PA accuses Lapid of "lying" in his response to Amnesty International's new definition of Israel as "an apartheid against Palestinians"
Headline: “Amnesty International: Israel is an apartheid state”
“The Amnesty International organization accused Israel of committing crimes of apartheid (refers to report released Feb. 1, 2022; see note below regarding apartheid claims -Ed.).
In a report that is expected to be published today, Tuesday [Feb. 1, 2022], under the title: ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity,’ the organization said that Israel is involved in a "widespread attack against the Palestinians that constitutes the crime against humanity of apartheid.’ The organization, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, condemned Israel’s policy in the occupied West Bank in the past and accused it of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip in 2014 (i.e., Gaza War 2014; see note below), but this is the first time that the organization is officially using the term ‘apartheid’ to define it.
The report is being published following a similar report by the Human Rights Watch organization, which was published in April [2021]. While the Human Rights Watch report accused Israel of discrimination against the Palestinians in all the territories under its control, it accused it of apartheid only in the territories outside of the 1948 borders (i.e., Israel), [whereas] the Amnesty International report applies the term ‘apartheid’ to the activities within the 1948 [territories] as well…
Yesterday evening the [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates emphasized that Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Yair Lapid is lying in his response to the Amnesty International report. The ministry said in a statement: ‘Lies and hurling accusations are the highlight of the official Israeli policy. It attacks its critics in order to silence the voices that defend international law and demand to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian civilian by ending the occupation, stopping the acts of oppression and persecution, and stopping the apartheid regime that the occupation state is attempting to build, in a manner that will enable the Palestinian people to realize its right to self-determination and to build its free and independent state whose capital is occupied Jerusalem.’ …
It noted: ‘This is not the first time that the Amnesty International organization is publishing documented and reliable reports of this kind… and each time the senior Israeli officials attack these reports, as Lapid is doing this time. He claims that Israel is a democratic state in a desperate attempt to hide the truth,and in a deliberate deception he pretends to forget that his state is occupying another people, stealing its homeland, committing ethnic cleansing and expulsion of the ugliest kind against it, and negating its elementary rights…Perhaps Lapid has a way of thinking that we are unfamiliar with or a definition of democracy that is unique to Israel, and it may be that according to this Israeli definition the extensive acts of uprooting against our people in the Negev, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and Masafer Yatta are included in Lapid’s democracy. Preventing the Palestinian people from realizing its democratic right to conduct [PA] elections in occupied Jerusalem is also part of Lapid’s democracy, which is the other side of the colonialist occupation of occupied Palestine, or one of the expressions of the Israeli apartheid regime that the occupation is imposing on the Palestinian residents from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.’”
Red Cross rebuts Palestinian claims that Israel commits “executions” and is an “apartheid state” – Jacques De Maio, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, rejected claims that Israel carries out “extrajudicial killings” or is an "apartheid state" in an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet on April 26, 2017. De Maio said: “We came to the unequivocal conclusion that there are no shoot to kill orders of suspects by IDF (i.e., the Israeli army), as some political elements tried to convince us. Rules of engagement have not changed, and became even stricter.” Regarding claims of apartheid, De Maio said: “No, there is no apartheid here, no regime of superiority of race, of denial of basic human rights to a group of people because of their alleged racial inferiority.”
The statements by the head of the ICRC delegation to Israel and the PA disprove the PA's repeated claim that Israel is committing "summary executions of Palestinians in cold blood" - a claim that PMW has documented numerous times: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=779
Gaza War 2014 / Operation Protective Edge – In June 2014, Hamas escalated its hostilities and attacks against Israel - including the firing of numerous rockets at Israel. Israel responded with Operation Protective Edge, which aimed at destroying Hamas' ability to launch rockets and its terror infrastructure in general, which included its building of cross-border tunnels for the purpose of terror attacks and kidnappings. The war began on July 7, 2014, when the Israeli government ordered the Israeli army to launch an aerial operation against Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, and continued until Aug. 26, 2014, when an open-ended ceasefire was declared. During the war, 32 Hamas cross-border tunnels built for the purpose of terror attacks were destroyed, and two thirds of Hamas' rocket arsenal was used up or destroyed. Despite claims by Hamas and others of Israel using disproportionate force and of an extreme amount of civilian casualties, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, stated on Nov. 6, 2014, that Israel had gone to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.”