Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution
Summary Summary
Approximately 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This region encompasses Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), consisting of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. In most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remaining parts, Israel exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian autonomy. In most aspects of daily life, Israeli authorities systematically favor Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by senior officials clearly demonstrate that the goal of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In this context, the authorities have, to varying degrees, dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians because of their identity. In some places, as this report describes, these abuses are so serious that they constitute crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
Several widely held assumptions have obscured the reality of the deep-rooted discriminatory domination of the Palestinians by Israeli authorities. These include the assumptions that the occupation is temporary, that the «peace process» will soon end Israeli abuses, that Palestinians have significant control over their lives in the West Bank and Gaza, and that Israel is an egalitarian democracy within its borders. With the exception of a six-month period during its 73-year history, Israel has consistently imposed military rule on at least a portion of the Palestinian population. This was the case for the vast majority of Palestinians within Israel itself from 1948 to 1966. From 1967 to the present, Israel has militarily ruled over the Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. In contrast, since the founding of Israel, all Jewish Israelis, including settlers established in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, have benefited from civilian governance that is more respectful of human rights. Over the past 54 years, Israeli authorities have facilitated the transfer of Jewish Israelis to the OPT, granting them superior legal status compared to Palestinians living in the same territory. This includes civil rights, access to land and freedom of movement, building permits, and the granting of residency rights for close relatives. While Palestinians have limited autonomy in certain parts of the OPT, Israel retains primary control over borders, airspace, the movement of people and goods, security, and the registry of the entire population, which determines issues such as legal status and eligibility for identity cards.
A number of Israeli officials have openly stated their intention to maintain this control in perpetuity and translated their words into action, including the continued expansion of settlements during the decades-long "peace process".
The unilateral annexation of additional areas of the West Bank, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has promised to complete, would formalize the reality of long-standing systematic Israeli domination and oppression without changing the reality that the entire West Bank is occupied territory under international occupation law, including East Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed in 1967.
International criminal law has defined two crimes against humanity for situations of systematic discrimination and repression: apartheid and persecution. Crimes against humanity are among the most heinous under international law.
Over the years, the international community has detached the term apartheid from its original South African context, developing a universal legal prohibition of this practice, recognized as a crime against humanity according to the definitions set out in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid («Apartheid Convention») and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The crime against humanity of persecution, also stated in the Rome Statute, namely the intentional and serious deprivation of fundamental rights on racial, ethnic and other grounds, is the outcome of trials following the Second World War and constitutes one of the most serious international crimes, of equal gravity to that of apartheid.
The State of Palestine is a party to both the Rome Statute and the Apartheid Convention. In February 2021, the ICC ruled that it had jurisdiction over serious international crimes committed throughout the OPT, including East Jerusalem, among which are crimes against humanity such as apartheid and persecution. In March 2021, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC announced the opening of a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.
The term apartheid is increasingly used in reference to Israel and the OPT, but generally in a descriptive or comparative, rather than legal, sense, often to emphasize that the current situation is evolving in a regrettable direction. In particular, Israeli, Palestinian, American, and European officials, prominent media commentators, and others have asserted that if Israel's policies and practices toward the Palestinians continue on their current trajectory, the situation, at least in the West Bank, would amount to apartheid. Some have claimed that the current reality is tantamount to apartheid. However, few have conducted a detailed legal analysis based on the international crimes of apartheid or persecution. .
