Since 2020, Israeli and international NGOs are seeking to modify the reading of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel, where these reports have little echo, the state has found the conclusions of Amnesty “false, biased and anti-Semites”.
by
An “apartheid” so, again. Amnesty International joined on Tuesday 1 February, several human rights organizations, since 2020, to renew the reading of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in international opinions. In a long legal analysis, four years of investigation, she denounces a “apartheid system” in the domination of the Palestinians by Israel.
It follows the positions of two Israeli NGOs, YESH DIN then B’TSELEM, and Human Rights Watch. Amnesty adopts a maximalist position: As B’TSELEM, the organization passes in addition to the distinction between the Israeli state born in 1948 and the “temporary” military occupation regime, in force in the Palestinian territories, in 1967. It concludes that a single system sedimen over time, between Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Each in their own way, these NGOs question the evolution of the founding principles of the “Jewish and Democratic State”, its reluctance to trace its borders and the place it grants to the Arab minority (20% of the population national). They examine the common sources of the occupation in force behind the “separation” wall and discrimination perpetrated in the Arab villages of Galilee and Negev. In this, these organizations seek an echo in Western opinions, particularly in the United States, where part of the left reads the Palestinian situation in the light of the history of the struggle for the civil rights of blacks.
Israel’s fight against the term apartheid
Amnesty, like the others, is kept, however, to expand on such historical comparisons to camp in international law. Apartheid’s term refers to the racial segregation regime put in place by the South African State between 1948 and 1991. More broadly, the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, in fact a generic crime against humanity.
The NGO therefore calls on the ICC to seize these charges, while the institution opened an investigation, in March 2021, on the crimes committed, since June 2014, in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel considers this procedure as a threat of primary importance. Monday, the State reacted before the publication of the Amnesty report, denouncing “false, biased and anti-Semitic” conclusions.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Centrist Yaïr Lapid, said in recent months that he intended to fight against the irruption of apartheid in a United Nations body in 2022, under the pressure of these NGOs. Qualifying Amnesty of Organization “Radical”, he reminded that “Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy attached to international law, open to criticism”. “I do not like to say that, if Israel was not a Jewish state, no one at Amnesty would not dare to go on it, but I do not see any other explanation,” he added.
You have 31.46% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.