Press Releases

Human Rights Review of Israel Must Scrutinize Racial Discrimination Against All Palestinians

For Immediate Release

No. (E/041/08)

4 December 2008


Badil Resource Center, Bethlehem, 5 December 2008 – Badil joined several human rights organizations in presenting information and evidence of Israeli violations of international human rights law to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Council met on 4 December to scrutinize the performance of Israel under human rights law in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) procedure, and is scheduled to release its report on the review of Israel on 9 December.

The National Report that was submitted by Israel to the Human Rights Council falls short from reflecting the reality and totally ignores the human rights situation in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), while justifying its violations of international humanitarian law by security reasons.

By 2008, and always under the pretext of "security and self-defense," Israel has displaced 70% of the Palestinian people, now living as refugees and internally displaced persons; confiscated and/or de facto annexed some 60% of the occupied West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, and established a system of institutionalized discrimination affecting Palestinians within Israel, in the OPT, and refugees worldwide.

Badil, together with other Palestinian, Arab, Israeli and international NGOs, provided information to the Human Rights Council, encouraging particular state scrutiny of Israel's self-definition as a "Jewish and democratic state", and its system of institutionalized racial discrimination against the indigenous Palestinian citizens (almost 20 % of Israel's population) in resource allocation and political decision-making. These human rights organizations also argued that Israel's regime of institutionalized racial discrimination has been expanded into the 1967 OPT as a tool for more colonization of land and oppression of the Palestinian people.

"Israel must be held accountable for the systematic and flagrant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people", says Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, director of Badil. She added that "to address Israel's regime of institutionalized racial discrimination which is a root cause of the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in Israel and the OPT, the international community should undertake effective measures, including boycotts, divestment and sanctions, which can bring Israel into compliance with its obligations under international law."

Badil welcomes and reaffirms the recent call by the President of the UN General Assembly for the United Nations to take serious the concerns of civil society organizations and independent human rights experts that Israel's regime and policies over the Palestinian people may amount to the crime of Apartheid.