Published: 19 January 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid (B’Tselem)
It is the first time in B’Tselem’s more than thirty-year history, since its founding in 1989 during the first intifada, that we publish an analysis addressing reality in the entire area controlled by Israel rather than only the Occupied Territories.
“Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it; it is one regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid,” B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad said in explaining the policy change.
The terms we have used in recent years to describe the situation – such as “prolonged occupation” or a “one-state reality” – are no longer adequate.
Leading Israeli rights group to henceforth refer to country as ‘apartheid’ state (Times of Israel)
‘This is not democracy plus occupation. This is apartheid between the river and the sea,’ says B’Tselem chief; rejecting term, Israeli official slams ‘distorted ideological view’
Itay Milner, a spokesman for Israel’s consulate general in New York, dismissed the B’Tselem report as “another tool for them to promote their political agenda,” which he said was based on a “distorted ideological view.” He pointed out that Arab citizens of Israel are represented across the government, including the diplomatic corps.
Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, said the fact that the Palestinians have their own government makes any talk of apartheid “inapplicable,” calling the B’Tselem report “shockingly weak, dishonest and misleading.”
Education Minister bars rights groups calling Israel 'apartheid state' from schools (Haaretz)
Gallant was responding to complaints over the director of the human rights group B’Tselem who is slated to address students at a Haifa elite high school
The Guardian view on Israel and apartheid: prophecy or description? (Guardian)
With no roadmap for peace, Israel risks being compared to the old South Africa
Education minister bans major human rights groups from entering schools (Times of Israel)
Yoav Gallant says those who ‘call Israel false derogatory names’ not allowed in educational institutions, after B’Tselem announces it will refer to Israel as ‘apartheid state’
Photo: Palestinian labourers cross illegally into Israel from the West Bank through an opening in a fence, south of Hebron, September 6, 2020 (Oded Balilty/AP)
