Palestinian civil society

The vast majority of Palestinian civil society organisations have concluded that Israel is imposing a regime of apartheid. In November 2019, a joint report from eight Palestinian, regional, and international organisations, including Al-Haq, BADIL, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, and Addameer, was submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

"The joint parallel report details Israel’s creation of an institutionalised regime of systematic domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and Palestinian refugees and exiles abroad, which amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law. In the report, the organisations argue that Israel has created and maintained an apartheid regime over the indigenous Palestinian people, in violation of its obligations under Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which enshrines: “States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.”

Palestinian civil society report apartheid

In January 2022, Al-Haq, Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network, submitted a joint report response to a call from the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Mr Michael Lynk, for his final thematic report on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. 

"Al-Haq, Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network have submitted a joint report on the question  of whether Israel’s conduct of its occupation is in breach of the prohibition of apartheid under international law. The report details that Israel has been entrenching and maintaining an apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, through its laws, policies and practices since 1948, and since 1967 has extended the apartheid regime into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, through its occupation.

The 40-page submission explained that “since its inception, the centrality of the racial dimension of Zionism has formed the foundation of Israel’s ever-lasting institutionalised racial discrimination and apartheid regime”. It further illustrated that Israel has been strategically using the fragmentation of the Palestinian people as the principal tool to establish, entrench, and operationalise its apartheid regime in Palestine: “[c]ontrary to the claim that Israel’s prolonged occupation has turned into apartheid, Israel’s occupation is, in fact, part and parcel of the overarching settler colonial and apartheid regime that Israel always intended –and continues– to impose on the Palestinian people as a whole.”

Al Haq Addameer Habitat Apartheid

Al Mezan 

On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November 2021, Palestinian NGO Al Mezan published their report; The Gaza Bantustan—Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip.

"As a sealed-off enclave, fragmented from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) and controlled by Israel within its apartheid system, Gaza is a strip of land that can in many respects be likened to a South African bantustan. While the Israeli government purports to justify the closure and related restrictions under the guise of ‘security’, this report shows how Israel’s policies are in fact motivated by its intent to separate and divide Palestinians and thereby to assert its domination over them, in furtherance of its overarching settler-colonialist agenda.

'The Gaza Bantustan—Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip’ builds on Al Mezan's decades-long work to promote respect, protection, and fulfillment of international law in the Gaza Strip, an integral part of the OPT, and is the Center’s first report focused on apartheid in Gaza. The report—draws upon relevant work by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations, academics, and experts, and reaffirms that Israel’s institutionalized and systemic racial domination and oppression of the Palestinian people, including those residing in Gaza, contravenes Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, amounts to the crime of apartheid according to the Apartheid Convention, and constitutes a crime against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Various “inhuman acts” calculated to “establish and maintain domination by one racial group over another” as defined by the UN Apartheid Convention are discussed. Those include: the use of excessive force and the recurrent military targeting of civilians and civilian homes, killing thousands; the arbitrary arrest and detention of children, patients, fishermen, and other vulnerable groups; and the sustained closure and blockade. Al Mezan concludes that these practices amount to murder, infliction of mental and bodily harm, arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment, imposition of living conditions calculated to cause the physical destruction of the population in whole or in part, and denial of the right to freedom of movement and to leave and return, as defined by the Apartheid Convention.

This report is issued at a critical time for Palestinian civil society and human rights defenders, following the recent designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist” by the Israeli government."

Al Mezan Gaza Apartheid