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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lOA1zqag24

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Julia Boutros - Righteousness Is My Weapon (English Subtitles)

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https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20210112_this_is_apartheid

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https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/israel/palestine

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Across two governments, each in power for roughly half of 2021, Israeli authorities doubled down on policies to repress Palestinians and privilege Jewish Israelis. The government's policy of maintaining the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), coupled with the particularly severe repression against Palestinians living in the OPT, amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

In May, amid discriminatory efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, 11 days of hostilities broke out between the Israeli government and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. The Israeli military said it struck about 1,500 targets in Gaza with ground- and air-launched munitions, which, according to UN figures, killed at least 120 Palestinian civilians. Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, launched more than 4,000 rockets and mortars towards Israel, resulting in the deaths of 12 civilians in Israel and at least 7 Palestinians in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch documented serious violations of the laws of war and apparent war crimes during the hostilities, including Israeli strikes that killed scores of civilians and destroyed four high-rise Gaza towers full of homes and businesses, with no evident military targets in the vicinity, as well as indiscriminate rocket attacks fired by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli cities.

These attacks took place amid Israel's sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza. With rare exceptions, Israel's closure policy, which is not based on an individualized assessment of security risk and is exacerbated by Egyptian restrictions on its border with Gaza, rob the more than two million Palestinians of Gaza of their right to freedom of movement, severely limit their access to electricity, health care, and water, and have devastated the economy. More than 80 percent of Gaza's population depend on humanitarian aid.

In June, a broad range of political parties formed a new Israeli coalition government, with Naftali Bennett as prime minister. This government continued to facilitate the transfer of Israeli citizens into settlements in the occupied West Bank, a war crime. In October, it advanced plans and issued tenders for more than 4,000 new settlement units.

During the first eight months of 2021, Israeli authorities demolished 666 Palestinian homes and other structures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 958 people, a 38 percent increase compared to the same period in 2020, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Most buildings were demolished for lacking building permits, which authorities make nearly impossible for Palestinians in these areas to obtain. In July, Israeli authorities razed for the sixth time in less than a year the homes of most residents of the Palestinian community of Khirbet Humsah in the Jordan Valley for being in a designated "firing zone," displacing 70 people, 35 of them children.

Israeli authorities in late 2021 designated six prominent Palestinian civil society organizations as "terrorist" and "illegal" organizations, moves that permit closing their offices, seizing their assets, and jailing their staff and supporters.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) manages affairs in parts of the West Bank, where it systematically arrests arbitrarily and tortures dissidents. In April, the PA postponed planned parliamentary and presidential elections, which would have been the first in 15 years. In June, PA critic Nizar al-Banat died in custody shortly after PA forces arrested and beat him outside a relative's home. The PA violently dispersed popular protests and rounded up scores of Palestinians demanding justice for al-Banat's death.

Gaza Strip

During the May hostilities, 260 Palestinians were killed, including 66 children, and 2,200 were wounded, "some of whom may suffer a long-term disability requiring rehabilitation," according to OCHA. Authorities in Gaza said that 2,400 housing units were made uninhabitable and over 50,000 units were damaged. 8,250 people remained internally displaced as of October 14, OCHA said. The fighting also damaged 331 educational facilities, 10 hospitals, and 23 primary health clinics. The World Bank estimated $380 million in total physical damage and $190 million in economic losses.

Israeli Closure

For a 14th consecutive year, Israeli authorities blocked most of Gaza's population from traveling through the Erez Crossing, the sole passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel through which Palestinians can travel to the West Bank and abroad. A generalized travel ban applies to all, except those whom Israeli authorities deem as presenting "exceptional humanitarian circumstances," mostly persons needing vital medical treatment and their companions, as well as prominent business people. Even the few seeking to travel under these narrow exemptions, including those seeking urgent medical care outside Gaza, often face denials or failures to respond to in a timely manner to their requests.

Israeli authorities tightened the closure amid the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first nine months of 2021, an average of 86 Palestinians in Gaza exited via Erez each day, just 17 percent of the daily average of 500 in 2019 and less than 1 percent the daily average of more than 24,000 before the beginning of the Second Intifada or Palestinian uprising in September 2000, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha.

Gaza's exports during this period, mostly produce destined for the West Bank and Israel, averaged 300 truckloads per month, compared to the monthly average of 1,064 truckloads prior to the June 2007 tightening of the closure, according to Gisha. During the May hostilities and up until August, Israeli authorities banned the entry of construction materials and other vital materials and limited access to Gaza's territorial waters for Palestinian fishermen, measures targeting Gaza's general civilian population that amount to unlawful collective punishment. Authorities continue to severely restrict the entry of construction materials and other items they deem "dual-use" materials that could also be used for military purposes. The list of such items also includes X-ray and communications equipment and spare parts.

