The UN human rights office has issued a report detailing what it calls Israel's 'systemic discrimination' against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and said the situation has 'drastically deteriorated' over the past three years.
Israeli laws, policies and practices were having an 'asphyxiating impact' on every aspect of daily life for Palestinians and violated an international convention against racial discrimination, it said.
'This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before,' High Commissioner Volker Türk warned.
Israel dismissed the accusations as 'absurd and distorted'.
The Israeli mission in Geneva said the UN human rights office 'completely ignores fundamental facts that lie at the basis of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, and that inform the actions and policies of the State of Israel, mainly the grave security threats Israel faces.'
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them, with the settlements deemed illegal under international law.
This is the first time a UN human rights chief has explicitly compared Israeli policies in the West Bank to apartheid.
'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,' Türk said in a statement.
According to the report by his office, Israeli authorities treat Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in the West Bank under two distinct bodies of law, resulting in unequal treatment on a range of critical issues.
'Palestinians continue to be subjected to large-scale confiscation of land and deprivation of access to resources. This has had the effect of dispossessing them of their lands and homes, alongside other forms of systemic discrimination, including criminal prosecution in military courts, during which their due process and fair trial rights are systematically violated.'
The report indicates that systemic discrimination against Palestinians has worsened since December 2022, particularly following the escalation of conflict on 7 October 2023.
It also discusses the acceleration of settlement expansion in the West Bank, citing the approval of 19 new settlements by Israeli ministers, which they claim is aimed at blocking the establishment of a Palestinian state.
'Every negative trend documented in the report has continued and accelerated. Every day this is allowed to continue, the consequences worsen for Palestinians,' Türk warned.
