Human Rights Review of Israel Must Scrutinize Racial Discrimination

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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.

For more information contact:
Ingrid Jaradat Gassner (Director of Badil Resource Center): +41.789.188.391