The closure limits access to basic services. During the first nine months of 2021, families in Gaza on average had to make do without centrally provided electricity for more than 11 hours a day, according to OCHA. Chronic prolonged power outages encumber many aspects of everyday life, from heating and cooling and sewage treatment to health care and business, in particular for people with disabilities who rely on light to communicate using sign language or equipment powered by electricity, such as elevators or electric wheelchairs, to move. OCHA found that Gaza's groundwater, its sole natural water source, is "almost completely unfit for human consumption." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 42 percent of "essential" medicines were at less than one month's supply as of June.

Egypt also restricts the movement of people and goods via its Rafah crossing with Gaza, at times fully sealing the crossing. In the first nine months of 2021, an average of 13,678 Palestinians crossed monthly in both directions, less than the monthly average of over 40,000 before the 2013 military coup in Egypt, according to Gisha.

Hamas and Palestinian Armed Groups

Rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups resulted in the deaths of 13 people in Israel, all during the May hostilities.

Hamas authorities provided no information about two Israeli civilians with psychosocial disabilities, Avera Mangistu and Hisham al-Sayed, whom they have apparently held in violation of international law for more than six years after they entered Gaza.

Hamas authorities detained opponents and critics for their peaceful expression and tortured some in their custody. The Palestinian statutory watchdog, the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), received 75 complaints of arbitrary arrests and 72 of torture and ill-treatment against Hamas authorities between January and September 2020.

Since they took control in Gaza in June 2007, Hamas authorities carried out 28 executions following trials marred with due process violations, but none during the first nine months of 2021. Courts in Gaza had, as of October 24, sentenced 19 people to death this year and 161 since June 2007, according to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

In February, Hamas authorities issued new restrictions that allow male guardians to request local authorities to block unmarried women from leaving Gaza when such travel will cause "absolute harm," a broad term that allows men to restrict women's travel at will.

West Bank

Israeli Use of Force and Detentions

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli security forces, as of October 14, killed 67 Palestinians-nearly triple the figure for all of 2020 and including 14 children-and wounded more than 1,000 Palestinians with live ammunition, according to OCHA. This total includes non-violent demonstrators and bystanders, as well as those alleged to have attacked Israelis.

On July 28, Israeli officers shot and killed 11-year-old Mohammad Abu Sarah in the back of his father's car at the entrance to their village of Beit Ummar near Hebron in a situation where neither posed any apparent threat to Israeli soldiers, as documented in video footage published by the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

Israeli settlers killed five Palestinians, wounded 137, and caused property damage in 287 incidents, as of October 22, according to OCHA. The number of incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the first half of 2021 was more than double the figure for the first half of 2020 and more than all of 2019, according to government data. As of October 16, Palestinians killed one Israeli settler and wounded 37 Israeli soldiers and 72 settlers in the West Bank.

Israeli authorities have rarely held accountable security forces who used excessive force or settlers who attacked Palestinians.

Israeli authorities closely monitor online speech by Palestinians, in part relying on predictive algorithms to determine whom to target, and have detained Palestinians based on social media posts and other expressive activity.

While applying Israeli civil law to settlers, Israeli authorities govern West Bank Palestinians, excluding Jerusalem residents, under harsh military law. In so doing, they deny them basic due process and try them in military courts with a near-100 percent conviction rate.

As of October 1, Israel held 4,460 Palestinians in custody for "security" offenses, including 200 children, many for throwing stones, and 492 in administrative detention without formal charges or trial and based on secret evidence, according to figures by the Israeli human rights group HaMoked and Palestinian prisoner rights group Adameer. Israel incarcerates many Palestinians from the OPT inside Israel, complicating family visits and violating international humanitarian law's prohibition against their transfer outside occupied territory.

In September, six Palestinian prisoners from the OPT escaped from an Israeli prison in northern Israel. In response, Israeli authorities temporarily cancelled family visits to all detainees. Lawyers for several of the men said the escaped prisoners were tortured upon their rearrest.

More than 1,300 complaints of torture, including of painful shackling, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures, have been filed with Israel's Justice Ministry since 2001, resulting in two criminal investigations and no indictments, according to the Israeli rights group Public Committee Against Torture.

In August, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the Israeli government's policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians killed in what they consider security incidents, as leverage to secure Hamas's release of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers presumed killed in 2014 hostilities, as authorities have acknowledged. As of August, authorities held the bodies of 81 Palestinians killed since 2015, according to the Haifa-based human rights group Adalah.

