Israel maintains an apartheid regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean: this is the radioactive observation made for the first time by a leading Israeli Jewish human rights organization, B’Tselem. In a report published on Tuesday, January 12, the NGO breaks free from the commonly accepted division between the political systems in place in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Democracy on the one hand, temporary military occupation on the other. B’Tselem believes that such a distinction has become meaningless over time, since Israel’s conquest of the territories in the 1967 war. ” [Cette distinction] obscures the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized according to a single principle: to advance and cement the supremacy of a group – the Jews – on another – the Palestinians ”, judge the organization.
It is the definition of an apartheid state, according to the historical precedent of the former regime of racial segregation in South Africa, a controversial comparison to the last degree in Israel. But above all according to the definition established by international law: the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court in 2002, makes it a crime against humanity.
Denunciation of institutionalized Jewish supremacy
“We want to change the talk about what’s going on here. One of the reasons that nothing is moving is that the situation is not analyzed correctly ” says the executive director of the NGO, Hagai El-Ad. This stance goes beyond the generally accepted analysis even within the Israeli left. But it does not surprise for all that, being part of a fundamental movement.
Already in July 2020, the lawyer Michaël Sfard published a legal analysis for the human rights NGO Yesh Din, in which he concluded that there was a reality of apartheid in the West Bank territories. This distinction is crucial. The occupation, as long as it remains temporary, is legal under international law. Its role is to regulate it and mitigate its violence, but it can only condemn a proven crime of apartheid.
However, we must distinguish between these critical positions. Yesh Din limits his analysis to the West Bank. M. Sfard himself believes that a “Process of unification is at work between the two regimes”, in Israel and in the territories. But he still wants to distinguish them, “Just as one cannot confuse a colonial power, like England in the 19the century, and the local administration of its colonies ”, he specifies.
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