See, for example, «In 1976 interview, Rabin likens settler ideologues to 'cancer,' warns of 'apartheid'‘ Times of Israel, September 25, 2015, https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-1976-interview-rabin-likens-settlements-to-cancer-warns-of-apartheid/ (accessed June 4, 2020); MS, ‘Ehud Barak breaks the apartheid barrier’, The Economist, February 15, 2010, https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2010/02/15/ehud-barak-breaks-the-apartheid-barrier (accessed June 4, 2020); Rory McCarthy, ’Israel risks apartheid-like struggle if two-state solution fails, says Olmert,‘ The Guardian, November 30, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/30/israel (accessed June 4, 2020); Zehava Galon (@zehavagalon), April 18, 2021, Twitter, https://twitter.com/zehavagalon/status/1251391524157435904?lang=en, (accessed July 13, 2020); ‘Abbas tells UN it's responsible for ending Israeli ’apartheid’,» Times of Israel, September 20, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-tells-un-its-responsible-for-ending-israeli-apartheid/ (accessed July 5, 2020); Jimmy Carter, «Israel, Palestine, Peace and Apartheid,» The Guardian, December 12, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/israel.politicsphilosophyandsociety (accessed June 4, 2020); Peter Beaumont, «Israel risks becoming apartheid state if peace talks fail, says John Kerry,» The Guardian, April 29, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/israel-apartheid-state-peace-talks-john-kerry (accessed June 4, 2020); Alon Liel, «Trump’s Plan for Palestine Looks a Lot Like Apartheid‘, Foreign Policy, February 27, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/27/trumps-plan-for-palestine-looks-a-lot-like-apartheid/ (accessed June 4, 2020); ;
«Binyamin Netanyahu: A Parable of Modern Populism,» The Economist, March 30, 2019, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/03/30/binyamin-netanyahu-a-parable-of-modern-populism (accessed June 4, 2020); New York Times Editorial Board, «Mr. Netanyahu’s Next Test,» The New York Times, April 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/editorials/israel-election-netanyahu-trump.html (accessed June 4, 2020); ;
Ishaan Tharoor, «Netanyahu Sees a Path to Victory. Critics See Apartheid,» The Washington Post, April 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/08/netanyahu-sees-path-victory-critics-see-apartheid/?noredirect=on (accessed June 4, 2020); «Civil Administration Advances 1,936 Settlement Units,» Peace Now press release, January 6, 2020, https://peacenow.org.il/en/civil-administration-advances-1936-settlement-units (accessed June 4, 2020); «Grave Concern About US Plan to Resolve Israel-Palestine Conflict,» The Guardian, February 27, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/grave-concern-about-us-plan-to-resolve-israel-palestine-conflict (accessed June 4, 2020); «Trump Plan Normalizes Israel’s Apartheid Regime in West Bank, Calls for Annexation and Forced Transfer of 260,000 Palestinian Citizens of Israel,» Adalah press release, January 30, 2020, https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/9900 (accessed June 4, 2020); Daniel Sokatch, «The Democratic Pushback to Annexation,» New Israel Fund blog, January 30, 2020, https://www.nif.org/blog/we-are-the-democratic-pushback-to-annexation/ (accessed June 4, 2020); Gadi Taub, «The Results Are In, and Peace Lost,» The New York Times, January 29, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/opinion/the-results-are-in-and-peace-lost.html (accessed June 4, 2020); Thomas L. Friedman, «Campus Hypocrisy,» The New York Times, October 16, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/opinion/campus-hypocrisy.html (accessed June 4, 2020).
2 See, for example, Nathan Thrall, «The Separate Regimes Delusion», London Review of Books, Vol. 43, No. 2, 21 January 2021, https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/nathan-thrall/the-separate-regimes-delusion (accessed 19 January 2021); «A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid», B'Tselem, 12 January 2021, https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid (accessed 19 January 2021). 3 Among those who have done so: «ESCWA Launches Report on Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,» press release from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), March 15, 2017, https://www.unescwa.org/news/escwa-launches-report-israeli-practices-towards-palestinian-people-and-question-apartheid (accessed June 4, 2020) (the report is no longer available online; HRW has a copy); «Palestinian, Regional and International Groups Submit Report on Israeli Apartheid to UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,» press release from Al-Haq, November 12, 2019, https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16183.html (accessed January 19, 2021); Yesh Din, «The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion,» July 9, 2020, https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/ (accessed August 12, 2020).
In this report, Human Rights Watch examines the extent to which this threshold has already been crossed in some of the areas where Israeli authorities exercise control.
Definitions of Apartheid and Persecution: The prohibition of institutionalized discrimination, particularly on the grounds of race or ethnic origin, is a fundamental element of international law. Most states have agreed to consider the worst forms of discrimination—persecution and apartheid—as crimes against humanity and have empowered the ICC to prosecute these crimes when national authorities are unable or unwilling to do so. Crimes against humanity are specific criminal acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack, or acts committed in accordance with a state or organizational policy directed against a civilian population.
The Apartheid Convention defines the crime against humanity of apartheid as "inhumane acts" "committed with the aim of establishing or maintaining the domination of one racial group of human beings over any other racial group of human beings and of systematically oppressing the latter." The Rome Statute of the ICC uses a similar definition:
«Inhumane acts […] committed within the framework of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over any other racial group or groups and with the intention of maintaining that regime.» The Rome Statute does not further define what constitutes an «institutionalized regime.».
The crime of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute is characterized by three main elements: the intent to maintain a system of domination of one racial group over another; the systematic oppression exercised by one racial group over another; and one or more inhumane acts, as defined, committed in a widespread or systematic manner in accordance with such policies.
Among the inhumane acts identified in the Convention or in the Rome Statute are "forced transfer", "expropriation of landed property", "creation of separate reserves and ghettos" and the denial of "the right to leave and return to their country, [and] the right to a nationality".
The Rome Statute identifies the crime against humanity of persecution as «the deliberate and serious denial of fundamental rights in violation of international law on grounds relating to the identity of the group or collectivity targeted,» including racial, national, or ethnic grounds. Customary international law identifies the crime of persecution as consisting of two main elements: (1) widespread or systematic serious violations of fundamental rights, and (2) discriminatory intent.
