The UN Special Rapporteur’s report echoes recent findings by
Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations
who analized Israel’s 55-year occupation of the
Palestinian Territory.
“There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a
deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system, that
privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300
illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,”
said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for
the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory
occupied since 1967.
‘Open-air prison’
Mentioning the lack of rights of people living in the same
vicinity, but separated by walls, checkpoints and roads, Mr. Link
acknowledged that “there are more than three million
Palestinians living under an oppressive rule of
institutional discrimination and without a path to a
genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised, is
their right”.
“Another two million Palestinians live in Gaza, described
regularly as an ‘open-air prison’, without adequate access to
power, water or health, with a collapsing economy and with no
ability to freely travel to the rest of Palestine or the outside
world”, he added.
He ran through the internationally-understood legal definition of
apartheid – the system of institutionalized racial segregation
practiced in South Africa prior to its dismantling in the early
1990s.
Israel, he said, conforms to the definition as a “political
regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental
political, legal and social rights to one group over another,
within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s
racial-national-ethnic identity”.
Crime against humanity
“Apartheid is not, sadly, a phenomenon confined to the
history books on southern Africa,” Mr. Lynk said, in his
report to the Human Rights Council.
“The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
came into law after the collapse of the old South Africa. It is a
forward-looking legal instrument which prohibits apartheid as a
crime against humanity today and into the future, wherever it may
exist.”
The independent rights expert added that Israel’s
military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory has
been deliberately built with the “intention of enduring facts on
the ground to demographically engineer a permanent, and illegal,
Israeli sovereign claim over occupied territory, while confining
Palestinians in smaller and more confined reserves of
disconnected land”.
Apartheid is not, sadly, a phenomenon confined to the history
books on southern Africa - UN rights expert Michael Lynk
He also mentioned that leading international figures – including
former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, and former Israeli
Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair – have also all described
Israel’s occupation, as apartheid.
International community’s responsibility
Citing inhumane acts, arbitrary and extra-judicial killings,
torture, the denial of fundamental rights, an abysmal child
mortality rate, collective punishment, an abusive military court
system, and home demolitions, Mr. Lynk said the international
community bears much responsibility for the present situation.
“For more than 40 years, the UN Security
Council and General Assembly have stated in hundreds of
resolutions that Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is
unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish
settlements are illegal, and its denial of Palestinian
self-determination breaches international law,” he added.
Highlighting that no accountability had ever followed, the
Special Rapporteur concluded, “if the international community had
truly acted on its resolutions 40 or 30 years ago, we would not
be talking about apartheid today.”
Mr. Link called on the international community to come up with an
imaginative list of effective accountability measures to bring
the Israeli occupation “and its apartheid practices” in the
occupied Palestinian territory, to a complete end.
Special Rapporteurs are part of what’s known as the Special
Procedures of the Human Rights Council. They are not UN
staff, and do not receive a salary for their work, and serve in
their own individual capacity.