Settlements and Home Demolitions

Israeli authorities provide security, infrastructure, and services for more than 667,000 settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The difficulty in obtaining Israeli building permits in East Jerusalem and the 60 percent of the West Bank under Israel's exclusive control (Area C) has driven Palestinians to build structures that are at constant risk of demolition or confiscation for being unauthorized. OCHA considers 46 Palestinian communities in the West Bank to be at "high risk of forcible transfer due to a 'relocation' plan advanced by the Israeli authorities," and more than 100,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem at risk of displacement. Save the Children considered, as of February, more than 50 kindergartens and primary schools, serving more than 5,000 Palestinian kids in the West Bank, at risk of demolition.

International law prohibits an occupying power from destroying property unless "absolutely necessary" for "military operations."

In the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, Israeli settler organizations advanced efforts to take possession of Palestinian homes and evict their long-term residents. They have done so under a discriminatory law, upheld by Israeli courts, that allow these groups to pursue claims for land they claim Jews owned in East Jerusalem before 1948. Palestinians, including Sheikh Jarrah residents set to be displaced, are barred under Israeli law from reclaiming property they owned in what became Israel, and from which they fled in 1948. A final court ruling on many of these cases is pending.

Freedom of Movement

Israeli authorities continued to require Palestinian ID holders with rare exceptions to hold difficult-to-obtain, time-limited permits to enter Israel and large parts of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. B'Tselem describes this as "an arbitrary, entirely non-transparent bureaucratic system" where "many applications are denied without explanation, with no real avenue for appeal." Israeli authorities, as of June 2020, maintained nearly 600 checkpoints and other permanent obstacles within the West Bank, in addition to nearly 1,500 ad-hoc "flying" checkpoints erected between April 2019 and March 2020, according to OCHA. Israeli forces routinely turn away or delay and humiliate Palestinians at checkpoints without explanation, while permitting largely unfettered movement to Israeli settlers.

The separation barrier, which Israel said it built for security reasons but 85 percent of which falls within the West Bank rather than along the Green Line separating Israeli from Palestinian territory, cuts off thousands of Palestinians from their agricultural lands. It also isolates 11,000 Palestinians who live on the western side of the barrier but are not allowed to travel to Israel and whose ability to cross the barrier to access their property and basic services is highly restricted.

Palestinian Authority

Following the death in custody of activist Nizar al-Banat in June, the PA detained activists on manifestly political charges, like insulting "higher authorities" and creating "sectarian strife," that in effect criminalized peaceful dissent. Between January and September 2021, the ICHR received 87 complaints of arbitrary arrests, 15 of detention without trial or charge pursuant to orders from a regional governor, and 76 of torture and ill-treatment against the PA.

PA personal status laws discriminated against women, including in relation to marriage, divorce, custody of children and inheritance. Women's rights groups have documented an increase in reports of domestic violence since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, with five women killed across the OPT in 2021. Palestine has no comprehensive domestic violence law. The PA is considering a draft family protection law, but women's rights groups have raised concern that it does not go far enough to prevent abuse and protect survivors.

The penal code in force in the West Bank and Gaza permits corporal punishment of children by parents, which remains a widespread practice.

Israel

During the May hostilities, intercommunal violence broke out in cities where both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israelis lived, leaving three people killed and hundreds wounded, including both Palestinians and Jews. According to the Haifa-based Mossawa Center, more than 2,000 people were detained in the aftermath, over 90 percent of them Palestinians. Human rights groups accused the Israeli government of failing to sufficiently protect Palestinians from attacks by armed Jewish mobs.

In July, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the Nation State Law, a law with constitutional status that affirms Israel as the "nation-state of the Jewish people," declares that within that territory the right to self-determination "is unique to the Jewish people," and establishes "Jewish settlement" as a national value.

The Knesset in July failed to renew a temporary order that had been in place since 2003 barring, with few exceptions, the granting of long-term legal status inside Israel to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who marry Israeli citizens or residents. Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked instructed authorities to continue to act as if the law was in place while the Interior Ministry examines the implications of its expiration, prolonging the separation of many families. Such a restriction does not exist for spouses of virtually any other nationality.

Israeli authorities continued to systematically deny asylum claims of the roughly 31,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers in the country. Over the years the government has imposed restrictions on their movement, work permits, and access to health care and to education in order to pressure them to leave.

Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to affect communities in Israel and the OPT.

The Israeli government had vaccinated more than two-thirds of its citizens and residents and begun offering third booster shots, as of October. Israeli authorities provided vaccines to Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of occupied East Jerusalem, as well as Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but not to most of the more than 4.7 million Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli authorities claim this responsibility falls on the PA, but the Fourth Geneva Convention obliges occupying powers to ensure medical supplies, including to combat the spread of pandemics, to the occupied population. More than 1 million Palestinians in the West Bank, excluding Jerusalem residents, and 466,000 Palestinians in Gaza, were vaccinated as of October 21, according to the WHO, largely through vaccines obtained from external sources and administered by Palestinian authorities.

