AMMAN — Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constitutes two
crimes against humanity, apartheid and persecution, according to a new report
by leading human rights organization
Human Rights Watch (HRW).
اضافة اعلان
The report considered Israeli actions both in the occupied
territories as well as those against
Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The 23-page report “A Threshold Crossed”, released on
Tuesday, draws on years of fieldwork and review of Israeli laws, government
planning documents, statements by officials, and land records. The watchdog, an
international organization based in
New York, compared this body of evidence to
the international legal standards for apartheid and persecution under the Rome
Statute.
The report also follows a recent report from Israeli NGO
B’Tselem, which likewise concluded that the Israeli regime meets the threshold
for apartheid under the legal definition. HRW found that three elements
together constitute Israeli apartheid: the intent to “maintain the domination
of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the OPT,”, systematic
oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem, and
“inhumane acts” committed against Palestinians.
Policy experts in Jordan say that the report represents a
turning point in the international community’s approach towards Israel and
Palestine.
“I think this is maybe a game changer when it comes to the
way the international community, human rights organizations, international
civil society, will deal now with this occupation,” said Orayeb Rantawi,
founder and director general of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political
Studies, in an interview with Jordan News. “It’s Human Rights Watch. No
one can challenge the credibility of Human Rights Watch.” He said that “now is
the time really to put Israel in front of the mirror and see itself, as not a
country sharing the same values with the West, but as a country that imposes
apartheid (and) occupation.”
Rantawi added that the report vindicates Jordanians and
Palestinians who have long called the systematic discrimination policies in
Israel apartheid. “We are victims of these policies. More than half of the
Jordanian population are Palestinian. We are aware about these findings and we
are a victim of this apartheid system and occupation.”
He pointed out that the report constitutes a “very strong
tool to argue against all the Israeli lies.” The report itself describes
Israel’s misrepresentation of its policies, disputing Israeli claims that
measures in the occupied territories are temporary pending a peace agreement by
writing that “the government’s actions and policies over more than a
half-century make clear the intent to maintain their control over the West Bank
in perpetuity.”
“The Palestinians keep talking, the Jordanians keep talking
about it, without being listened to by the international community. Now our
voices are amplified with this report,” he said.
The analyst added that he hoped the report “will pave the
way for most, if not all, the international human rights organizations to
report about what’s going on in Palestine and to break the taboo imposed by the
Israelis and to a certain extent the Americans that governs these issues.”
Mohammad Momany, former minister of information and chairman
of the National Guidance Committee at the Senate, said that he believes reports
about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians will damage Israel’s international
image. “Israel flourished out of giving the image that it’s a democracy,” he
said. “A democracy cannot and should not act in a way that will undermine the
human rights of the Palestinians and that will establish an ugly apartheid
system.”
He added that a two-state solution “is not only of the best
interest of the Palestinians and Jordan, but also of the best interest of
Israel. Because the alternative is apartheid.” He pointed out that Jordan has
long supported a two-state solution, adding that “what is said by Human Rights
Watch is totally consistent with the logic the Jordanian state has been arguing
with the international community and with Israel.”
Momany pointed out that the report is especially valuable
because under Israel’s current right-wing government, institutional change will
only come from outside pressure — not inside.
“We are starting to witness a situation where the
international community is starting to call things as they should be,” said
Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister and Jordan’s first ambassador to
Israel. “I think the international community ignored calling it apartheid for
the longest time, in the hope that a solution would emerge, and the question
would become moot. Of course, thirty years after Oslo, a two state solution has
not emerged. I think it becomes more difficult to ignore the fact that Israel
is systematically discriminating against Palestinians.” He added that by
persecuting Palestinian citizens of Israel, as determined by the report, Israel
“is not practicing apartheid against the occupied only, it’s practicing
apartheid against its own citizens.”
Muasher attributed the timing of the report to three main
factors: the failure of the Oslo framework to produce a viable solution, the
rise of a right-wing government that is explicitly “not interested in
withdrawing from the occupied territories and working towards establishment of
a Palestinian state,”, and the 2018 passage of the controversial “Jewish
nation-state law”, which “obviously places Israeli Jews as a separate category
from Arab Israelis.”
Muasher also linked the report and growing change in
sentiment towards Israel to a global interest in human rights, sparked by
abuses that drew international attention, like the murder of George Floyd by an
American police officer. “The issue of rights today is a central issue in the
United States. After George Floyd, it is no longer possible to exceptionalize
Israel,” he said. If the United States and other global leaders begin to hold
themselves accountable for rights violations, they must also hold their allies
accountable, he suggested.
“We are saying that this issue needs to be reframed from one
that focuses on the shape of the solution to one that focuses on rights.
Whatever the shape of the solution, we don’t know what shape it will take, it
has to be based on equal human rights.”
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