HRW report on Israeli apartheid comes at a pivotal moment

In March, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would be investigating alleged war crimes by Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since June 2014, the Biden administration moved swiftly to condemn scrutiny of its main Middle Eastern ally.

But State Department spokesman Ned Price’s press conference illustrated the void at the heart of US policy towards the Palestinians. When asked repeatedly by Matt Lee of the Associated Press where Palestinians living under Israeli occupation were supposed to go to have their complaints heard impartially, his answer was no answer at all.

Price held up the two-state solution like a battered old talisman. Those who have advocated for it over decades as a pragmatic solution to competing claims of national self-determination (and for years I was one of them, in Jewish, Arab and Australian forums) have to acknowledge that the reality on the ground – the very basis for pragmatic calculations – has altered profoundly.

Today Israel rules over two distinct populations, extending different sets of rules to each. While people abroad talk about different solutions, successive Israeli governments have implemented a vision. That vision is of one group of people who are represented by the state and another who, whether they have Israeli passports or live under military rule, live in the land of their ancestors on sufferance and with restricted rights.

In January the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called this apartheid. Now Human Rights Watch has decided the same term is warranted.

The West Bank settlement of Modiin Ilit. The Trump administration supported the expansion of Israeli settlements.Credit: AP

Reading their numbingly familiar descriptions of the regime under which Palestinians live, I was reminded of something this newspaper’s investigative reporter Nick McKenzie said about the recent Brereton report into war crimes allegations in Afghanistan.

McKenzie pointed out that ordinary Afghan men and women and NGOs working with them on the ground had originally made the complaints Major-General Paul Brereton was investigating, but their allegations were swiftly dismissed. It wasn’t until serving special forces personnel began to blow the whistle - something which does also happen in Israel - that there began to be proper scrutiny and accountability.

In a world where governments loudly proclaim their dedication to human rights and equality, some voices are still granted more credibility than others. Is Human Rights Watch one of them? Or will it, like the ICC, be censured by Washington and other Western capitals for relaying a message from those who rail at injustice but rarely receive a hearing?

Under Donald Trump, Washington presided over the Abraham Accords, which prioritise Israel’s relations with wealthy Arab states ahead of the plight of those who remain stateless, and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital even as the city’s Palestinian population struggle against race hatred and ethnic cleansing.

Palestinian Hamas supporters chant anti Israel slogans during a protest in solidarity with Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem.Credit: AP

A “normalisation” deal between Israel and Morocco added another layer of human rights abuse by recognising Moroccan rule over Western Sahara - without any consultation with the indigenous Sahrawi population - and throwing in a cache of arms to sweeten the arrangement.

US President Joe Biden built his election campaign on a repudiation of far-right mobs marching in the streets of Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us”. He needs to understand that the deals struck by the Israeli government under his predecessor have emboldened those settlers who march in the streets of occupied East Jerusalem and in the hills and villages of the occupied West Bank destroying property and lives and chanting “death to the Arabs”. So far Biden appears determined to build on these rotten foundations. In doing so, he will end up aiding and abetting the very crimes Human Rights Watch has identified.

The organisation’s report calls for sanctions if Israeli policy does not change. The US House of Representatives has already shown what it thinks of that, with 330 of its members - three-quarters of the chamber - insisting aid to Israel must not be bound by any conditions.

Israeli politics is currently in limbo after a fourth general election in two years without a conclusive result. In any other nation, the seats held by parties for which most of the state’s Arab citizens vote would be crucial to the balance of power. But in Israel, for all its talk of equality, the taboo over Arabs participating in government has yet to be broken.

As Human Rights Watch notes, we have reached a pivotal moment: the population of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is approximately at parity, with 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinian Arabs. From now onwards, since the Palestinian population is not going to disappear or fall silent, the question Matt Lee asked about them will only become more insistent for the Biden administration and the world.

“Where do they go?” indeed.

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