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Apartheid Regime Al-Haq – Law in the Service of Man, BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network Joint Parallel Report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Israel’s Seventeenth to Nineteenth Periodic Reports 100th SESSION Submitted: 10 November 2019 Al-Haq – Law in the Service of Man BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian P.O. Box: 1413, Residency and Refugee Rights 54 Main Street, 2nd and 3rd Floors P.O. Box: 728, Karkafa Street Ramallah, Palestine Bethlehem, Palestine Tel: +970 2 295-4646/7/9 Tel: +970 2 277-7086 www.alhaq.org www.badil.org Palestinian Center for Human Rights Al Mezan Center for Human Rights P.O. Box: 1328, Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser Street 5/102-1 Habosh Road, Al-Roya Building – 12th Floor Omar El-Mukhtar Street Gaza, Palestine Western Rimal, Gaza City, Palestine Tel: +972 8 282-4776 / +972 8 282-3725 Tel.: +972 8 245-3555 www.pchrgaza.org www.mezan.org Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights Association Rights in Jerusalem 3 Mousa Tawasheh Street, Sebat Bldg., 1st Floor Dahiat Al-Barid, Ramallah (near Rafidain Square), Palestine Jerusalem, Palestine Tel: + 972 2 296-0446 / + 972 2 297-0136 Tel: +972 2 234–3929 www.addameer.org www.civiccoalition-jerusalem.org Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies Habitat International Coalition – 21 Rue El Hijaz – 1002 Housing and Land Rights Network Tunis Belvedere, Tunisia 4 Sulaiman Abaza Street, 3rd Floor Tel: +216 71 901 043 Muhandisin, Cairo, Egypt www.cihrs.org Tel/Fax: +20 2 3748–6379 www.hlrn.org ½ www.hic-mena.org Joint Parallel Report to CERD on Israel’s 17th–19th Periodic Reports – 10 November 2019 Table of Contents 1. Overview ..............................................................................................................................................1 2. Cumulative recognition of Israeli apartheid .....................................................................................3 3. Creating an apartheid regime ............................................................................................................5 3.1. Definition of the crime of apartheid ..........................................................................................5 3.1.1. Applicable international law framework .............................................................................5 3.1.2. ICERD (1965) and the adoption of the Apartheid Convention (1973) ...............................5 3.1.3. The Rome Statute (1998) .....................................................................................................6 3.2. Elements of the crime of apartheid ...........................................................................................7 3.2.1. Institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination .....................................7 3.2.2. By one racial group over any other racial group or groups .................................................7 3.2.3. With the intention of maintaining the regime ......................................................................8 4. Establishing apartheid ........................................................................................................................8 4.1. Israel’s discriminatory legal foundation ..................................................................................8 4.1.1. Basic Law: The Law of Return (1950) and The Citizenship Law (1952) ...........................9 4.1.2. The Absentee Property Law (1950) .....................................................................................9 4.1.3. The Entry into Israel Law (1952) and its amendments ......................................................10 4.1.4. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) (2003) .............................11 4.1.5. The Basic Law: The Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018) ........................................11 4.2. The role of Israel’s Zionist parastatal institutions ................................................................12 4.3. Material consequences of discriminatory laws ......................................................................13 5. Maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime ......................................................................................15 5.1. Entrenching fragmentation .....................................................................................................15 5.1.1. Denying the Palestinian people their right of return to their homes and property ............18 5.1.2. Restrictions on freedom of movement, residence, and the right to family life .................22 5.1.3. The closure of Jerusalem and the targeting of Palestinian presence in the city ................25 5.1.4. The closure and blockade of the Gaza Strip ......................................................................26 5.2. The creation of a coercive environment .................................................................................31 5.2.1. Population transfer and demographic manipulation ..........................................................31 5.2.2. Discriminatory planning and zoning and denial of access to natural resources ................33 5.2.3. Excessive use of force and disregard for Palestinian life ..................................................38 5.2.4. Denial of access to and fragmentation of healthcare .........................................................40 5.3. Silencing of opposition .............................................................................................................43 5.3.1. Arbitrary detention .............................................................................................................43 5.3.2. Torture and other ill-treatment ...........................................................................................45 5.3.3. Collective punishment .......................................................................................................47 5.3.4. Intimidation, harassment, and smear campaigns against human rights defenders ............50 5.3.5. Racist hate speech and incitement to racial hatred ............................................................52 6. Conclusions and recommendations .................................................................................................54 6.1. Conclusions ...............................................................................................................................54 6.2. Recommendations ....................................................................................................................55 ii Joint Parallel Report to CERD on Israel’s 17th–19th Periodic Reports – 10 November 2019 1. Overview 1. Since 1948, the State of Israel has instituted a series of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices that form the foundation of its institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the indigenous Palestinian people as a whole, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and Palestinian refugees and exiles abroad. These discriminatory features arise from Israel’s raison d’État and seek to maintain a racialized regime of dispossession, domination, and systematic fragmentation of the Palestinian people, by persistently denying the right of reparation, including consensual return to their homes, lands, and property, to Palestinian refugees and other persons displaced in the waves of ethnic cleansing carried out since the State’s establishment. 2. These measures have not abated since Israel, the State party, ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD or ‘the Convention’)1 on 3 January 1979. Rather, Israel maintains a widespread State-driven effort to deprive the Palestinian people of its means of subsistence, in violation of the collective right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including permanent sovereignty over natural wealth and resources, which underlies Israel’s widespread and systematic violations of the individual human rights of Palestinian persons within its jurisdiction or territory of effective control, and as refugees elsewhere. Each periodic review by the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD or ‘the Committee’), as well as by other UN treaty bodies, renews these observations. However, it is necessary to include the latest developments in the application of Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, thereby contextualising them within the institutionalised nature of the violations that breach the Convention. 3. In this joint parallel report to the Committee ahead of its 100th session, our organisations, including Al-Haq, BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCPRJ), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC- HLRN), address the seventeenth to nineteenth periodic
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