It rarely enters UN reports, and is not heard from the lips of UN officials. But now, in a report released on March 15 in Beirut, Lebanon, the UN has proclaimed that Israel ‘is guilty of the crime of apartheid’. This is a very significant judgment, one with important ramifications for the UN, for the International Court of Justice and for the international community. In 2015, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) was charged by its member state, the eighteen Arab states in West Asia and North Africa, to study whether Israel has established an apartheid regime. ESCWA asked two American academics, Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley, to undertake the study. The report that they have now produced makes the ‘grave charge’ that Israel is guilty of apartheid not only in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the Occupied Territory, but also within its own boundaries and against the Palestinian refugees. This is a very sharp report, which will be hard for Israel to ignore.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington DC some few weeks back to meet US President Donald Trump. At that meeting, Mr. Trump seemed to disregard the international consensus towards the creation of two states. In fact, as this report and others show, the two-state solution has been long vitiated. The Israeli government’s illegal Jewish settlement project in the West Bank and its virtual annexation of East Jerusalem makes it impossible to imagine the establishment of Palestine in that region.
