Amnesty International accused Israel, on Tuesday, of subjecting Palestinians to a system of apartheid founded on policies of “segregation, dispossession and exclusion” that has amounted to crimes against humanity.
The London-based rights group said its findings were based on research and legal analysis in a 211-page report into Israeli seizure of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer of people and denial of citizenship.
Israel said the report, the second by an international rights group in less than a year to accuse it of pursuing a policy of apartheid, “consolidates and recycles lies” from hate groups and was designed to “pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism”.
It accused Amnesty UK of using “double standards and demonisation in order to delegitimise Israel.’’
The Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement that “the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly are obliged to heed the compelling evidence presented by Amnesty and other leading human rights organizations.
“It holds Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people, including through sanctions”.
Amnesty said Israel was enforcing a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians “wherever it has control over their rights”, including Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory and refugees living abroad.
The measures included restrictions on Palestinian movement in territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and preventing the return of Palestinian refugees.
Alongside forcible transfers, torture and unlawful killings, which Amnesty said were intended to maintain a system of “oppression and domination”, they constitute “the crime against humanity of apartheid”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said “Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny” with a free press and a strong Supreme Court.
Israel has cited security concerns in imposing travel restrictions on Palestinians, whose uprising in the early 2000s included suicide bombings in Israeli cities.
The Jewish Federations of North America denounced the report it described as “irresponsibly distorts international law, and advances hateful and disparaging rhetoric associated with age-old antisemitic tropes, while ignoring or whitewashing violence, terror and incitement committed by Palestinians.”
The Central Council of Jews in Germany echoed those remarks and called on Amnesty International’s German section to distance itself from the report, which it called antisemitic.
Amnesty said the U.N. Security Council should impose an arms embargo on Israel for killing scores of civilians during weekly protests on the border with Gaza in 2018-19.
Israel has said those protests included attempts by Palestinian militants to breach its border fence.