Few tribunals have dealt with cases involving the crime of persecution, and none with the crime of apartheid, resulting in insufficient jurisprudence on the meaning of key terms in their definitions. As described in the report, international criminal tribunals have, over the past two decades, assessed group identity based on context and the construction of local actors, as opposed to earlier approaches focused on genetic physical traits. Under international human rights law, particularly the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), race and racial discrimination have been broadly interpreted as including distinctions based on ancestry and national or ethnic origin, among other categories.
Application to Israeli Policies Toward the Palestinians: Two main groups live in Israel and the OPT today: Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, under the authority of a primary sovereign power, the Israeli government. Intention to Maintain Domination: A stated objective of the Israeli government is to ensure that Jewish Israelis maintain their dominance over Israel and the OPT. In 2018, the Knesset passed a law with constitutional status affirming that Israel is «the nation-state of the Jewish people,» declaring that within this territory, the right to self-determination «is unique to the Jewish people,» and establishing «Jewish settlement» as a national value. To maintain Jewish Israeli control, Israeli authorities have adopted policies aimed at mitigating what they have openly described as the demographic «threat» posed by the Palestinians. These policies included limiting the Palestinian population and its political power, granting voting rights only to Palestinians living within Israel's borders as they existed between 1948 and June 1967, and restricting Palestinians' ability to move between Israel and the OPT, and from anywhere else into Israel or the OPT. Other measures were taken to ensure Jewish dominance, including a state policy of "separation" of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, which prevents the movement of people and goods within the OPT, and the "Judaization" of areas with significant Palestinian populations, including Jerusalem, as well as the Galilee and the Negev, in Israel. This policy, which aims to maximize Jewish Israeli control of land, concentrates the majority of Palestinians living outside major, predominantly Jewish Israeli cities in densely populated and poorly served enclaves, and restricts their access to land and housing, while promoting the growth of neighboring Jewish communities.
Systematic Oppression and Institutional Discrimination: To achieve its objective of domination, the Israeli government engages in institutional discrimination against Palestinians. The severity of this discrimination varies depending on the specific rules established by the Israeli government within Israel and the particular areas of the OPT where it is most pronounced.
In the OPT, which Israel has recognized as a single territory encompassing the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli authorities treat Palestinians separately and unequally compared to Jewish Israeli settlers. In the occupied West Bank, Israel subjects Palestinians to a draconian military regime and implements segregation, largely prohibiting Palestinians from entering settlements. In the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel imposes a generalized closure, marked by severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods—measures that Gaza's other neighbor, Egypt, often does nothing to mitigate. In annexed East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its sovereign territory but which remains occupied territory under international law, Israel grants the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live there a legal status that weakens their residency rights by conditioning them on each individual's ties to the city, among other factors. This level of discrimination amounts to systematic oppression.
In Israel, a country that the vast majority of nations consider to be defined by its pre-1967 borders, the stark differences in acquiring citizenship and the distinction made between nationality and citizenship confer upon Palestinian citizens a lower legal status than Jewish citizens. While Palestinians living in Israel, unlike those in the OPT, have the right to vote and run in Israeli elections, these rights do not allow them to overcome the institutional discrimination they face from the Israeli government, whether it be widespread restrictions on access to confiscated land, home demolitions, or de facto bans on family reunification.
The fragmentation of the Palestinian population, partly deliberately resulting from Israeli restrictions on the rights of movement and residence, furthers the objective of domination and helps to obscure the reality that the Israeli government is repressing a single Palestinian population, to varying degrees in different areas, for the benefit of the domination of the same group of Jewish Israelis.
Inhumane Acts and Other Violations of Fundamental Rights: As part of these policies, the Israeli authorities have committed a series of inhumane acts in the OPT. These include sweeping restrictions on the movement of 4.7 million Palestinians; the confiscation of much of their land; the imposition of harsh living conditions, including the outright refusal to issue building permits in large parts of the West Bank, leading thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes in conditions amounting to forced transfer; the denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives, largely because they were abroad when the occupation began in 1967, or for long periods during the first decades of the occupation, or as a result of the effective freeze on family reunification during the last two decades; and the suspension of fundamental civil rights, such as the freedoms of assembly and association, depriving Palestinians of the opportunity to express their views on a wide range of issues that have a real impact on their daily lives and their future. Many of these abuses, including outright refusals to issue building permits, mass revocations or restrictions on residency rights, and large-scale land confiscations, have no legitimate security justification; others, such as the extent of restrictions on movement and civil rights, fail the test of a reasonable balance between security concerns and the seriousness of the violations related to those concerns.
