Responding to Israel’s apartheid, conference to be held in London to hear from directors of human rights NGOs
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- In response to Israel’s apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories, a conference will be held next week in London to hear from directors of five leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups.
The conference, hosted by International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), will be taken place at the Telford Theatre of One Great George Street Westminster on Tuesday 31, May at 6:30 to hear directors from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Al Haq, B’Tselem and DAWN explaining “international legal responsibilities, mechanisms for accountability and change.”
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians is a new, independent London based organisation composed of lawyers, academics and politicians, who are seeking justice for Palestinians wherever they may live.
The ICJP said in an early announcement, “Israeli state supported by legal architecture promotes Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea perpetuating a racialised regime of dispossession, cruel domination and systematic fragmentation of the Palestinian people.”
“This constitutes apartheid according to the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute. A threshold has been crossed.”
The five leading human rights groups have recently declared that ‘Israel’ is committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution according to international law. These crimes against humanity are occurring ‘in a post-apartheid world,’ as the UN Special Rapporteur, Michael Lynk has recently reported.
The conference will address the question as to “how the international community generally and the British government specifically should respond to these findings? What are its legal obligations when it comes to occupation, settlements, trade deals, supply of arms, administrative detention, the siege on Gaza and potential corporate and state complicity in war crimes?”
Israel & Apartheid – Hear in person from Directors of the worlds leading human rights organisations. 31 May 2022 London. Free tickets. Book now https://t.co/AC5jilaw1g pic.twitter.com/TydJ4mdczZ
— ICJP (@ICJPalestine) May 21, 2022
In February, Amnesty International released a 278-page report detailing 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 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.”
A year ago, B’Tselem also drew criticism from Israeli politicians when it asserted that Israeli policies had been designed to enforce “Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch in April last year became the first significant international rights group to publicly level the allegation of apartheid.
