Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem, Hebron, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. Israel’s cruel policies like forced evictions, home demolitions, and separation of families across all territories under its control amount to apartheid. Recognising this racist system for what it is, is the first step to dismantling it.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, successive governments have created and maintained a system of laws, policies, and practices designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians. This system plays out in different ways across the different areas where Israel exercises control over Palestinians’ rights. However, the intent is always the same: to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.
We've documented four ways the Israeli authorities enact this system:
Fragmentation
Keeping Palestinians separated from each other into distinct territorial, legal and administrative domains
Dispossession
Decades of discriminatory land and property seizures, home demolitions, and forced evictions
Segregation
A system of laws and policies that keep Palestinians restricted to enclaves, subject to several measures that control their lives, and segregated from Jewish Israelis
Deprivation
The deliberate impoverishment of Palestinians. For example, keeping them at a great disadvantage in comparison to Jewish Israelis
Yesterday, Israel’s parliament reauthorised a racist law banning Palestinians from gaining citizenship or residency in Israel through marriage.
This law is yet another pillar of Israel’s system of apartheid.#EndIsraeliApartheid pic.twitter.com/hI137yFjak
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) March 11, 2022
To learn more about: the crime of apartheid in international law, what apartheid looks like in Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories, and how it affects Palestinians’ lives, take our free course on Deconstructing Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians. It's a self-paced course, meaning you can go through the material at your own pace.
The Palestinian experience of being denied a home is at the heart of Israel’s apartheid system. Every week, Israeli authorities displace Palestinians through home demolitions or forced evictions, deliberately disadvantaging them and giving them inferior status to Israeli Jews.
Israel has forcibly displaced entire Palestinian communities and demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinians’ homes for over 73 years. Today at least 150,000 are at real risk of losing their homes. Countries like the UK must stand on the right side of history and condemn these blatant human rights violations.
❝The international response to apartheid must no longer be limited to bland condemnations and equivocating. Unless we tackle the root causes, Palestinians and Israelis will remain locked in the cycle of violence which has destroyed so many lives. ❞
Agnès Callamard
Our report includes dozens of wide-ranging recommendations to the Israeli authorities and other relevant stakeholders to dismantle the system of apartheid against Palestinians and end the associated human rights violations. In the short term, we are calling for Israel’s Prime Minister to:
- 🎯 Cancel all orders for forced evictions and home demolitions against Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
- 🎯 End the forced displacement of Palestinians