Since the founding of the State of Israel, successive governments have also systematically discriminated against Palestinians living within the pre-1967 borders and violated their rights, notably by refusing them access to the millions of dunams of land (1,000 dunams being equivalent to 100 hectares) that were confiscated from them. In the Negev alone, these policies have made it virtually impossible for tens of thousands of Palestinians to live legally in the communities where they have been established for decades. Furthermore, Israeli authorities refuse to allow the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled in 1948, as well as their descendants, to return to Israel or the OPT, and impose sweeping restrictions on legal residency, preventing many Palestinian spouses and families from living together in Israel.
Findings of the Report: This report examines Israeli policies and practices toward Palestinians in the OPT and in Israel and compares them to the treatment of Jewish Israelis living in the same territories. It is not an exhaustive assessment of all types of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Rather, it examines the practices and policies of the Israeli government that violate the fundamental rights of Palestinians and are aimed at ensuring the dominance of Jewish Israelis, and evaluates them in light of the definitions of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
The report draws on years of research and documentation by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, including field investigations specifically conducted for the preparation of this report. Human Rights Watch also reviewed Israeli laws, government planning documents, statements by officials, and land records. We then analyzed this evidence according to existing legal standards for the crimes of apartheid and persecution. Human Rights Watch also wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July 2020, seeking his views on the issues covered in the report, but as of the date of publication, we had not received a response.
The report does not seek to compare Israel with apartheid-era South Africa or to determine whether Israel is an apartheid state, a concept that does not exist under international law. Rather, the report assesses whether the actions and policies of the Israeli authorities in specific areas amount to the crimes of apartheid and persecution as defined by international law.
Each of the report’s three main chapters examines Israel’s domination over the Palestinians: the dynamics of its governance and discrimination, studying Israel and the OPT in turn, the specific violations it commits there, and some of the objectives that motivate its policies. It does so with regard to the main components of the crimes of apartheid and persecution, as outlined above. Human Rights Watch assesses the dynamics of the Israeli government in each of these areas, keeping in mind the different legal frameworks that apply in the OPT and in Israel, the two legally recognized territorial entities, each with a different status under international law. While noting important factual differences between the components of each of these two territories, the report does not establish distinct subregional determinations.
Based on its research, Human Rights Watch concludes that the Israeli government has demonstrated its intention to maintain Jewish Israeli domination over Palestinians through Israel and the OPT. In the OPT, including East Jerusalem, this intention has been accompanied by systematic oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three elements are present simultaneously, they constitute the crime of apartheid.
Israeli officials have also committed the crime against humanity of persecution. This conclusion is based on the discriminatory intent underlying Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the serious abuses committed in the OPT, including the widespread confiscation of private land, the effective prohibition of building or living in many areas, the massive denial of residency rights, and the sweeping restrictions imposed on freedom of movement and fundamental civil rights for decades. Such policies and practices intentionally and severely deprive millions of Palestinians of essential fundamental rights, including residency, private property, and access to land, services, and resources, on a widespread and systematic basis because of their Palestinian identity.
The goal of maximizing Palestinian land occupancy: Israeli policies have sought to increase the number of Jews, as well as the land they possess, in Israel and in those parts of the OPT coveted by the Israeli government for Jewish settlement. At the same time, by restricting Palestinian residency rights, Israeli policy seeks to minimize the number of Palestinians and the land they possess in these areas. The level of repression is highest in the OPT, although less severe aspects of similar policies are often at work in Israel.
In the West Bank, authorities have confiscated more than two million dunams (200,000 hectares) of land from Palestinians, representing more than a third of the West Bank, including tens of thousands of dunams they recognize as Palestinian private property. A common tactic is to declare territory, including privately owned Palestinian land, as "state land." The Israeli organization Peace Now estimates that the Israeli government has designated approximately 1.4 million dunams (140,000 hectares) of land, roughly a quarter of the West Bank, as state land. It has also found that more than 30% of the land used for settlements is recognized by the Israeli government as belonging to Palestinians. Of the more than 675,000 dunams (67,500 hectares of state-owned land) that Israeli authorities have allocated to third parties in the West Bank, they have reserved more than 99,000 for Israeli civilians, according to government data. According to B'Tselem, the appropriation of land for settlements and infrastructure primarily intended for settlers effectively concentrates Palestinians in the West Bank into 165 non-contiguous "territorial enclaves.".
