Why is Biden’s Israel policy controversial?

A recent report released by the U.K.-based human rights organization Amnesty International accused Israel of “committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians.”

The report says that “the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime” was revealed. “Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.” Agnes Callamard, the new secretary of the organization, said that “the international community has a responsibility to act.” With the report, Amnesty International has become one of several global rights groups to use the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians.

Since 1948, as the report confirms, Israel has pursued policies that benefit Jewish Israelis while restricting the rights of Palestinians. The report also furthered that “the segregation is conducted in a systematic and highly institutionalized manner through laws, policies and practices, all of which are intended to prevent Palestinians from claiming and enjoying equal rights with Jewish Israelis.” This is the case both for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20% of the country’s population, and the 5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

The 278-page report, based on research conducted from 2017 to 2021, follows similar legal assessments published over the past year by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) saying that Israel’s dual policies, which are codified in its laws, privilege Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians and had “crossed the threshold” into apartheid. On the other hand, Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem says that Israel has adopted a policy to “divide, separate and rule” over the Palestinians, who have rights “inferior” to those afforded to its Jewish citizens.

Prior to Amnesty International’s report, Israel urged the rights group against publishing the study and accused the conclusions as being “false, biased and antisemitic.” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Amnesty International “is just another radical organization (that) echoes propaganda, without seriously checking the facts,” accusing it of echoing “the same lies shared by terrorist organizations.”

“Israel isn’t perfect, but we are a democracy committed to international law, open to criticism, with a free press and a strong and independent judicial system,” Lapid said in a statement.

Washington’s stance

The United States dismissed the view that Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians constitute apartheid. “I reject the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid. The department’s own reports have never used such terminology,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters. Price added: “I think that it is important, as the world’s only Jewish state, that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn’t a double standard being applied.” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides called the report “absurd,” adding “that is not language that we have used and will not use.” Other senior U.S. politicians also rejected the report, claiming it is “steeped in antisemitism and is part of Amnesty’s broad, decadeslong campaign to criminalize and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state.”

U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration are sticking to the long-established script in Washington, expressing unequivocal support for Israel and thus failing to acknowledge Israel as an occupying power and the profound advantages this state enjoys over the occupied Palestinians when it comes to military prowess, wealth and resources. It also turns a blind eye to the growing cries from progressive Democrats in U.S. Congress to take a harder line with Israel over its theft of lands, displacement of Palestinians and expansion of settlements. The endless U.S. support for Israel is well-known thanks to the billions of dollars of aid given annually, the consistent blocks of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions condemning Israel and the public backing of its military offensives.

The U.S. knows Amnesty International’s report on Israel is true and that all its facts are well documented; however, it is the endless U.S. support for Israel that compromises America’s status as a neutral broker and has served only to entrench and legitimize Israel’s military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land for more than 70 years and has made establishing a just, lasting peace between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples more difficult.

Hopes fade away

There can be – and there should be – no going back to the old formula in place for decades, whereby the U.S. colluded privately with Israel and the two powers thereafter imposed their will on the Palestinians. This will never be the way to achieve just and lasting peace; it will only exacerbate and prolong the conflict. The hopes for the two-state solution to the decadeslong conflict are fading dramatically because of Israel’s continued violence and settlement expansion.

Palestinians are allowed limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip while in East Jerusalem they are facing hard measures pushing for their displacement. The U.S. must examine all these facts on the ground that upend the two-state paradigm instead of denying Amnesty International’s report or silencing it, as this report reflects a civil-rights-based struggle for equality between two people on the same holy land.

* The article was first appeared on Daily Sabah