Trump's Promised Land: Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians

Grotius – Center for International Law and Human Rights

News update

Trump’s Promised Land: Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians

1 October 2019

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Today, Grotius – Center for International Law and Human Rights published a report titled “Trump’s Promised Land: Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”. It details Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967 (Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem) as well as its discriminatory practices towards Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also examines recent policies by the American Trump administration that have vehemently undermined Palestinian rights.

 

The American army has considered Israel as a close strategic military ally for several decades. This fact can be traced to the early 1970s when the American government upgraded Israel’s strategic standing to a nuclear power, making it the first and only nuclear country in the region. Although American Democratic and Republican politicians had consistently declared their unwavering support for Israel during presidential campaigns, the Trump administration’s behavior exceeded any other in advocating for Israel against Palestinian rights.

 

American President Donald Trump has had no special interest in the Middle East or any knowledge of the Israel / Palestine conflict prior to assuming his current role. One commentator has described him as “the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president” and another one wrote about Trump’s questionable business ethics:

"Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s… At the very least, with his constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. But whatever his knowledge about the source of his wealth, the public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all."

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Trump has adopted aggressive settlements supporting policies in violation of international law that included recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel. The Trump administration has also engaged in cutting humanitarian aid for the Palestinian population seeking political concessions. The Trump administration did so because of billionaires supporters of Israel who donated to Trump’s presidential election campaign. The most prominent among them are casino mogul Sheldon Adelson the owner of Netanyahu backing Israeli free daily newspaper Yisrael Ha-Yom and cosmetics businessman and head of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder. Trump’s ‘peace team’ for Israel / occupied Palestinian territories has been comprised of Israeli settlements enthusiasts: Trump’s son in law and presidential adviser Jared Kushner, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt.

 

No citizenship was bestowed on the Palestinian population living in the occupied territories constituting a formal apartheid regime that has brutally distinguished between them and Israeli Jews. The creation of a Palestinian Authority with minimal jurisdiction and under the total control of Israel has generated areas of Bantustan nature that only reinforced Israel’s apartheid.

 

The country’s continuously expanding illegal settlements project, particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank under consecutive Labor (including its subsequent variants such as Kadima) and Likud governments has subverted any genuine resolution for Israel’s occupation in the form of ending it and establishing two independent and sovereign states.  

 

Israeli policies in the occupied territories have not created the minimal conditions required to realize a peaceful resolution to terminating its occupation / apartheid. These have consisted of mass killings, routine torture of Palestinian detainees, targeted assassinations, arbitrary and administrative detentions, home demolitions, discriminatory practices, severe limitation on freedom of movement, and war crimes.

 

Israel has systematically discriminated against those Palestinians who were not forced out of the country by Jewish forces during the 1948 war. Founded on the ruins of their people, the less than third of the Palestinians neither yearned for the state of Israel, nor expected it to be realized. On the contrary. During the first two decades of Israel’s existence they were placed under a draconian military regime that severely restricted their freedom of movement and other fundamental rights.

 

The Jewish supremacy in Israel is reflected in the country’s declaration of independence as well as in its citizenship, immigration, and elections laws. Most recently it has been manifested through Basic Law: Israel – Nation State of the Jewish People, which benefits from a constitutional status, although the country has no official constitution nor can it be proud of a constitutional tradition, imagined or real. The government’s policy is intentionally biased against Palestinian citizens in all spheres of rights: political, social, economic, education, and religious. 

For additional information, please contact:

Marwan Dalal, Executive Director