Israeli authorities have also made it practically impossible for Palestinians in Area C, some 60 million square kilometers of the West Bank placed under full Israeli control by the Oslo Accords, as well as those in East Jerusalem, to obtain building permits. In Area C, for example, authorities approved fewer than 1.5 million building permit applications submitted by Palestinians between 2016 and 2018—21 in total—a figure 100 times lower than the number of demolitions they ordered during the same period, according to official data. Israeli authorities have razed thousands of Palestinian properties in these areas due to the lack of permits, forcing thousands of families to relocate. However, according to Peace Now, Israeli authorities began construction of more than 21,263 housing units between 2009 and 2019 in Israeli settlements in Area C. The transfer of civilian population from an occupying power to occupied territory constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
These policies stem from long-standing plans of the Israeli authorities. For example, the 1980 Drobles Plan, which guided the government's settlement policy in the West Bank at the time and built upon earlier plans, called on the authorities to "settle the territorial question between the population centers of the [Arab] minority and their surroundings," noting that this would make it "difficult for the Palestinians to create territorial contiguity and political unity" and "dispel any doubt as to our intention to control Judea and Samaria forever.".
In Jerusalem, the government's plan for the municipality, including both the occupied west and east of the city, sets the objective of "maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city" and a "demographic ratio of 70 % Jews and 30 % Arabs" [...] later readjusted to a ratio of 60/40 after the authorities recognized that "this objective is not achievable" in light of the current "demographic trend".
The Israeli government has also carried out discriminatory land seizures within Israel itself. Through various mechanisms, the authorities have seized at least 4.5 million dunams (450,000 hectares) of Palestinian land, according to historians. This represents 65 to 75 percent of all land owned by Palestinians before 1948 and 40 to 60 percent of the land that belonged to Palestinians who remained after 1948 and became Israeli citizens. In the early years of the state, the authorities declared land belonging to displaced Palestinians "absentee property" or "closed military zones," then took control of it, converting it into state land and developing Jewish communities there. The authorities continue to prevent Palestinian citizens from accessing the land that has been confiscated from them. A 2003 government-commissioned report revealed that "expropriation activities were clearly and explicitly linked to the interests of the Jewish majority" and that state lands, which constitute 93% of all land in Israel, effectively serve the purpose of "Jewish settlement." Since 1948, the government has authorized the establishment of over 900 "Jewish settlements" in Israel, but has, conversely, authorized only a handful of townships and villages planned by the government for Palestinians, created largely to concentrate previously displaced Bedouin communities living in the Negev.
Land confiscations and other discriminatory land policies in Israel are at work in Palestinian municipalities located within Israel, denying them the opportunities for natural expansion enjoyed by Jewish municipalities. The vast majority of Palestinian citizens, who comprise about 19% of the Israeli population, live in these municipalities, which have estimated jurisdiction over less than 3% of all land in Israel. While Palestinians in Israel can move freely and some live in "mixed cities," such as Haifa, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Acre, Israeli law allows small towns to exclude potential residents based on their perceived incompatibility with the town's "sociocultural" fabric. According to a study by a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, more than 900 small Jewish localities across Israel, including kibbutzim, can impose restrictions on who can live there. None of them have Palestinian inhabitants.
In Israel's Negev desert, Israeli authorities have refused to legally recognize 35 Palestinian Bedouin communities, preventing their approximately 90,000 residents from living legally in the communities where they have been established for decades. Instead, the authorities have sought to concentrate the Bedouin communities into larger, recognized municipalities in order, as stated in government plans and declarations by political leaders, to maximize the amount of land available for Jewish communities. Israeli law deems all buildings in these unrecognized villages illegal, and the authorities have refused to connect most of the settlements to the national electricity or water grids or even to construct basic infrastructure such as paved roads or sewage systems. The communities are not listed on official maps, most lack schools, and residents live under the constant threat of their homes being demolished. Israeli authorities demolished more than 10,000 Bedouin homes in the Negev between 2013 and 2019, according to government data. They razed an unrecognized village, al-Araqib, which had contested the expropriation of its land 185 times.
The authorities implemented these policies in accordance with government plans dating back to the early years of the State of Israel, which called for restricting Bedouin communities to secure land for Jewish settlement. Several months before becoming prime minister in December 2000, Ariel Sharon declared that the Negev Bedouins were «eating away at the country’s land reserves,» which he characterized as a «demographic phenomenon.» As prime minister, Sharon continued to implement a multi-billion-dollar plan that openly sought to stimulate Jewish settlement in Israel’s Negev and Galilee regions, areas with significant Palestinian populations. His then-Deputy Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, later described the plan as a «battle for the future of the Jewish people.».
