Human Rights Watch, the widely respected research and advocacy group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, on Tuesday ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paju.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/1055.jpg\")
released a report declaring that the Israeli government is committing the crime of apartheid. It is the first official use of the term by the group, which is based in New York but documents human-rights abuses across 100 countries and has long clashed with Israeli officials.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0213-page report<\/a>\u00a0cites Israel\u2019s \u201cintent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.\u201d Titled \u201cA Threshold Crossed,\u201d it alleges decades of persecution that cannot be justified by Israel\u2019s security needs or the stalled peace process.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli government systematically discriminates against non-Jews in all areas under its control \u2014 including the nearly 2 million Arab citizens within the state\u2019s 1948 borders \u2014 but that an additional layer of severe human-rights abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza amounts to the crime of apartheid. The report, an embargoed copy of which was given to the Forward and other news outlets on Thursday, contends that Israeli officials are using military rule to ensure a Jewish majority across the combined land of Israel and the West Bank.<\/p>\n Israeli officials called the report \u201cpreposterous and false.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Goldstein, acting director for Human Rights Watch\u2019s Middle East division, said that the group\u2019s report is intended to show that Israeli abuses against Palestinians were not isolated incidents.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, the international community \u2014 and many Israelis \u2014 have the tendency to think of the cases we document as the unfortunate symptoms of a lack of peace,\u201d Goldstein said in an interview. \u201cBut the peace process has unfortunately gone nowhere and the abuses have just become more entrenched.\u201d<\/p>\n The report lands at a time of renewed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, including a Jewish mob\u00a0attacking Arab residents<\/a>\u00a0of Jerusalem last week and\u00a0clashes over the weekend<\/a>, along with the election of\u00a0openly racist Jewish extremists<\/a>\u00a0to Israel\u2019s parliament in the March elections. Meanwhile, Hamas has been\u00a0firing rockets at Israel<\/a>\u00a0in recent days.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch, often referred to as HRW, has a long and complicated history with Israel. Founder Robert L. Bernstein, now deceased, would\u00a0come to decry<\/a>\u00a0what he described as the organization\u2019s anti-Israel bias, citing its relatively frequent condemnations of Israel compared to Middle Eastern \u201cauthoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records.\u201d<\/p>\n But Aryeh Neier, former executive director of the ACLU and HRW, has defended the organization\u2019s stance toward Israel, once writing that \u201cthe criticisms are based on misunderstandings and distortions of international humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n The report was written by Omar Shakir, the group\u2019s Israel and Palestine director, who was\u00a0expelled by Israel<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 because Human Rights Watch calls on companies not to do business in Israeli settlements.<\/p>\n An uncertain impact<\/strong><\/p>\n Repercussions from the report may not be immediately evident, but among those who saw summaries before it was released, Palestinian activists hoped it would would re-focus attention on their people\u2019s plight and Israel\u2019s supporters worried it would further efforts to undermine the nation\u2019s standing in the world.<\/p>\n The authors issue pointed recommendations, calling on the Palestinian Authority to end its security cooperation with Israel and for the United States to condition its military aid to Israel on the country ending its \u201ccommission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.\u201d It also recommends that all countries impose targeted sanctions and other restrictions on Israeli officials implicated by the report. It does not call for a full boycott of Israel.<\/p>\n That did not make the report any less offensive to Israeli officials.<\/p>\n \u201cHuman Rights Watch is known to have a long-standing anti-Israeli agenda, actively seeking for years to promote boycotts against Israel,\u201d the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cHRW\u2019s founder, Mr. Robert Bernstein, has criticized his organization in 2009 for \u201cissuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cThis report is yet another part of the organization\u2019s ongoing campaign, led by a known BDS supporter, with no connection to facts or reality on the ground. The fictional claims that HRW concocted are both preposterous and false.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u2018A\u2019 word<\/strong><\/p>\n While Palestinian groups have accused Israel of apartheid since the 1960s, and Israel Apartheid Week has been a\u00a0fixture of campus activism<\/a>\u00a0in the United States since the early 2000s, the Human Rights Watch report levels the charge from a different source: a high-profile, widely-respected non-profit founded by Jews that has more than 400 employees across 40 countries.<\/p>\n Many human-rights and advocacy organizations continue to avoid using the term in relation to Israel, including the perhaps best-known human rights group, Amnesty International.<\/p>\n The fear that using the term \u201capartheid\u201d to refer to the Israeli occupation would alienate Jewish audiences has dissuaded even some otherwise staunchly left-wing groups from using it. IfNotNow, an American Jewish anti-occupation organization, refrained from using the language until last spring, when Israel was actively discussing\u00a0possible annexation<\/a>\u00a0of the West Bank. It still uses the term sparingly.<\/p>\n \u201cIfNotNow has always aimed to speak in a language that is legible to the American Jewish public and apartheid has been one of those words that, if you use it, there are people who simply won\u2019t engage with you,\u201d said Morriah Kaplan, an IfNotNow spokeswoman.<\/p>\n HRW\u2019s report comes on the heels of two others authored by smaller, Israeli human-rights groups, that apply \u201capartheid\u201d to Israel. Yesh Din\u00a0issued a legal opinion<\/a>\u00a0in July that said Israel was committing apartheid in the West Bank and B\u2019Tselem, which has long documented Israel\u2019s treatment of Palestinians, unveiled a\u00a0sweeping position paper<\/a>\u00a0in January describing a \u201cregime of Jewish supremacy\u201d that amounted to apartheid.