It is becoming harder to deny that Israel is an apartheid state

Now, the international community needs to take action to end this decades-old system of oppression.

On April 27, the leading international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a 213-page report, titled “A Threshold Crossed”, condemning Israel for “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians” in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) and in Israel itself. The report undoubtedly marks the crossing of a threshold for the rights group, which has long been shying away from such overt and comprehensive criticism of Israel, to the frustration of Palestinians and advocates of Palestinian rights. But the threshold that the report’s name ostensibly refers to is a legal one that, in HRW’s analysis, Israel has finally crossed. “While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW.