Israel is an apartheid regime, Russell Tribunal on Palestine declares

Tehran Times
Last Update: 08 November 2011 19:41 GMT

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine has found that Israel's practices against the Palestinian people are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid under the international law.

On Monday night, following two intense days in Cape Town listening to testimony from expert witnesses, the Tribunal concluded unanimously that “Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalized regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law,” The Middle East Monitor website reported.

The jury reached this conclusion having paid particular attention to the legal definition of apartheid and ensuring that each of the defining criteria was met. This included the following facts: “(i) that two distinct racial groups can be identified; (ii) that 'inhuman acts' are committed against the subordinate group; and (iii) that such acts are committed systematically in the context of an institutionalized regime of domination by one group over the other.” In their judgment, they considered the widespread evidence of, inter alia, “targeted killings”; the “use of lethal force” against peaceful demonstrators; and the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians.

The Tribunal declared that although the Palestinians living “under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid,” the apartheid system extends to Israeli treatment of Palestinian citizens within Israel, and that Tel Aviv's “rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”

The Tribunal urged Israel to dismantle its apartheid system and called for the international community to put pressure on the occupying force through sanctions and severing ties with Tel Aviv. It called for the UN General Assembly to list banks, corporations, and other organizations that support Israel.

While the sessions were underway, the Tribunal's website was hacked. Experts have described the incident as a precision attack. At the same time, the Israeli parliament (Knesset) instituted action to have an Arab member of the Knesset, Haneen Zoabi, stripped of her citizenship because she testified in Cape Town.

Zoabi told Press TV that Israel views every move for democracy as an attack on its racist system.

She stated, “We are demanding Israel… stop this racist system and… recognize equal rights for the Palestinians because it is our homeland. We didn't immigrate to Israel; it is Israel that immigrated to us.”

“Even when we are struggling for equality, we are actually compromising because we are the indigenous people and we are asking immigrants to give us equal rights,” Zoabi added.

In response to the threat to Zoabi, the Tribunal delivered a letter to the South African government asking it to ensure that Israel takes no reprisals against those who testified in South Africa.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was formed in March 2009 to promote and sustain initiatives in support of the rights of the Palestinian people. The Tribunal is a part of the Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal or Russell-Sartre Tribunal, that was a public body organized by British philosopher Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.