Key International Actors

During the May fighting, the Biden administration criticized rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups, but not Israeli conduct, and proceeded with the sale of $735 million in arms to Israel, including of the kind of precision-guided munitions used in unlawful attacks in Gaza. This funding supplemented the annual $3.7 billion in security assistance the US provides and an additional $1 billion authorized in October.

In May, the UN Human Rights Council established an ongoing Commission of Inquiry (COI) to address abuses arising from the May hostilities and their root causes, including systematic discrimination and repression based on group identity across Israel and the OPT, and to promote accountability for those responsible. All Western states on the council abstained or voted against creating the COI.

The European Union condemned Israel's settlement policy and Israeli and Palestinian abuses, but divisions among EU member states have frustrated attempts to adopt more forceful measures.

During the May hostilities, Facebook wrongfully removed and suppressed content by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses.

In February, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction over serious crimes committed in the OPT. In March, the ICC prosecutor's office announced the opening of a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.

The American company Ben & Jerry's announced in June that it will stop selling its ice cream in Israeli settlements, explaining that "it is inconsistent with our values for our product to be present within an internationally recognised illegal occupation."

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World Report 2022: Rights Trends in Israel and Palestine

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Across two governments, each in power for roughly half of 2021, Israeli authorities doubled down on policies to repress Palestinians and privilege Jewish Israelis. The government's policy of maintaining the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), coupled with the particularly severe repression against Palestinians living in the OPT, amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

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https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

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In May 2021, Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, began protesting against Israel's plan to forcibly evict them from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. Many of the families are refugees, who settled in Sheikh Jarrah after being forcibly displaced around the time of Israel's establishment as a state in 1948. Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who use discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.

In response to the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah, thousands of Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) held their own protests in support of the families, and against their shared experience of fragmentation, dispossession, and segregation. These were met with excessive and deadly force by Israeli authorities with thousands injured, arrested and detained.

The events of May 2021 were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day, for decades. The discrimination, the dispossession, the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries - all are part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.

This is apartheid.

Amnesty International's new investigation shows that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the OPT, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.

Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.

WHAT IS APARTHEID?

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights, and a crime against humanity under international criminal law.

The term "apartheid" was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalize such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world.

The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

Amnesty International has created a free 90-minute course called "Deconstructing Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians". To learn more about the crime of apartheid in international law, what apartheid looks like in Israel/OPT, and how it affects Palestinians' lives, sign up to our course on Amnesty International's human rights education academy.

WHY IS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGNING AGAINST APARTHEID?

I do not know why the entire world is watching what is happening and letting Israel get away with it? It is time the world stopped spoiling Israel
Nabil el-Kurd, one of the residents under threat of forced eviction in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah

Apartheid is not acceptable anywhere in the world. So why has the world accepted it against Palestinians?

Human rights have long been side-lined by the international community when dealing with the decades-long struggle and suffering of Palestinians. Palestinians facing the brutality of Israel's repression have been calling for an understanding of Israel's rule as apartheid for over two decades. Over time, a broader international recognition of Israel's treatment of Palestinians as apartheid has begun to take shape.

Yet, governments with the responsibility and power to do something have refused to take any meaningful action to hold Israel accountable. Instead, they have been hiding behind a moribund peace process at the expense of human rights and accountability. Unfortunately, the situation today is one of no progress towards a just solution and worsening human rights for Palestinians.

Amnesty is calling for Israel to end the international wrong, and crime, of apartheid, by dismantling measures of fragmentation, segregation, discrimination, and deprivation, currently in place against the Palestinian population.

The Palestinian experience of being denied a home is at the heart of Israel's apartheid system. That's why, as a first step towards dismantling this system, we are calling on Israel to end the practice of home demolitions.

Palestinian families need people to stand with them against injustice and discrimination, by taking action to help them protect their homes.

Israel is not a state of all its citizens... [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them
Israel's then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (message posted online in March 2019)

ISRAEL'S SYSTEM OF OPPRESSION AND DOMINATION OF PALESTINIANS

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, successive governments have created and maintained a system of laws, policies, and practices designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians. This system plays out in different ways across the different areas where Israel exercises control over Palestinians' rights, but the intent is always the same: to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.

Israeli authorities have done this through four main strategies:

FRAGMENTATION INTO DOMAINS OF CONTROL

In the course of establishing Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages, in what amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Since then, successive governments have designed laws and policies to ensure the continued fragmentation of the Palestinian population. Palestinians are confined to enclaves in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the refugee communities, where they are subject to different legal and administrative regimes. This has had the effect of undermining family, social and political ties between Palestinian communities and suppressing sustained dissent against the apartheid system; it also helps to maximise Jewish Israeli control over land and maintain a Jewish demographic majority.