Sharon's efforts to Judaize the Negev, as well as the Galilee, took shape in the context of the government's decision to withdraw Jewish settlers from Gaza. After ending Jewish settlement activity in that territory, Israel began to view Gaza as a territorial jurisdiction whose population it could exclude from the demographic calculation of the Jewish and Palestinian population living in Israel and in the vast majority of the OPT—the West Bank, including East Jerusalem—which Israel intends to retain. Israeli officials at the time acknowledged the demographic objectives behind this decision. Amid pressure to remove settlers from Gaza, Sharon stated in a speech to the Israeli people in August 2005: "We cannot remain in Gaza forever. More than a million Palestinians live there, and their numbers are doubling every generation." Peres stated that same month: "We are disengaging from Gaza because of demographics."«
Despite the withdrawal of its settlers and ground troops, Israel has decisively remained the supreme power in Gaza, dominating by other means, and thus maintaining its legal obligations as an occupying power, as noted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN, among others. Most importantly, Israel prohibits Palestinians living there—with few exceptions—from leaving through the Erez Crossing, which it controls, and has instituted a formal «separation policy» between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, even though Israel recognized in the Oslo Accords that these two parts of the OPT collectively constitute a «single territorial unit.».
The blanket travel ban, in place since 2007 and which has reduced travel outside Gaza to a fraction of what it was 20 years ago, is not based on an individualized security assessment and does not withstand reasonable scrutiny that would seek a balance between security concerns and the right to freedom of movement of more than two million people.
The authorities have also severely restricted the entry and exit of goods to and from Gaza, which, combined with Egypt's frequent border closures, isolates the territory from the outside world. These restrictions have contributed to limiting access to basic services, devastating the economy, and making 80% of the population dependent on humanitarian aid. In recent years, Gazan families have had to do without electricity from the central grid for between 12 and 20 hours a day, depending on the season. Drinking water is also extremely scarce, with the UN considering more than 96% of Gaza's water supply to be "unfit for human consumption." In the West Bank, too, Israeli authorities prohibit holders of Palestinian identity cards from entering East Jerusalem, the land beyond the separation barrier, and areas controlled by settlements and the army, unless they present exemptions that are difficult to obtain. They have also erected nearly 600 permanent barriers, many between Palestinian communities, which disrupt the daily lives of Palestinians. In contrast, Israeli authorities allow Jewish settlers in the West Bank to move freely throughout most of this territory under their exclusive control, as well as to and from Israel, on roads built to facilitate their movement and integrate them into all aspects of Israeli life.
Demographic considerations play a central role in Israel's policy of separation between Gaza and the West Bank. In particular, in the rare instances where they permit movement of people between the two parts of the OPT, Israeli authorities primarily authorize it toward Gaza, thus facilitating the flow of people out of the area where Israel actively promotes Jewish settlement. Official Israeli military policy stipulates that while a West Bank resident may request "permanent resettlement in the Gaza Strip for any purpose deemed humanitarian (generally family reunification)," Gaza residents may only settle in the West Bank "in extremely rare cases," usually related to family reunification. In these cases, the authorities are mandated to attempt to resettle the couple in question in Gaza. Official data shows that Israel has not allowed a single resident of Gaza to resettle in the West Bank, apart from a handful who filed petitions with the Supreme Court between 2009 and March 2017, while allowing several dozen West Bank residents to resettle in Gaza on the condition that they commit in writing not to return to the West Bank.
Beyond the policy of closure, Israeli authorities have frequently resorted to oppressive and discriminatory strategies in the context of hostilities and demonstrations in Gaza. Since 2008, the Israeli military has launched three large-scale military offensives in Gaza in clashes with Palestinian armed groups. As explained in the report, these offensives included apparently deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure and resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 civilians. Furthermore, Israeli forces have routinely fired on Palestinian demonstrators and others who approached the fences separating Gaza and Israel in circumstances where they did not pose an imminent threat to life, killing 214 demonstrators in 2018 and 2019 alone and maiming thousands more. These practices stem from a decades-long pattern of using excessive and disproportionate force to suppress demonstrations and public unrest, with civilians bearing the brunt of the consequences. Despite the recurrence of these incidents over the years, Israeli authorities have failed to develop policing tactics that comply with international human rights standards.
Discriminatory Restrictions on Residency and Nationality: Palestinians face discriminatory restrictions on their residency and nationality rights to varying degrees in the OPT and in Israel. Israeli authorities have used their control of the population register in the West Bank and Gaza—the list of Palestinians they consider legal residents for the purposes of determining legal status and issuing identity cards—to deny residency to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Israeli authorities refused to register at least 270,000 Palestinians who were outside the West Bank and Gaza when the occupation began in 1967 and revoked the residency of nearly 250,000 people, primarily for having been abroad for too long between 1967 and 1994. Since 2000, Israeli authorities have largely refused to grant family reunification or change of address requests from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This freeze effectively prevents Palestinians from obtaining legal status for unregistered spouses or relatives and, according to the Israeli army, renders illegal the presence in the West Bank of thousands of Gaza residents who arrived on temporary permits and now live there, since they cannot change their address to one in the West Bank. These restrictions have the effect of limiting the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
Authorities routinely deny entry to the West Bank to unregistered Palestinians who have lived in the West Bank but have left temporarily (to study, work, get married or for other reasons) as well as to their unregistered spouses and other family members.
