'My country is now an apartheid regime', former Israel justice chief says
'My country is now an apartheid regime', former Israel justice chief says
“With great sadness, I conclude that my country is now an apartheid regime,” former Israeli Attorney General and Supreme Court judge Michael Benyair said, agreeing with an Amnesty report.
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Israel's domination over the occupied Palestinian territories must be rectified, Benyair said [Getty]
Former Israeli Attorney General and Supreme Court judge Michael Benyair described his country on Friday as “an apartheid regime”.
“I have spent my career analysing Israel’s most pressing legal questions. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem was a fundamental dilemma during my tenure and beyond,” Benyair said on Twitter.
“With great sadness, I conclude that my country is now an apartheid regime.”
מאמר בחתימתי שפורסם באתר חדשותי פופולרי באירלנד:
— Michael Benyair (@1benyair) February 10, 2022
Former AG of Israel: With great sadness I conclude that my country is now an apartheid regime (via @thejournal_ie) https://t.co/lX5mP6yhZT
In several damning passages in which he analysed the last five decades of Israeli control of the West Bank, the former Attorney General cited Israel’s transfer of more than 400,000 of its Jewish citizens to areas inside the occupied Palestinian territory, in violation of international law.
“Any attempts to resist apartheid are heavily surveilled or criminalised, exemplified by the spurious designation of Palestinian civil society groups as terrorists by the Israeli Ministry of Defence,” he said.
Benyair even addressed his own legacy as Attorney General, and his role in expanding Israeli apartheid in the West Bank.
“It was me, in my role as the Attorney General who approved the expropriation of private Palestinian land in order to build infrastructure such as roads that have entrenched settlement expansion,” the former legal chief said.
Turning his attention to the actions of the Israeli state towards Palestinian citizens of Israel inside the Green Line, Benyair was similarly critical.
“Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it is Israel that is permanently depriving millions of Palestinians of their civil and political rights. This is Israeli apartheid,” he said, also drawing attention to Israeli attempts to dispossess Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah area of east Jerusalem.
“Israel’s ongoing domination over these territories is a gross injustice that must be urgently rectified,” he said.
Earlier this month, Amnesty International released a report similarly concluding that Israel engages in "the crime of apartheid".
The term apartheid was first used to describe the institutionalised racial segregation seen in South Africa in the second half of the 20th century. Pro-Palestine activists have long described Israel's rule of Palestinians using the term.
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