Millions of Palestinians remain displaced as refugees and continue to be physically isolated from those residing in Israel and the OPT through Israel's continuous denial of their right to return to their homes, towns and villages.

DISPOSSESSION OF LAND AND PROPERTY

Since 1948, Israel has enforced massive and cruel land seizures to dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes. Although Palestinians in Israel and the OPT are subjected to different legal and administrative regimes, Israel has used similar land expropriation measures across all areas - for example, since 1948, Israel has expropriated land in areas of strategic importance that include significant Palestinian populations such as the Galilee and the Negev/Naqab, and used similar measures in the OPT following Israel's military occupation in 1967. In order to maximize Jewish Israeli control over land and minimize the Palestinian presence, Palestinians have been confined to separate, densely populated enclaves. While Israeli policies have allowed for the discriminatory allocation of state land to be used almost exclusively to benefit Jewish Israelis both inside of Israel and in the OPT.

SEGREGATION AND CONTROL

Successive Israeli governments have pursued a strategy of establishing domination through discriminatory laws and policies which segregate Palestinians into enclaves, based on their legal status and residence.

Israel denies Palestinian citizens their rights to equal nationality and status, while Palestinians in the OPT face severe restrictions on freedom of movement. Israel also restricts Palestinians' rights to family unification in a profoundly discriminatory manner: for example, Palestinians from the OPT cannot gain residency or citizenship through marriage, which Jewish Israelis can.

Israel also places severe limitations on Palestinians' civil and political rights, to suppress dissent and maintain the system of oppression and domination. For example, millions of Palestinians in the West Bank remain subject to Israel's military rule and draconian military orders adopted since 1967.

DEPRIVATION OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS

These measures have left Palestinians marginalized, impoverished and economically disadvantaged across Israel and the OPT.

Decades of discriminatory allocation of resources by Israeli authorities, for the benefit of Jewish Israeli citizens in Israel and Israeli settlers in the OPT, compound these inequalities. For example, millions of Palestinians inside of Israel and East Jerusalem live in densely populated areas that are generally underdeveloped and lack adequate essential services such as garbage collection, electricity, public transportation and water and sanitation infrastructure.

Palestinians across all areas under Israel's control have fewer opportunities to earn a living and engage in business than Jewish Israelis. They experience discriminatory limitations on access to and use of farmland, water, gas and oil amongst other natural resources, as well as restrictions on the provision of health, education and basic services.

In addition, Israeli authorities have appropriated the vast majority of Palestinians' natural resources in the OPT for the economic benefit of Jewish citizens in Israel and in the illegal settlements.

LIFE UNDER APARTHEID

DENIED A HOME: DEMOLITIONS AND FORCED EVICTIONS

Palestinians are systematically subjected to home demolitions and forced evictions, and live in constant fear of losing their homes.

For more than 73 years, Israel has been forcibly displacing entire Palestinian communities. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians' homes have been demolished, causing terrible trauma & suffering. More than 6 million Palestinians remain refugees, the vast majority of whom live in refugee camps including outside of Israel/OPT. There are over 100,000 Palestinians in the OPT and another 68,000 inside of Israel at imminent risk of losing their homes, many for the second or third time.

Palestinians are caught in a Catch-22 situation. Israel requires them to obtain a permit to build or even erect a structure such as a tent, but - unlike Jewish Israeli applicants - rarely issues them a permit. Many Palestinians are forced to build without permits. Israel then demolishes Palestinian homes on the basis that they were built "illegally". Israel uses these discriminatory planning and zoning policies to create unbearable living conditions to force Palestinians to leave their homes to allow for the expansion of Jewish settlement.

Mohammed Al-Rajabi, a resident of Al-Bustan area in Silwan, whose home was demolished by Israeli authorities on 23 June 2020 on the basis that it was built "illegally", described to Amnesty International the devastating impact on his family:

This is extremely hard to deal with. It might be difficult to put into words... and I sensed that it was harder on my kids than on us. They were really excited for us to have this new home. I'm going to keep the photos from that day and show them to my children when they grow up, so they do not forget what happened to us. I will tell them, 'you see what kind of memories I have to pass on to you?' My plan was for them to have a warm family home close to their loved ones and family members. Now I'm passing on the memories of their first childhood home being destroyed
Mohammed Al-Rajabi, a resident of Al-Bustan area in Silwan

FRAGMENTED LOVE: SEPARATION OF PALESTINIAN FAMILIES

Israel has enacted discriminatory laws and policies that disrupt family life for Palestinians. Since 2002, Israel has adopted a policy of prohibiting Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from gaining status in Israel or East Jerusalem through marriage, thus preventing family unification.

Israel has long used discriminatory laws and policies to separate Palestinians from their families. For example, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza cannot gain legal status in Israel or occupied East Jerusalem through marriage, denying their rights to family unification. This policy has forced thousands of Palestinians to live apart from their loved ones; others are forced to go abroad, or live in constant fear of being arrested, expelled or deported.

