Hours after an Amnesty International report was published highlighting Israeli authorities, the embassy of Palestine in Dhaka has welcomed the publication.
Issuing a statement on Tuesday, the embassy said that the UK-based rights group through the report joined a long list of distinguished Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations and experts in exposing Israel’s colonial occupation.
The comprehensive report “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity,” sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law.
It details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
Amnesty International urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
In the statement, the embassy said the report must compel those who have chosen appeasement and inaction to realign their actions with their stated positions and international obligations.
Allowing this wholesale and institutionalized brutalization and dehumanization of the Palestinian people to continue without consequence is a betrayal of the values and principles of universal human rights.
Such a betrayal would also negatively impact the rights and lives of victims of injustice around the world. This would undermine the global fight for justice and universal application of human rights. It would be simply inexcusable.
The United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly are obliged to heed the compelling evidence presented by Amnesty and other leading human rights organizations and hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people, including through sanctions. Equally and urgently, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must investigate Israel’s crime against humanity of apartheid without delay.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian people will continue to exercise their legitimate right to oppose and resist all forms of occupation, colonization, dehumanization, racism, and apartheid until they achieve justice and realize their rights to self-determination, return, freedom, and independence, the embassy concluded.