<\/p>\n Nathan Thrall, a researcher based in Jerusalem, has\u00a0tracked the use of the term<\/a>\u00a0\u201capartheid\u201d to refer to the Israeli occupation and said its increasing use stems from a growing belief that Israel does not ever plan to allow for Palestinian sovereignty. Instead, Thrall said, what was meant to be a temporary occupation after the 1967 war seems increasingly permanent, and Israel maintains a system across the West Bank where Jewish settlers have full Israeli citizenship rights and Palestinians live under a rigid system of military control.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s happening is very much related to the death of belief in partition, or Oslo, or two states,\u201d Thrall said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a sense that, \u2018Wow, this situation of domination by one group over another is indefinite or permanent.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The HRW report emphasized that it was using \u201capartheid\u201d in the strict legal sense and not as a reference to South Africa, where domination by whites drew international condemnation and spurred a successful boycott movement that pro-Palestinian activists have tried to recreate. Human Rights Watch officials say they are not equating Israel to \u201can apartheid state,\u201d a term they note does not exist under international law but is common in conversational usage.<\/p>\n But some observers are skeptical that the public discourse will reflect such a distinction.<\/p>\n Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli author and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said that applying the term to Israel was intended to malign the Jewish state and ensured that the Israeli public would ignore whatever substantive criticism was behind the Human Rights Watch analysis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe game of those who seek to delegitimize Israel is to latch onto the words and the images that are most reprehensible to the moral sensibilities of our time, so it\u2019s \u2018apartheid, it\u2019s \u2018colonialism,\u2019\u201d Halevi said. \u201cWe don\u2019t react well to being libeled.\u201d<\/p>\n The report echoes the claims of Palestinian activists, who have long used the apartheid framework to describe the legal regime that covers both Israel and the occupied territories.<\/p>\n Diana Buttu, a former spokeswoman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, said she is hopeful that broader adoption of the concept will spur the international community to apply more pressure on Israel. But, she added, it is frustrating to see it take so long to confirm what Palestinians had long known.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody believes us until an international organization, or an Israeli organization, says this,\u201d Buttu said.<\/p>\n \u2018A Threshold Crossed\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Human Rights Watch has previously leveled the charge of apartheid\u00a0against the Myanmar government<\/a>\u00a0for its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority and Indian officials for their\u00a0discrimination against the dalit<\/a>. The organization has also\u00a0criticized the Palestinian Authority<\/a>\u00a0in the West Bank and\u00a0the Hamas regime that rules Gaza<\/a>\u00a0for violating the human rights of residents under their control, and\u00a0condemned Hamas for firing rockets<\/a>\u00a0indiscriminately into Israel, among other violations of international law.<\/p>\n The report also found that in addition to apartheid, Israel was guilty of \u201cpersecution\u201d under international law, because it deprives Palestinians of \u201ckey fundamental rights\u201d based on \u201ctheir identity as Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n It argues that the government\u2019s treatment of Palestinians goes well beyond what is required to administer an occupation and prevent terrorism. It cites examples including land confiscation from Palestinians in the West Bank for use by Jewish settlers, the inability of Palestinians living outside the region to move into the West Bank and the tenuous status of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, who can be barred from returning to the city after study or travel abroad. There is also what the report describes as a \u201cnear-categorical\u201d denial of building permits in parts of the West Bank that coerce Palestinians to abandon their homes.<\/p>\n In addition to its objections to the content of the report, the Israeli foreign ministry faulted Human Rights Watch for failing to provide the Israeli government a copy before its release date, which it described as \u201cclear indication that it is a propaganda pamphlet, which lacks all credibility.\u201d But Stacy Sullivan, spokesperson for Human Rights Watch, said the group sent an executive summary of the report to the prime minister\u2019s office last week with a request to discuss it.<\/p>\n Goldstein said the difference between how Israeli officials treat Gaza and the West Bank demonstrates that Israel is restricting Palestinian rights for ideological reasons. Israeli policy, he said, seeks to minimize the number of Palestinians in the West Bank while allowing the population to grow in Gaza. For example, if a West Bank Palestinian marries a Gaza resident, the newlyweds are allowed to settle in Gaza but not in the West Bank. Likewise, some Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank are released on the condition they move to Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not about security, it\u2019s really a demographic thing,\u201d Goldstein said. \u201cIsrael does not covet the land in Gaza but it wants to maintain maximum land for Jews in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n Pro-Israel groups argue that groups like Human Rights Watch are insensitive to the history of Jewish persecution and the need for a Jewish state. One such group, NGO Monitor, issued a response to the Human Rights Watch report condemning it for characterizing Israel\u2019s demographic goals in a \u201csinisterly way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe sharp rise in physical violence and other forms of antisemitism around the world in recent years only highlights the need for Israel as a safe refuge from persecution,\u201d reads the NGO Monitor press release.<\/p>\n In addition to what the report describes as this \u201cintent to maintain domination,\u201d Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of a litany of abuses against Palestinians such as denying them the rights to free assembly and expression, including targeting them for speaking out against the occupation and shutting down \u201chundreds\u201d of NGOs and \u201cdozens\u201d of media outlets.<\/p>\n One military order described in the report states that \u201cparticipating in a gathering of more than 10 people without a military permit on any issue \u2018that could be construed as political\u2019\u201d can subject Palestinians to a 10-year prison term.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no effort to balance legitimate security needs against the rights of the people involved,\u201d Goldstein said.<\/p>\n