These measures explicitly target Palestinians, and not Jewish Israelis, and are primarily guided by demographic considerations that aim to minimize Palestinian presence inside Israel/OPT.

Sumaia, was born and raised in Lod in central Israel. She married her husband, who is from the Gaza Strip, in 1998 and he moved to live with her in Lod. In 2000, Sumaia and her husband began the process of applying for family unification, so they could live together legally. The family unification process took 18 years, during which the couple lived in fear and anxiety. Sumaia told Amnesty International:

The government is controlling every detail of our lives, they are in our bedroom, in our homes. One of the most extreme cases was when they arrested my husband in 2004 while I was giving birth to one of my daughters...while I was in the delivery room they arrested him
Sumaia

UNDER SIEGE

Over the past 14 years, more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been living under Israel's illegal blockade. Along with four major military offensives, the blockade has had catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza.

The blockade is a form of collective punishment. It forces Gaza's population - the majority of whom are refugees or their descendants who fled in 1948 - to live in increasingly dire conditions. There are severe shortages of housing, drinking water, electricity, essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials. In 2020, Gaza had the world's highest unemployment rate, and more than half of its population was living below the poverty line.

On 30 March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza launched the Great March of Return, a series of weekly mass demonstrations along the fence between Gaza and Israel.

They were demanding their right to return to their villages and towns in what is now Israel, as well as an end to Israel's blockade on Gaza. The response was brutal: by the end of 2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children, and injured more than 8,000 others with live ammunition. A total of 156 of those injured had to have limbs amputated. More than 1,200 patients require long-term, complex and expensive therapy and rehabilitation, and tens of thousands more require psycho-social support -none of which are widely available in Gaza.

The blockade prevents Palestinians from accessing adequate healthcare, in particular life-saving and other emergency medical treatment only available outside Gaza. The Israeli authorities often delay these permits and sometimes fail to provide them at all.

Adham Al-Hajjar, 36, is a freelance journalist and lives in Gaza City. On 6 April 2018, while he was covering the Great March of Return demonstrations, Israeli snipers positioned along the fence separating Gaza from Israel shot him. He is unable to get the medical help he needs in Gaza because of the debilitated health services there.

The bullet that entered my leg did not just enter and leave my body. It entered and stopped everything; it stopped my life. Just because a soldier pulled the trigger without thinking of how it would devastate my life. Did he or she ever think about what this would cause? I am walking around as a dead man, everything in my life froze from the moment that bullet entered my leg
Adham Al-Hajjar

CRIMINAL PATTERNS

Israel has been systematically committing serious human rights violations against Palestinians for decades. Violations such as forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, unlawful killings and serious injuries, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms have been well documented by Amnesty and others. It is clear that Israel's apartheid system is being maintained through committing these abuses-which have been perpetrated with almost total impunity.

They form part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian population, carried out within the context of Israel's institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians, and therefore constitute crimes against humanity of apartheid.

DISMANTLING THE SYSTEM

There is no place for apartheid in our world. It is a crime against humanity, and it has to end.

Israeli authorities have enjoyed impunity for too long. The international failure to hold Israel to account means Palestinians are still suffering every single day. It's time to speak up, to stand with Palestinians and tell Israel that we will not tolerate apartheid.

For decades, Palestinians have been calling for an end to the oppression they live under. All too often, they pay a terrible price for standing up for their rights, and they have long been calling for others around the world to help them.

Let this be the beginning of an end to Israel's system of apartheid against Palestinians.

Join us in the fight for justice, freedom, and equality for all.

The Palestinian experience of being denied a home is at the heart of Israel's apartheid system. That's why, as a first step towards dismantling this system, we are calling on Israel to end the practice of home demolitions.

Palestinian families need people to stand with them against injustice and discrimination, by taking action to help them protect their homes.

Further Reading

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Palestinians are systematically subjected to home demolitions and forced evictions, and live in constant fear of losing their homes. For more than 73 years, Israel has been forcibly displacing entire Palestinian communities. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians' homes have been demolished, causing terrible trauma & suffering.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGQBFtQoXU

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbn4i7_CFIM

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https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2590

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https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2407

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Sponsor: | Rep. McCollum, Betty [D-MN-4] (Introduced 04/30/2019)
Committees: | House - Foreign Affairs
Latest Action: | House - 04/30/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  (All Actions)

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Summary: H.R.2407 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)All Information (Except Text)

There is one summary for H.R.2407. Bill summaries are authored by CRS.

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Introduced in House (04/30/2019)

Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act

This bill prohibits the use of certain foreign-assistance funds to support the military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill treatment of children in violation of international humanitarian law. The bill also prohibits such funds from being used to support certain practices against children, including torture, sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, and arbitrary detention.

