Photo: ©Charlotte Marshall
Occupation and Apartheid
The Israeli occupation controls Palestinian movement (people and goods) through a network of checkpoints and obstacles such as roadblocks and roads reserved for settlers only. In addition, Palestinians under occupation live under Israeli military rule, whereas Israeli settlers live under civilian rule, leading several human rights organisations to label the situation as Apartheid.
One of the main obstacles to Palestinian freedom of travel is the Separation Wall which Israel began building in 2002 and which puts 8.5% of the Palestinian West Bank on the ‘wrong side’. This includes prime agricultural land, water resources, and tens of thousands of Palestinian people. In 2004, the International Court of Justice at The Hague gave an advisory ruling that parts of the route of the wall were illegal and should be dismantled, but construction continues to this day.
Har Gilo settlement near Bethlehem.
On top of this, large parts of the West Bank is completely off-limits to Palestinian people: their land is taken up and fragmented by settlements, military training zones, ‘nature reserves’, and Israeli army bases. For example, in the Bethlehem region, 87% of the land is unavailable for Palestinian use. The UN has condemned these settlements in Palestinian in a number of resolutions, declaring them to be illegal under international law. The number of settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank has grown to over 700,000. Settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank are connected to each other and to Israel through bypass roads that cut through Palestinian land. Israeli settlers in the West Bank are allowed to carry weapons, and often attack Palestinians and their property. Israel continues to expand existing settlements, as well as annexing more Palestinian land to build new settlements. This planned annexing of land and the settlements are viewed by many to be one of the major obstacles to peace, and a deliberate attempt by the Israeli Government to completely annex parts of the West Bank into the State of Israel.
Fakhry Abu Diab stands in front of his demolished home in Silwan, East Jerusalem.
Many Israeli and Jewish leaders, groups and individuals are determined to transform the West Bank and particularly East Jerusalem in to a majority Jewish area for religious and ideological reasons. To this end, while settlements increase, Israel uses tactics such as house demolitions to increase the ratio of Israelis to Palestinians. Since 1948 Israel has demolished more than 130,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, often on the pretext that that the construction was ‘illegal’. Yet Palestinians are routinely denied planning permission by the Israeli authorities, while Jewish settlements grow.
Palestinian civilians are also subjected to a matrix of control over their movements even within their own towns and cities. There are now over 890 Checkpoints, gates, and roadblocks across the West Bank, making travel between towns and cities extremely challenging. On top of waiting for hours at these checkpoints, or dealing with them being closed arbitrarily, Palestinians also need specific permits to access places like Jerusalem. Since the attacks on October 7th 2023, all Palestinian permits to work in Israel have been revoked, as have many of those who had permits to work in Jerusalem. This has led to an increasing economic and unemployment crisis in the West Bank.
Palestinian Christian Layan Nassir has been arrested twice and held in administrative detention for several months. She has not been formerly charged with any crime.
Furthermore, Palestinians (even children) in the West Bank are subject to harassment, arrest and imprisonment without trial or charge (called administrative detention), where they can be held for up to 6 months in prison without being formally charged with an offence. Today there are over 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, and of those, over 3,600 are being held in administrative detention. 300 are children, many serving administrative detention in adult prisons, in direct violation of international law.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion after evidence from many states and organisations was submitted which concluded that Israel’s occupation policies and practices are in breach of international law, and called on Israel to dismantle the occupation within 1 year.
This report agrees with much of the analysis conducted by international and Israeli human rights organisations in the last 3 years that Israel is committing the crime of Apartheid against the Palestinian people. You can access those reports by clicking the links below.
ThisisApartheid (B’Tselem)
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution | HRW.
Contact us