An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
- A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.
- Inhumane acts.
The report found that the crime of apartheid is particularly severe in the oPt, where Palestinians live under draconian military rule, while Israeli Jews live in a segregated manner in the same territory, yet enjoy full rights under Israeli civil law.
According to the report, Israel’s crimes of apartheid include the more than decade-long siege on Gaza, the severe restriction of movement of Palestinians in the oPt, the confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank, policies and conditions in the West Bank that has led to forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians, the denial of residency rights for Palestinians and their relatives in the oPt, and the continued denial of basic civl rights to millions of Palestinians.
Across the land that Israel controls, the report highlighted, Israeli authorities “have sought to maximize the land available for Jewish communities and to concentrate most Palestinians in dense population centers.”
Such policies, which explicitly label and treat Palestinians as a “demographic threat”are most evident in places like Jerusalem, where the city’s Israeli municipality has set the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain,” HRW noted.
Such discriminatory policies that specifically target Palestinian communities and restrict their livelihoods, coupled with the reality that the state grants Israeli Jews the freedom to move about and live where they please, all contribute to Israel’s crime of apartheid, HRW said.
“These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another,” HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a statement.
Similar to its response towards the B’Tselem report released in January, Israel wrote off the the report as “propaganda,” with the Israeli Foreign Ministry accusing HRW of “demonizing Israel.”
“Human Rights Watch is known to have a long-standing anti-Israel agenda, actively seeking for years to promote boycotts against Israel,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The foreign ministry went on to claim that HRW did not share their report for review or comment with Israel — a claim that HRW denies.
International community must take action
Tuesday’s report stated that through the passage of bills like the 2018 Nation State Law, which claimed that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” coupled with increased settlement expansion in recent years, has “clarified their [Israel’s] intent to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis.”
As a result, HRW recommenced that individual nations and members of the international community should take a number of steps into holding Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, and the crime of apartheid.
In its recommendations, HRW suggests that its findings of crimes against humanity should prompt the international community to change its approach towards Israel and Palestine, by moving away from the unending “peace process” and negotiations, and move towards a human rights based approach centered on accountability.
“While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” Roth said.
Among the group’s recommendations are the following:
- An International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation and prosecution of those credibly implicated in crimes against humanity and crimes of apartheid.
- The imposition of individual sanctions including travel bans and asset freezes on individuals responsible for committing such crimes.
- Countries should condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on “Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps toward ending their commission of these crimes.”
- Current agreements and cooperations with Israel such as trade should be reevaluated to ensure that such agreements are not directly contributing to committing the crimes of apartheid.
- Countries should establish a UN commission of inquiry to “investigate systematic discrimination and repression in Israel and Palestine.”
- Countries should establish a UN global envoy for the crimes of persecution and apartheid “with a mandate to mobilize international action to end persecution and apartheid worldwide.”
A step in the right direction, though long overdue
In response to the release of the Human Rights Watch report, Palestinian leaders, activists, and rights groups largely hailed it as a positive step in the right direction.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the report, while the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the international community to use the reports findings and take “immediate and effective” action against the “Israeli apartheid regime.”
“The report exposes the nature of Israel’s colonial occupation as an entrenched regime of Jewish supremacy and domination over the Palestinian people, designed to legitimize its settlement enterprise in the occupied territory of the State of Palestine and affecting every facet of Palestinian life,” the ministry said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh called the report “a remarkable addition to earlier international reports and judicial verdicts, which asserts the urgent need for the international community to bear its responsibilities, per international law and human rights principles, by holding Israel accountable for its crimes, namely its colonial- occupation and settlements, apartheid, and persecution, as codified in Israeli laws and policies.”
“The traditional situation, where many countries worldwide announce their position against occupation without actual sanctions and without revising their relations and agreements with Israel on the different diplomatic, cultural, and trade relations, can and should not continue,” Shtayyeh said.
Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel welcomed the HRW report, saying that “the racist nature of the Israeli regime should be a primary concern of the international community.”
Other Palestinian scholars and human rights advocates pointed out that while the HRW was a necessary and welcomed step, the organization, along with other human rights groups, was “finally catching up” with what Palestinians have been saying for years.
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