The bill also authorizes the Department of State to provide funding to nongovernmental organizations to (1) monitor and assess incidents of Palestinian children being subjected to Israeli military detention, and (2) provide treatment and rehabilitation for Palestinians under 21 years of age who have been subject to military detention as children.

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Israel and Hamas: Anatomy of a prisoner exchange | Al Jazeera World Documentary

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Gaza Fights For Freedom (2019) | Full Documentary | Directed by Abby Martin

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Killing Gaza: Documentary by Dan Cohen & Max Blumenthal shows life under Israel's bombs and siege

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Jenin Jenin English subtitle 2002 | وثائقي جنين جنين 2002

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IYw9fI0CrU

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Israel's Hunt for the Red Prince, Ali Hassan Salameh | Al Jazeera World

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Kill Him Silently: Mossad vs Khaled Meshaal: Part 1 | Al Jazeera World

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Fathi Shaqaqi: Don't Kill Him in Damascus | Al Jazeera World

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Assassination in Tunis | Al Jazeera World

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Israel and Hamas: Anatomy of a prisoner exchange | Al Jazeera World Documentary

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Hebron, die Geisterstadt: Breaking the Silence - Jung & Naiv: Folge 389

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI7AIFgyTUw

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https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553

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5.0 out of 5 stars Criminality of our ME policy.
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2016

Brilliant. A must read. Scholarship & courageous abound.

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

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Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018

Ironic that Israel is doing EXACTLY what they claim the Germans did to them, to the Palestinians, and even worse...and the media is silent of course...

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2019

The narrative might be somewhat biased but the facts cannot be disputed and are totally eradicated in the internal historical existence inside of Israel, This level of truth bending cannot stand the test of time this late past the 20th century. A must read albeit extremely emotional and difficult for every Israeli who wishes there to be ray of hope and understanding in this part of the middle east.

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2020

In order to create Israel 800,000 Palestinians were systematically, premeditatedly, murdered. A holocaust by any definition. All of the Palestinian men over the age of 10. TEN! -were rounded up and killed tiny village by tiny village. Ben Gurion used the word "Zionism" to market and brand the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, a feat he planned for a solid decade prior by collecting data on every notable aspect of small defenseless Palestinian villages and the people living there. The remaining women, children, and elderly were marched on foot into neighboring Lebanon, Syria, and Jordon where many live without a citizenship or country to this day. Is it possible this might create unrest in the middle east? Sure. This is not the Zionism we were taught in school. Every one of Muslim, Christian, or Jewish faith has a stake in the truth found in this book. Everyone who is concerned about tension in the Middle East, exploitation of oil and other resources in the Middle East, or the future of peace, and the future of a stable and healthy energy policy while combating climate change, has a stake in understanding the truth in this book. Pape' courageously lays out in well documented fashion what really happened after World War II in the former Palestine and the land now called Israel. At the same time the very same leaders were shaping policy that lead to our involvement in VietNam it is clear now that they were also involved in another horrific lie in the middle east. While the Pentagon Papers laid open one horrific lie about Viet Nam it would seem there is another body of information , a "Pentagon Papers 2" of sorts, that clearly still needs exposing about the decisions on world policy by the very same people at the very same time concerning the middle east post World War II policy. This is a superb work with a dire and shocking message that left me asking many questions about the very foundations of what I was taught were the basis of my ethical beliefs. It clearly changes everything.

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2018

An extremely well documented account of the land-grab initiated by Ben-Gurion and continued throughout Netanyahu, resulting in the killing or displacement of hundreds of thousands Palestinians; initially supported by the British and continued by American administrations, whether actively of by casting a blind eye. A must read for those interested in the true history of the Middle East. With such a ¾ of century history, It is hard to conceive of a two-state solution.

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2018

Sentence after sentence, page after page, documented atrocities against Palestinians from 1947-1949 are described. Details of Zionist plans from Theodor Herzl, Ben Gurion and many other Zionist leaders make it crystal clear that they wanted a PURE Jewish stare with ZERO Palestinians from long before 1948. Ben Gurion’s 1937 letter to his son clearly spells out the the Palestinians would need to be removed. That is only one of DOZENS on examples detailed in this book. This is a MUST READ!

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2018

With the descriptive detail of a born and raised Israeli and the thorough documentation of a history professor, Pappe describes the forceable removal of the indigenous Palestinian population in a campaign of terror, rape, and systematic looting orchestrated by the highest levels of the Israeli government. Whether or not you agree with its premises, it is an important turning point in raising public awareness of the dark side of the "Israeli Miracle." Dwelling on specific events documented by hundreds of footnotes, it is an easy read relatively free of political rhetoric and heavy-handed erudition.

