Left-wing Israeli human rights group B'Tselem on Tuesday blasted Israel for its policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian, calling it an "apartheid" regime – an explosive term that the country's leaders and the majority of the public vehemently reject.
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In its latest report, B'Tselem said that while Palestinians live under different forms of Israeli control in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and within Israel itself, they have fewer rights than Jews in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
"One of the key points in our analysis is that this is a single geopolitical area ruled by one government," said B'Tselem Director Hagai El-Ad. "This is not democracy plus occupation. This is apartheid between the river and the sea."
For the high-profile Israeli organization to adopt such harsh language – a term long seen as taboo even by many critics of Israel – points to a broader shift in the debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as hopes for a two-state solution fade.
Peter Beinart, a prominent Jewish-American critic of Israel, caused a similar stir last year when he came out in favor of a single binational state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. B'Tselem does not take a position on whether there should be one state or two.
"We are not saying that the degree of discrimination that a Palestinian has to endure is the same if one is a citizen of the state of Israel or if one is besieged in Gaza," El-Ad said. "The point is that there isn't a single square inch between the river and the sea in which a Palestinian and a Jew are equal."
Israel's harshest critics have used the term "apartheid" for decades, evoking the system of white rule and racial segregation in South Africa that was brought to an end in 1994. The International Criminal Court defines apartheid as an "institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group."
Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said "There is no country in the world that is clearer in its apartheid policies than Israel. It is a state based on racist decisions aimed at confiscating land, expelling indigenous people, demolishing homes and establishing settlements."
Israel adamantly rejects the term "apartheid state," saying the restrictions it imposes in Gaza and the West Bank are temporary measures needed for security. Most Palestinians in the West Bank live in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority, but those areas are surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and Israeli soldiers can enter at any time.
Israel has full control over about 60% of the West Bank.
Itay Milner, a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate General in New York, dismissed B'Tselem's 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."
Kontorovich said the use of the word "apartheid" was instead aimed at demonizing Israel in a way that "resonates with racial sensitivities and debates in America and the West."
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York, rejects the term. "Occupation, yes. Apartheid, absolutely not," he stated, but he acknowledged that critics of Israel who had refrained from using the term, or who had used it and been attacked, "will now conveniently say, 'Hey, you know, Israelis are saying it themselves.'"
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, which estimates its reach at more than 1.5 million people in 850 congregations across North America, said the situation in the West Bank and Gaza is a "moral blight" – but not apartheid.
"What goes along with saying that, to many in the international community, is that therefore Israel has no right to exist," he said. "If the accusation is apartheid, that is not simply a strong critique, it's an existential critique."
El-Ad points to two recent developments that altered B'Tselem's thinking.
The first was a contentious law passed in 2018 that defines Israel as the "nation-state of the Jewish people," and the second was Israel's announcement in 2019 of its plan to extend sovereignty to large parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including all of its Jewish settlements, which are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis.
Those plans were put on hold as part of a normalization agreement reached with the United Arab Emirates last year, but Israel has said the pause is only temporary.
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There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade. "Fifty years plus, that's not enough to understand the permanence of Israeli control of the occupied territories?" El-Ad said. "We think that people need to wake up to reality, and stop talking in future terms about something that has already happened."
