[COLUMNIST] Israel is an apartheid regime that deserves to be boycotted

ISRAEL is actually an illegal state that should not have been recognized by the international community.

This is because it was established in 1948 by way of terrorism and war crimes that resulted in the death of thousands of Palestinians and more than 750,000 forced to become refugees.

The historical facts have been documented by several scholars on the history of Palestine, including Israeli historians, the most prominent being Prof Ilan Pappe in his famous book entitled 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'.

Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians continues to this day. It acts with impunity because of the blind support from America, the EU and Britain.

Nevertheless, Israeli tyranny is being challenged now due to the increasing use of the term 'apartheid' to describe the situation that is ongoing in areas under its control.

If the international community can be convinced of this reality, then it will be obligated to boycott Israel, as was the case with the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

WHAT IS APARTHEID?

'Apartheid' is a term in Afrikaan that means` separation'. The term was originally used to describe the system of discrimination against blacks that existed in South Africa until it ended in 1994.

Now the term 'apartheid' refers not just to the former South African regime but has even been adopted in international law to describe a category of regimes, defined in the United Nations International Convention on the Oppression and Criminal Punishment of Apartheid (1973).

The definition of the term ‘apartheid’ has also been further refined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002) which defines the crime of apartheid as: “inhumane acts...committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”

APARTHEID CRIME IN ISRAEL

The fact is that Israel (or historic Palestine) and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip form one territorial unit under full Israeli control, either through colonization or military occupation.

The Palestinian population is about half of the total population in all these areas.

Yet under Israeli law, in practice, Palestinians are treated differently compared to Israeli Jews in almost every aspect of life such as housing, education, health, employment, family life, residence, and freedom of movement. Dozens of Israeli laws and policies institutionalize this system of discrimination and domination.

In the OPT, Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in the same area are governed by separate legal systems.

For example, in the West Bank, Jewish settlers living in settlements which are illegal under international law are governed by Israeli civil law, while Palestinians living in the same territory are governed by Israeli military law.

Within the state of Israel itself, there is no equal ‘Israeli’ citizenship status shared by all citizens. In contrast, Israeli citizenship is divided into several categories.

Those in the Jewish category will get far better rights and privileges compared to those in the Arab category who have limited rights and privileges.

This differentiated treatment is now made explicit when Israel passed the Nation State laws in 2018, which formally codified decades of discrimination and perpetuated two different classes of citizens, namely Arabs and Jews, under Israeli law.

Here is some evidence of the existence of apartheid practices against Palestinians that meet apartheid criteria under the UN Apartheid Convention:

1. Forced eviction of Palestinians from their original settlement areas to make way for illegal settlements which are for Jews only.

2. Prevention of Palestinians (including the millions of refugees living in exile in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza and other places) from returning to their homes and hometowns

3. Systematic and severe violations of the human rights of Palestinians based on their identity as Arabs (i.e. non-Jews).

4. Denial of the right of Palestinians to move freely or live anywhere freely (the most extreme example is the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip since June 2007).

5. Unlawful killing, torture, imprisonment of Palestinians, including children as young as 12, and the restriction of physical liberty.

6. Persecution of the Palestinian people for their opposition to the heinous apartheid crimes committed against them.

The apartheid crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians have been reported by UN officials themselves, as well as by organizations under the UN.

They include Professor Richard Falk, professor of law emeritus at Princeton University and UN special rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Palestine between 2008-2014 and Professor John Dugard, a law professor from South Africa who held the position of UN Special Rapporteur (previously Professor Richard Falk) who conducted a detailed study of the situation in Palestine and released his report in 2013; and Mr Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who made the report in 2019.

All of them concluded that Israel committed crimes of apartheid against Palestinians.

In addition, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also condemned Israel’s apartheid policy in 2012. In March 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) also concluded based on strong evidence that Israel was guilty of committing apartheid crimes.

In 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also concluded that Israel had violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which was ratified in 1979.

Several human rights organizations have also stated that Israel is implementing an apartheid policy against Palestinians. They include:

1. Human Rights Watch (HRW) which released a report on 27 April 2021 entitled: ‘A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution’.

2. Amnesty International which released a report entitled `Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity’ on 1 February 2022

3. B’Tselem, an Israel-based human rights organization that issued a report in January 2021 stating that the Israeli regime implemented an apartheid system in all territories it controlled.

Unfortunately, despite all the above, Israel is still allowed to continue committing these crimes of apartheid.

The main reason is the blind support given to Israel by the major powers of the world, especially the EU, Britain and the United States.

What is very sad is that there are also now several Arab countries that have normalised relations with Israel such as the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Morocco.

Fortunately, there are some countries, which include Malaysia, that still refuse to recognize Israel. In fact, the Prime Minister of Malaysia is the only world leader that used the term ‘apartheid’ at the UN general assembly in describing the Israeli crimes towards the Palestinian people.

THE ROLE OF THE BDS MOVEMENT

Moreover, there is now an active international movement that is trying to explain the situation of apartheid in Palestine to the whole world, namely the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

This movement which started in Palestine in 2005 has grown rapidly in Europe and the United States. It also espouses and campaigns for the cause of justice for Palestinians in peaceful and non-violent ways and therefore it is difficult for Israel to associate BDS with terrorism or terrorist groups.

CONCLUSION

Israel’s continuous crimes of apartheid against the Palestinians is a stain on the moral conscience of the world and need to be stopped.

If the efforts of the international BDS movement succeed in raising awareness of the reality of apartheid crimes by Israel, then the international community cannot avoid the moral obligation to act against Israel the same way it did against apartheid South Africa: boycott, isolate and apply sanctions.

Justice, freedom and equality for Palestinians will no longer seem impossible.

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* Professor Mohd Nazari Ismail is an Honorary Professor of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Malaya.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.