When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it applied its 1952 Entry Law to the Palestinians living there and designated them as "permanent residents," the same status granted to a non-Jewish foreigner who moves to Israel. The Interior Ministry has revoked this status for at least 14,701 Palestinians since 1967, primarily for failing to demonstrate that their "center of life" is in the city. Access to Israeli citizenship exists, but few have applied, and most of those who have applied in recent years have not been granted it. In contrast, Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem settlers, are citizens who do not have to prove their ties to the city to maintain their status.
In Israel, the Declaration of Independence affirms the "complete equality" of all residents, but the existence of a two-tiered citizenship system undermines this principle, revealing that Jews and Palestinians are treated separately and unequally. The 1952 Israeli Citizenship Law contains a separate procedure reserved for Jews to automatically acquire Israeli citizenship. This law stems from the Law of Return, which since 1950 has guaranteed Jewish citizens of other countries the right to settle in Israel. In contrast, the path for Palestinians to citizenship requires proof of pre-1948 residence in the territory that became Israel, registration in the population register at the time, and continuous presence in Israel or legal entry between 1948 and 1952. The authorities have used these criteria to deny residency rights to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled in 1948 and to their descendants, who now number over 5.7 million. This law creates a de facto situation where a Jewish citizen from any other country who has never been to Israel can go there and automatically acquire citizenship, while a Palestinian expelled from their home and languishing for more than 70 years in a refugee camp in a neighboring country is prevented from doing so.
The 1952 Citizenship Law also permits the granting of citizenship based on naturalization. However, in 2003, the Knesset passed a temporary ordinance related to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which prohibits the granting of Israeli citizenship or long-term legal status to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who marry Israeli citizens or residents. With few exceptions, this law, extended annually since its enactment and upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court, denies Jewish and Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel who choose to marry Palestinians the right to live with their partners in Israel. This restriction, based solely on the spouse's identity as a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, does not apply to Israelis who marry non-Jewish spouses of most other foreign nationalities. They can acquire immediate status and, several years later, citizenship.
Speaking about a renewal of the law in 2005, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said: "There is no need to hide behind security arguments.
The existence of a Jewish state is necessary.» Benjamin Netanyahu, then finance minister, said during the discussions at the time: «Instead of making it easier for Palestinians to acquire citizenship, we should make the process much more difficult, in order to guarantee Israel’s security and a Jewish majority [in the country].» In March 2019, this time as prime minister, Netanyahu said: «Israel is not a state for all its citizens,» but rather «the nation-state of the Jewish people and theirs alone.».
International human rights law grants governments considerable latitude in defining their migration policies. Nothing in international law prevents Israel from promoting Jewish immigration. Jewish Israelis, many of whom migrated to Mandatory Palestine or later to Israel to escape antisemitic persecution in various parts of the world, have the right to the protection of their security and fundamental rights. However, this latitude does not give a state the prerogative to discriminate against people already living in that country, particularly with regard to family reunification rights, or against people who have the right to return to their country. Palestinians also have the right to the protection of their security and fundamental rights.
Israel's Justifications for its Policies and Practices: Israeli authorities present many of the policies documented in this report as responses to anti-Israeli Palestinian violence. However, many of these policies, such as the refusal to issue building permits in Area C, East Jerusalem, and the Negev in Israel, the revocation of residency permits for Jerusalem residents, and the expropriation of private land and discriminatory allocation of state land, lack legitimate security justification. Other measures, including the Citizenship and Entry Law and the freezing of the Palestinian Territories' population register, use security pretexts to serve demographic objectives.
Israeli authorities face real security challenges both in Israel and in the OPT. However, restrictions that fail to balance human rights, such as freedom of movement, with legitimate security concerns—for example, by conducting individualized security assessments rather than preventing the entire population of Gaza from leaving the territory with few exceptions—go far beyond what international law permits. Even when security concerns partly motivate a specific policy, this does not give Israel carte blanche to commit widespread human rights violations. Real security problems can be present in policies that resemble apartheid, just as they can be present in a policy that permits the excessive use of force or torture.
Israeli officials sometimes claim that the measures taken in the OPT are temporary and would be reversed as part of a peace agreement. From former Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of the Labor Party, who stated in July 1967 that «I see only a quasi-independent region [for the Palestinians], because security and land are in Israeli hands,» to Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, who asserted in July 2019 that «the Israeli army and security forces will continue to rule the entire territory, up to the Jordan River,» several have made it clear that they intend to maintain absolute control of the West Bank in perpetuity, regardless of any arrangements in place to govern the Palestinians. Their actions and policies further contradict the notion that Israeli authorities view the occupation as temporary, as illustrated by the ongoing confiscation of land; the construction of the separation barrier in a way that facilitates future settlement expansion; The successful integration of the settlements' sewage system, communication networks, electricity grids, water infrastructure, and road network into Israel's infrastructure; as well as a growing set of laws applicable to Israeli settlers in the West Bank but not to Palestinians. The possibility that a future Israeli leader might reach an agreement with the Palestinians that dismantles the discriminatory system and ends systematic repression does not negate the current leadership's intention to maintain the system, nor the reality of apartheid and persecution.
