JAKARTA - Amnesty International accused Israel on Tuesday of subjecting Palestinians to the apartheid system, which was established under a policy of "separation, dispossession and exclusion" which it said constituted crimes against humanity.
The London-based rights group said its findings were based on legal research and analysis in its 211-page report on Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and property, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement of people and denial of citizenship.
Israel and its main ally the United States rejected the report, the second by an international rights group in less than a year to accuse it of pursuing policies of apartheid, a word originally used to describe South Africa's racist policies of white minority rule and segregation in the 20th century. 20.
Israel says the report "consolidates and recycles lies" from hate groups, designed to "pour fuel into the fire of antisemitism". He accused Amnesty UK of using "double standards and demonization to delegitimize Israel."
"The United Nations (UN) Security Council and the General Assembly are obliged to heed the strong evidence, presented by Amnesty and other leading human rights organizations, holding Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people, including through sanctions," the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said. in a statement, citing Reuters Feb. 2.
Amnesty said Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians "wherever it has control over their rights", including Arab Israelis, Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories and refugees living abroad.
The measures include restrictions on Palestinian movement in territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, lack of investment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and preventing the return of Palestinian refugees.
Apart from forced transfers, torture and extrajudicial killings, which Amnesty says are meant to maintain a system of "repression and domination", they constitute "crimes against humanity from apartheid".
"Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny with a free press and a strong Supreme Court," said Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, "We reject the view that Israel's actions constitute apartheid."
"(We) think that it is important, as the only Jewish state in the world, that the Jewish people should not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure that no double standards are applied," he said.
Israel has cited security concerns in imposing travel restrictions on Palestinians, whose uprisings in the early 2000s included suicide bombings in Israeli cities.
Palestinians seek their own state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Gaza, the coastal strip that Israel also captured in the 1967 war but abandoned in 2005, is run by Hamas, which the West considers a terrorist group.
To note, the last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2014.
"Our conclusions may be surprising and disturbing, and they should be," Amnesty Secretary General Agnes Callamard said at a news conference in Jerusalem.
"Some within the Israeli government may seek to divert them, accusing Amnesty of falsely trying to destabilize Israel or being anti-Semitic, or of unfairly voting for Israel," Callamard said, adding that such criticism was "baseless."
Separately, the North American Jewish Federation condemned the report it described as "irresponsibly distorting international law, and advancing hateful and disparaging rhetoric associated with ancient antisemitic tropes, while ignoring or covering up violence, terror and incitement perpetrated by Palestinians."
The Central Council of Jews in Germany echoed that statement and called on the German section of Amnesty International to distance itself from the report, which it called anti-Semitic.
For information, Amnesty said the UN Security Council should impose an arms embargo on Israel, for killing scores of civilians during weekly protests on the border with Gaza in 2018-19. Israel says the protests include attempts by Palestinian militants to breach its border fence.
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