‘Israeli apartheid’ top human rights issue of 2021 - HRW

A story about “Israel’s apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians," topped the list of Human Rights Watch's (HRW) most-read reports of 2021, the NGO has reported.

The report outlined Israel’s persecution and discrimination against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

HRW’s report on Israel’s conduct ranked higher than reports on topics including sexual violence against women in India, extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, restrictions on women’s rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, digital sex crimes in South Korea and others.
 

“Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy,” the report reads. “In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. These deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The report further describes instances of “inhumane acts” by the Israeli side, such as the construction of barriers between Israeli and Palestinian lands, restrictions on travel, excessive force used in policing and a “suspension of civil rights,” ending with a series of recommendations for relevant United States government bodies, the International Criminal Court (ICC), UN member and non-member states, businesses active in Israel, the State of Israel itself, and even the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).