Top reviews from other countries

4.0 out of 5 stars Why peace eludes the Middle East

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2020

Ilan Pappe politely compares the Nakba to the ethnic cleansing of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. It is a good comparison yet we should recall that the Jews had themselves experienced the wrath of a racist state determined to drive them out of Europe. However, no irony would restrain Zionists determined to build an ethnically pure Israel. It is all here: the pogroms, the cold-blooded mass murders, the executions, the rape, the pillage, the torture, the typhoid epidemics, the poisoning of civilian water supplies, the theft of Arab bank accounts, the destruction of property, the injustice, the forced labour camps, the planting of forests over crime-scenes and the rewriting of history. The UN went as far as not using the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), to help the Palestinian refugees in 1948, because the IRO that had helped the European Jews after World War Two. Nobody was meant to make the comparison. “For the Israeli Jews to accept this would naturally mean undermining their own status of victimhood.” writes Pappe.
In 1948 the Israeli State had the upper-hand against Arab countries who were barely nations themselves. The Arabs possessed neither the weapons nor armies to defend the Palestinian refugees - let alone quash the birth of Israel. Yet that is not the propaganda story so carefully airbrushed into place by the victor’s historians and Hollywood. It has been all too easy to demonise the Palestinians. Half of all Palestinian villages had already been cleansed in 1948 BEFORE the Arab nations attempted to defend them. The vast majority of Palestinians expected peace at the partition and had never thought there was a need to defend their villages. They thought life would go on as before within a new state. The Israelis had other ideas, rejecting the UN Partition lines, and drawing up plans to invade the country. Of course, this was the continuation of an ongoing conflict... however most Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities lived peacefully side-by-side. Peace could have been built in a multi-ethnic state. But it was not to be.

If this book is lacking it is in the fact that Pappe does not reach into the minds of these perpetrators. Despite the numerous references to Ben Gurion’s diaries we never really get under the skin of the Zionist mind-set. How did they imagine they could build a peace on the bones of the innocent? They invoked the memory of the destruction of the Jews to justify the destruction of Muslims. Indeed, the Israelis had not expected the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to defend the Palestinians in 1948 as he defended Jews in 1943. They failed to see they were NOW on the wrong side of history. Today Israelis exist behind fortress walls which Pappe compares to medieval Crusaders inside a fortified Jerusalem: “The Zionist project has always been to construct and defend a ‘white’ (Western) fortress in a ‘black’ (Arab) world.” This was colonialism in the mould of the British Empire just at a time when it was falling out of fashion. Pappe writes that what happened in 1948 raises “troubling questions about the moral legitimacy of the Zionist project” as the realities of the Nakba “would trigger moral and existential repercussions for the Israeli Jewish psyche: Israeli Jews would have to recognise that they have become the mirror image of their own worst nightmare”. This is a vital story that must be understood if there is ever to be peace. A must-read book.

5.0 out of 5 stars What the mainstream media will not tell you

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2019

The sad truth about the tragedy of the Palestinian people. Pappe's book is full of well documented facts which destroy the many myths about the creation of Israel as circulated by the mainstream media. The fact that it is written by an Israeli Jewish historian lends even greater credibility to it. A must read for anyone interested in the truth about this ongoing tragedy.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fair impartial review of the Palestinian crisis

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2020

I really enjoyed this book, as it detailed accounts from the 'other side' that is typically ignored or not reported on in Western media and in a professional objective manner. I have read other books that can paint a rather biased image whether true or not, but this book is fully backed by credible citations some of which are from Israel's very own official IDF records - which immediately eliminates the predictable cries of "propaganda" and "Disinformation" that routinely arise whenever there is any criticism of the current (and past) treatment of Palestinians.
Recommended reading if you have any interest in the conflict or on recent Middle Eastern history, but be warned, this does cause some upset

5.0 out of 5 stars Palestinian Holocaust

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2021

I have not finished reading this yet, but what I have read is very good. It is the first time I have actually read someone state the obvious about Israeli policy of genocide toward the Palestinian people. And to be clear, being against Israeli policy does not make me anti-Semitic. The Israelis, ironically, have continued along the same lines of persecution that many of their people sought to flee in Germany during the 1930s through 1940s. While I agree that the maltreatment they endured during that time was inhumane and a crime against humanity, so too is their treatment toward the Palestinian people. This book bares the fallacy of current Israeli policy and explains why there can never be a two state solution without recognizing the blatant errors of the current government, as well as those governments who support and condone Israeli policy while contributing to them militarily.

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading on Israel/Palestine

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2018

An important and ground-breaking book from a Jewish Israeli historian. It gives the lie to the myth of 'plucky little Israel' and its War of Independence, and reveals in forensic detail the reality behind the hype. Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the roots of the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine [Pappe, Ilan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

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Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary