The argument that Israel practices apartheid, explained – By Li Zhouli (VOX) / Oct 20, 2023
Some human rights groups have reached this conclusion based on how the crime is defined in international law.
In recent years, human rights organizations and legal experts have increasingly described Israel’s policies toward Palestinians as apartheid, adding to a longstanding debate about whether this is an accurate way to categorize the country’s practices.
Apartheid, a term originating from the South African government’s systematic oppression of Black residents, is a crime against humanity under international law. At its core, it refers to policies intended to elevate one racial group over another, with the goal of maintaining the dominant group’s hegemony. In 1998, the International Criminal Court (to which Israel is not a party) defined it as “inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group … and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
Human rights groups have argued that the Israeli government’s policies on land access, restrictions on movement, and limitations on the right to vote meet the ICC’s standard and that it has institutionalized racism against Palestinians in order to ensure Israeli Jews remain the dominant group across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), which includes the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and its allies, including the US and the European Commission, have rejected this assessment.
International organizations’ use of this term has grown in the last five years.
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