UN Special Rapporteur accuses Israel of apartheid in UNHRC report

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), concluding that the situation in Israel and the occupied territories amounts to apartheid.
 

In a 19-page report (Microsoft word document) submitted to the body on Tuesday, Michael Lynk said Zionists 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.

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. 

Apartheid is a legal term defined by international law that refers to systematic oppression by one racial group over another.

"There are pitiless features of Israel's 'apartness' rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa, such as segregated highways, high walls and extensive checkpoints, a barricaded population, missile strikes and tank shelling of a civilian population, and the abandonment of the Palestinians' social welfare to the international community.

"With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world."

Lynk is slated to formally release his report on Thursday ahead of a debate on Agenda Item Seven, the permanent UNHRC item reserved for Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians and other Arabs.

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".

The issuing of thousands of work permits for Palestinian labourers in the West Bank and Gaza to work in Israel amounts to the "exploitation of labor of a racial group", the report said.