Feb. 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The NGO Amnesty International (AI) has demanded this Wednesday that Israel end its apartheid policy on the Palestinian territory amid the upturn in tensions in the region due to the increase in attacks and security operations by Israeli forces .
“The devastating events of the past week have once again highlighted the deadly cost associated with the apartheid system. The failure of the international community to hold the Israeli authorities to account for apartheid and other crimes gives them a free hand to segregate, control and oppress the Palestinian population on a daily basis and contributes to perpetuating deadly violence,” AI Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement.
Thus, he has reiterated that apartheid “is a crime against humanity.” “Frankly, it’s chilling to see their perpetrators evade justice year after year,” she said, adding that Israel tries to silence their actions “with targeted smear campaigns.”
For this reason, Callamard has specified that the international community “must not be intimidated by these tactics” at the same time that he has justified that until the apartheid system is “dismantled” “there will be no hope of protecting the lives of the civilian population nor to offer justice to the bereaved families of Palestine and Israel”.
AI has stressed in said statement that, in the period of one year, the Israeli Army has killed almost 220 Palestinian people, 35 of them in January 2023 alone. Israel’s apartheid system and constitute crimes against humanity”.
“In the shadow of apartheid, the Israeli authorities control virtually all aspects of the life of the Palestinian people and subject them to oppression and discrimination on a daily basis through territorial fragmentation and legal segregation,” he recalled.
The NGO has also focused, among other issues, on administrative detention and forced transfers, as well as other serious and continuous violations of Human Rights by the Israeli authorities.
“The Palestinian population residing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is segregated into separate enclaves; the people living in the Gaza Strip are isolated from the rest of the world under Israel’s illegal blockade, which has caused a humanitarian crisis and is a form of collective punishment”, has sentenced.
Callamard has assured that “the continued disregard of the Israeli authorities for the obligations of International Law” continues to have “dire consequences for the Palestinian population” while “it also undermines the protection of the rights of Israeli citizens.”
“No State should be able to systematically and with impunity disregard International Law, and especially the binding resolutions of the UN Security Council. We ask States to eliminate all forms of support for Israel’s Human Rights violations, to break with years of of complicit inaction and hold the Israeli authorities to account,” he argued.
In 2022, Israeli forces killed 153 Palestinians, including dozens of children, during military assaults and detention operations, one of the highest numbers since 2005. Likewise, violent incidents by Israeli settlers against Palestinians increased in 2022 for the sixth year consecutive.
