The United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk accused Israel of apartheid in a report submitted on Thursday to the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
Titled “Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” the report concluded that the situation in Israel and the occupied territories amounts to apartheid.
“With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world,” wrote Lynk.
“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” Lynk added.
In the 19-page report, Lynk said Israeli Jews and Palestinians lived “under a single regime which differentiates its distribution of rights and benefits on the basis of national and ethnic identity, and which ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other”.
“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” he added.
In the report, the Canadian academic argued that Israel was pursuing a strategy of “strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian territory into separate areas of population control, with Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem physically divided from one another”.
Israel uses Gaza, Lynk said, for the “indefinite warehousing of an unwanted population of two million Palestinians”.
Lynk said that while the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories differed from that experienced in South Africa, it still amounted to apartheid.
The report further emphasised the need for the international community to accept the findings of human rights organizations, and start calling Israel’s apartheid what it is.
“The international community, in particular countries allied to Israel, must stop making excuses for this cruel system of racial domination and oppression and take immediate action to help end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights,” Lynk recommended.
