Palestinian BDS National Committee welcomes Amnesty’s report on Israel’s apartheid
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) “warmly” welcomed Amnesty International’s new report that says Israel’s actions against Palestinians amount to the international definition of “apartheid”.
“We warmly welcome the publication of Amnesty International’s report, titled, “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity,” the Palestinian BDS National Committee said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
It added that Amnesty’s “meticulously 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.”
The BDS movement particularly welcomed “Amnesty’s endorsement of the demands, #UNinvestigateApartheid, #MilitaryEmbargo, #SanctionsOnIsrael, #ICC4Israel, and its call on states and institutions to ban business with Israel’s illegal settlements.”
The BNC said that 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 perpetrating the crime of apartheid against the Indigenous Palestinian people.”
The BNC called to make sure that “governments and the UN take action to end Israel’s apartheid regime as they did with apartheid in Southern Africa in the past,” while referring to the former UN chief Ban Ki-moon suggestion last June that ‘Israel’ is imposing apartheid on Palestinians.
It also referred to the 47 independent human rights experts within the UN who stated last year that Israel’s plans to illegally annex Palestinian land would constitute “a vision of a 21st-century apartheid.”
“Our South Africa moment is nearing,” the BNC said. “With your support, we can and shall #DismantleApartheid to live in freedom, justice and equality.”
Amnesty International said in a new report that Israel’ is carrying out “the crime of apartheid against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an inferior racial group”.
Released on Tuesday, the 278-page report by the leading rights group details how Israeli occupation authorities enforce a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinians.
The damning investigation sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system “which amounts to apartheid under international law.”
Amnesty said that this system is maintained by violations which the rights group found to “constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.”
Amnesty International has also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the “crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT” and called on all states to “exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.”