Grandstand. Published on 1er February, Amnesty International’s report entitled “Israeli apartheid against the Palestinian population: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity” adds to the indictments of Human Rights Watch and the Israeli NGO B ‘Tselem. Except that Amnesty goes much further by attacking the very foundations of the state. As one might expect, he was coolly welcomed by the Israeli authorities who, as usual, dodged the question of the occupation to accuse the NGO of being an organization “radical”wanting “delegitimize” Israel.
The main criticism that can be leveled against Amnesty is that it weakened the scope of its report by making several approximations. The first relates to the definition of apartheid. The NGO takes as a reference the international convention adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in November 1973, for the elimination and repression of the crime of apartheid. This refers to “inhuman acts (…) committed with a view to establishing or maintaining the domination of one racial group of human beings over any other racial group of human beings and to systematically oppress that group..
Among these acts are mentioned attacks on dignity, arbitrary arrests, restrictions of freedoms and fundamental human rights, expropriation of property. But there is a second meaning of the word “apartheid” that the NGO ignores and which refers to the segregationist policy implemented by the racist regime of South Africa to establish white supremacy over non-white populations ( apartheid means “separation” in Afrikaans).
Without war, no domination
The 1973 convention clearly applies to the situation in the West Bank. A segregationist system has been established there, with separate legal and administrative structures for settlers and Palestinians. The former are tried before Israeli courts, in accordance with Israeli criminal law, the latter before military courts which impose much harsher sentences.
Palestinians do not enjoy political rights and their civil rights are limited. Arbitrary arrests and expropriation of property are commonplace. The response of the Israeli authorities to the report evacuates more than fifty years of unchallenged domination and unbridled colonization, and evades the annexation of East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian inhabitants, pushed to leave the city by Jewish associations, do not have rights equal to those of the Jewish inhabitants.
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