Canadian Michael Lynk, who has been commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to investigate human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, claimed in a report released on Friday that the reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem fit the legal definition the “apartheid” enshrined in international law.
He stated that the two-tier legal system employed by the Israeli regime in the West Bank, including Al-Quds (Jerusalem), has solidified the system of Israeli rule over the Palestinians and can no longer be interpreted as the unintended consequence of a temporary occupation.
“Today, in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system exists that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the live in the West Bank,” Lynk said. .
While “in the same space, the same geographic space, but separated by walls, checkpoints, roads and an entrenched military presence, five million Palestinians now live without rights in a state of severe oppression and without roads to self-determination or a viable independent state promised by the international community, and that is their right,” the UN official noted.
He also denounced that another two million Palestinians live in Gaza, regularly referred to as an “open-air prison,” without adequate access to energy, water or health, with a collapsed economy and without the ability to travel freely to or from the rest of Palestine outside world.
To put an end to the practice of “apartheid” against the Palestinians, the international rapporteur called on the international community to establish accountability measures to finally end the Israeli occupation and all its forms of violations of Palestinian rights.
The regime in Tel Aviv is trying to somehow expel the Palestinians from their homes and to Judaize the Palestinian territories. In this regard, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been rapidly expanding settlements since taking office in June last year.