The UN Office of Human Rights, headed by Volker Türk, on Wednesday issued an extensive report on the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank in which it for the first time described Israeli policies there as Apartheid. The executive summary says, “The report warns that Israel is violating international law requiring States to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.”
Türk told the UN, “There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank. Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives – every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.” He is referring to racial discrimination in Apartheid South Africa from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.