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After four years of research, Amnesty International, the world’s leading human rights organization, has today released a 280-page report detailing “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity” for which ”Israeli authorities must be held accountable.”
The Palestinian BDS National Committee, (BNC), the broadest Palestinian civil society coalition, warmly welcomes Amnesty International’s report, published today, condemning Israel’s apartheid regime.
Amnesty’s rigorously researched report outlines a brutal and intentional system of fragmentation, dispossession, segregation, and oppression against Indigenous Palestinians, residing both across historic Palestine and around the world as refugees.
This system, Amnesty concludes, meets the definition of apartheid under both the Rome Statute and the UN’s Apartheid Convention.
The report is the latest in a series of studies confirming what Palestinian and international human rights experts and advocates have been saying for decades: Israel is responsible for the crime against humanity of apartheid.
The BDS movement particularly welcomes Amnesty’s support for the demands: #UNinvestigateApartheid, #MilitaryEmbargo, #SanctionsOnIsrael, #ICC4Israel, and for states and institutions to ban business with Israel’s illegal settlements. Our South Africa moment is nearing. We shall #DismantleApartheid so our people can live in freedom, justice, and equality."
For its part, Palestine Solidarity Campaign Director, Ben Jamal, says: “Amnesty’s report is comprehensive, forensic and devastating in its conclusions.
PSC welcomes Amnesty International’s landmark report asserting Israeli apartheid is a “system of domination and a crime against humanity” practiced in the OPT, Israel and against Palestinian refugees.
PSC said that Report Amnesty’s calls for an arms embargo, targeted sanctions, ICC investigation among a series of concrete recommendations for the international community.
Provides specific recommendations for how the apartheid system can be dismantled, including the Right of Return for refugees and equal rights for all Palestinians living in Israel and OPT.
Its release means that the world’s two leading human rights monitoring organizations and Israel’s own leading human rights organization have all now affirmed what Palestinian civil society has been asserting for decades. That Israel is guilty of apartheid, a crime against humanity.
Those who continue to treat Israel as a normal functioning democracy, and to shield it from accountability for its crimes are complicit in the crime of apartheid and on the wrong side of history.
PSC welcomes the recommendations that Amnesty outlines - including targeted sanctions, an arms embargo, an investigation by the International Criminal Court, the exercise of universal jurisdiction, the right of return of refugees, and the granting of equal rights to everyone living under Israeli jurisdiction - and calls on the UK government to take immediate action, including ending the two-way arms trade with Israel.”
Amnesty International’s Recommendations for Justice & Accountability All states should exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
The International Criminal Court should consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigations.
UN Security Council should impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.
UN Security Council should impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.
An end to home demolitions and forced evictions.
Granting of equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and the OPT.
Recognition of the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived.
Full reparations for victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
States that are party to the Apartheid Convention have an obligation to exercise universal jurisdiction.