Recommendations: The Israeli government should renounce all forms of systematic domination and oppression that privilege Jewish Israelis and systematically repress Palestinians, and end the persecution of the latter. In particular, the authorities should end discriminatory policies and practices, including those related to obtaining citizenship and nationality, freedom of movement, the allocation of land and resources, access to water, electricity and other services, and the issuance of building permits.
The findings that the crimes of apartheid and persecution have been committed do not negate the reality of the Israeli occupation, nor do they absolve Israel of its obligations under the law of occupation, as would also be the case if other crimes against humanity or war crimes had been committed. As things stand, the Israeli authorities should cease building settlements and dismantle existing ones, and furthermore ensure full respect for the human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, using as a benchmark the rights granted to Israeli citizens, as well as the protections afforded to them by international humanitarian law.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) should end forms of security coordination with the Israeli army that contribute to facilitating the commission of apartheid crimes against humanity and persecution.
The recognition of crimes against humanity should prompt the international community to reassess its approach to Israel and Palestine. The United States, which for decades failed to pressure the Israeli government to end its systematic repression of Palestinians, has in some cases, in recent years, demonstrated its support for serious abuses such as settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Many European and other states have forged close ties with Israel while simultaneously supporting the «peace process,» strengthening the Palestinian Authority, and distancing themselves from Israel, and sometimes even criticizing its specific abusive practices in the OPT. This approach, which overlooks the deeply entrenched nature of Israeli discrimination and repression against Palestinians, minimizes serious human rights violations by treating them as temporary symptoms of the occupation that the «peace process» will soon resolve. It allowed states to avoid establishing the responsibilities that a situation of this gravity demands, enabling apartheid to metastasize and consolidate. Fifty-four years later, states should stop assessing the situation through the lens of what might happen if a languishing peace process were to be revived and instead focus on the long-standing reality on the ground, which shows no sign of abating.
Crimes against humanity can serve as a basis for individual criminal responsibility in international jurisdictions, as well as before national courts outside of Israel and the OPT under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
In light of the Israeli authorities’ decades-long failure to curb serious abuses such as those documented in our report, Human Rights Watch calls on the Office of the Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated in the apartheid or persecution crimes against humanity. The ICC has jurisdiction over serious crimes committed in the OPT, and the Prosecutor has opened an investigation into this matter. Furthermore, national judicial authorities in other countries should investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated in these crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction and in accordance with their national laws.
Beyond the criminal dimension, Human Rights Watch calls on states to establish, through the UN, an international commission of inquiry into systematic discrimination and repression based on group identity in the OPT and Israel. This body should be mandated to establish and analyze the facts; identify those responsible for serious crimes, including apartheid and persecution, to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable; and collect and preserve evidence of abuses for future use by credible judicial institutions.
States should also establish, through the UN, a United Nations Global Envoy for the Crimes of Persecution and Apartheid, who would be responsible for mobilizing international action to end persecution and apartheid worldwide.
Governments should also publicly express their concern that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. States should also reassess their cooperation agreements and programs, as well as all existing forms of trade with Israel, to identify those that directly contribute to the commission of apartheid and persecution crimes against Palestinians, mitigate their impact on human rights, and, where this is not possible, cease the activities and funding mechanisms that facilitate these serious crimes.
The implications of this report's findings for businesses are complex and extend beyond the scope of this report. At a minimum, businesses should cease activities that directly contribute to the commission of apartheid and persecution crimes. They should assess whether their goods or services contribute to the commission of apartheid and persecution crimes, such as materials used in the unlawful demolition of Palestinian homes, and cease providing goods and services that are likely to be used for these purposes, in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
States should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against those responsible for and perpetrators of serious crimes and condition arms sales and military and security assistance provided to Israel on concrete and verifiable measures taken by the authorities of that country to end the perpetration of apartheid crimes and persecution.
The international community has for too long turned a blind eye to the increasingly glaring reality on the ground, or attempted to justify it. Every day, a person is born in Gaza into an open-air prison, in the West Bank without civil rights, in Israel with an inferior legal status, and in neighboring countries with de facto lifelong refugee status, like their parents and grandparents before them, simply because these people are Palestinian and not Jewish. A future rooted in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all people living in Israel and the OPT will remain out of reach as long as Israel's abusive practices against Palestinians persist.
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