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On the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Al Mezan repeats call for dismantling Israel’s apartheid

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21 March 2023 |Reference 19/2023

21 March marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This date was chosen to commemorate the victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in Apartheid South Africa, during which at least 69 peaceful demonstrators were killed when the police opened fire to disperse a non-violent protest against the South African apartheid regime.

 

For over 75 years, the Palestinian people have been subjected to Israel’s apartheid, which is a tool of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine aimed at creating and maintaining Israeli Jewish supremacy, with the ultimate goal of gradually eradicating the indigenous Palestinian people. To this end, since its establishment as a State in 1948, Israel has instituted a series of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices to maintain its regime of systemic oppression, domination, segregation, and fragmentation of the indigenous Palestinian people.

 

Click here to read the landmark Palestinian coalition report:
‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’.

 

 

This year, Palestinians observe this day at a time of great escalation of Israeli oppression in the wake of the swearing-in of Israel’s new far-right government. The new government, whose guiding principles clearly outline full-fledged apartheid policies, has explicitly pledged to honor its settler colonial legacy, with some ministers going so far as to declare that Palestinians should be “wiped out” from their homes and lands.

 

 

In the West Bank, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 88 Palestinians since the beginning of this year—including 17 children and one woman—which corresponds to a rate of nearly one killing every day. As Israeli forces’ crackdown intensifies, Israeli settlers continue a rampage in the occupied West Bank villages and towns.

 

In Gaza, Israel continues to maintain its illegal colonial blockade and closure for the sixteenth consecutive year, leaving the Strip even more “unlivable”. Last August, Israel launched yet another unprovoked military attack against Gaza. In the space of three days, 33 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks, including nine children and three women. As argued by Al Mezan, Israel’s unlawful closure of the Gaza Strip forms part of its ubiquitous apartheid regime against the Palestinian people as a whole and serves as a deliberate attempt to strategically fragment and isolate more than two million Palestinians living therein.

 

Click here to read Al Mezan’s report:
‘The Gaza Bantustan—Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip’.

 

On the bright side, a large number of Israeli, regional, and international organizations, States, parliamentarians, experts, and many others have joined the Palestinian voices in condemning Israel’s system of racial discrimination against all Palestinians as apartheid.

Al Mezan reiterates its position that the instruments of Israel’s apartheid derive from its ongoing settler colonial project, emphasizing that the dismantling of Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid is an indispensable condition for the Palestinian people to exercise their full legitimate and inalienable right to self-determination.

 

As Al Mezan marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, it recognizes the growing, instrumental work of human rights defenders, organizations, and States to combat Israel’s apartheid and calls on the rest of the international community to recognize and condemn Israel’s apartheid regime  against the Palestinian people as well as on the UN General Assembly to re-establish the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid and the UN Centre Against Apartheid to advocate for an end to Israel’s apartheid.