Apartheid

The term, Afrikaans for ‘separateness,’ was universalized beyond its South African origin by two legal instruments: the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, whose Article 7 lists ‘the crime of apartheid’ among crimes against humanity. Both define three elements: an intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another, systematic oppression, and inhumane acts carried out pursuant to that regime.

Applied to Israel and Palestine, the findings accumulated in a short span. In January 2021 the Israeli organization B’Tselem published ‘A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid.’ In April 2021 Human Rights Watch’s A Threshold Crossed found that Israeli authorities commit the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution in the occupied territory. In February 2022 Amnesty International’s 280-page report concluded that Israel imposes apartheid on Palestinians ‘wherever it has control over their rights.’ A UN Special Rapporteur reached the same conclusion in a 2022 report, and in July 2024 the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s legislation and measures in the occupied Palestinian territory breach Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid.

The documented basis of these findings includes separate legal systems for settlers and Palestinians in the same territory, mass land confiscation, restrictions on movement and residency, and a citizenship regime that privileges Jewish immigration while barring Palestinian refugee return. Israel rejects the characterization as a false and defamatory analogy, and maintains that its measures respond to legitimate security needs — a dispute that has moved from activist rhetoric into the dockets of international courts.

Sources

• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (PDF) — International Criminal Court
• A Threshold Crossed — Human Rights Watch, April 2021
• Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity — Amnesty International, 2022
• This Is Apartheid — B’Tselem, January 2021