In 2006, former President Jimmy Carter set off a firestorm of criticism when he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter was accused on anti-Semitism and people resigned in protest from the Carter Center Board of Directors. Carter responded “Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank” including the “forced separation within the West Bank of Israelis from Palestinians and the total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military.” Fifteen years later, the situation may be worse in big and little ways. The International Criminal Court recently began a formal investigation into possible war crimes by Israel in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and in Gaza, which Israel has blockaded since 2007.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the depth of the Israeli apartheid regime. Israel, which has the highest vaccination rate in the world, delayed vaccinating the over 100,000 Palestinians who work in Israel or in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel also denied responsibility for vaccinating people in land controlled by its military where 5 million people live. According to the World Health Organization, there were more than 200,000 coronavirus cases there and over 2,000 deaths.
Palestinians continue to live with smaller daily injustices. Israeli settlers living illegally on Palestinian territory were recently videoed harassing an Arab Israeli family, including a woman with a baby, that were picnicking in the West Bank. The armed settlers dumped the family’s food into a fire and claimed they did not have a right to be there because “You’re not Israelis, you’re Arabs.” When Israeli soldiers intervened they sided with the settler vigilantes and forced the family to leave. Arab Israelis are technically Israeli citizens.
In another incident, five Palestinians children between the age of 8 and 13 were detained by the Israeli military in the West Bank’s south Hebron hills, accused of illegally picking wild vegetables. Israeli settlers occupying an illegal outpost on Palestinian land accused the children of trespassing. Seen on video, when an older child tried to rescue one of the younger ones being taken away by Israeli soldiers, he was manhandled. The five Palestinian children were held in police custody for three hours before being released.
The Israeli military claimed, “a number of suspects were identified who had penetrated the territory of a house in the south Hebron hills. An army patrol in the area located the suspects and transferred them to Israel Police, who worked to find their parents and release them.” According to an Israeli human rights activist who viewed the events, the military’s report was at best misleading. “We watched a number of settlers descend the hill, they got closer to the kids, and the children fled towards al-Rakiz, which is nearby.” The settlers chased the children in a van forcing them to abandon their buckets of edible plants. Army jeeps were dispatched to the Palestinian village of al-Rakiz, where soldiers forcefully seized the children.
According to the Israeli organization B'Tselem, Israel arrests hundreds of children every year in the occupied territories. In 2020, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a teenage Palestinian boy who was part of a protest against the occupation of the West Bank. UNICEF condemned the killing and other abuses against Palestinian minors in the occupied territories. According to Ted Chaiban, the UNICEF Regional Director, "From January to September this year, according to UN data to date, 232 incidents involved the injury of Palestinian children, some of whom sustained long-term damage." UNICEF urged Israeli authorities to “fully respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of all children and refrain from using violence against children, in accordance with international law."
Israel’s security forces have detained more than 10,000 Palestinian children since 2000 and the U.S. State Department has documented numerous cases of human rights abuses against Palestinian minors who are held in Israeli prisons.
United States Congresswoman Betty McCollum (Democrat-Minnesota), is urging the "Biden administration to fully investigate and verify to the American people that no U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel” is being used in the police actions against Palestinian children. In 2019, McCollum unsuccessfully introduced legislation that would prevent United States military aid to Israel from being used in operations that led to Palestinian children being detained. So far the Biden administration has been reluctant to criticize the Israeli government and has kept the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, a move from Tel Aviv made by Donald Trump. Biden’s Secretary of State also condemned the International Criminal Court for deciding to investigate possible Israeli war crimes committed against Palestine.
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