New York: A United Nations-appointed investigator accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is the first time an organization official has used the term to describe what other international watchdogs have said is a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute.
Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur and independent expert appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, is responsible for investigating human rights violations in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Lynk said before publishing a full report on her latest report: Investigations.
He argued that Israel’s two-tiered justice system in the West Bank reinforced the oppression of Palestinians that could no longer be considered an unintended consequence of the temporary occupation.
“Differences in living conditions, as well as in the rights and benefits of citizenship, are flagrant and deeply discriminatory and are maintained systematic repression and institutionalization,” says Mr. Link in his report.
It describes the situation in which the Israeli Jewish community and Palestinians live in the occupied territories.Under one system, rights and benefits are distributed according to national and ethnic identity, in addition to ensuring the supremacy of one group over the other and at the expense of the latter.
This system “grants one racial, national, and ethnic group significant rights, advantages, and privileges, while compelling another to live behind walls and checkpoints and under permanent military rule. This meets the criteria for the existence of apartheid.”
Other international watchdogs have previously accused Israel of implementing apartheid-like policies of “dominance and oppression” in the occupied territories.
Amnesty International is the latest human rights advocate to accuse Israel of imposing apartheid by enacting laws and practices that seek to maintain “a harsh regime of control that divides Palestinians geographically and politically, often impoverishing them and making them captives of fear and insecurity.”
Although the situation in the occupied territories has been referred to by Palestinian and Israeli human rights bodies as “apartheid” for many years, the term is becoming increasingly prominent in international discourse on the Israeli conflict. Palestinian in recent months. At a recent UN Security Council meeting, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour wore a black mask that read: “End apartheid.”
“This council may not be ready to use the word, but apartheid has been – for some time now – our reality,” he told council members.
The Israeli authorities have repeatedly accused the United Nations of issuing biased reports. They said it was unfair to blame Israel without considering the security challenges the country faces and the daily threats Palestinian armed groups pose to its citizens.
This text is a translation of an article published on Arabnews.com
