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Israeli authorities have been accused of persecuting Palestinians with oppressive policies that amount to apartheid, in a major new report that is already stirring up international controversy.
The Human Rights Watch report, released on Tuesday, says Israeli authorities “methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians” in most aspects of life.
They have “dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity,” the report says.
“In certain areas … these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
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Other human rights groups - including Jerusalem-based B Tselem - have accused Israel of apartheid in the past. Israel has rejected such accusations as propaganda .
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FOR its most recent webinar, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) turned to Shmuel Rosner, Israeli analyst, author, columnist and editor across a wide range of Israeli and international media, to explain the post-election situation in Israel.
Rosner’s sharp analysis included two perhaps surprising but very important points. The first is that the election was a fight not over ideology, but personalities, with a bloc in support of Benjamin Netanyahu remaining prime minister, and another bloc favouring “anybody but Bibi”. A clear majority of Israelis voted for right-wing parties. In fact, he said, “the basic features of ideology in Israel, namely, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Israel and Iran, Israel in the Middle East, Israel, US relations, economic issues, all these matters are not under great debate in Israel.”
Benjamin Netanyahu and Yair Lapid. Photos: Miriam Alster/Flash90
ISRAEL “has been held back” by years of electoral paralysis, Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said this week, as the country prepares for its fourth election in under two years.
Israelis go to the ballot box on Tuesday, March 23, with recent polling ambiguous as to the result.
After the last three elections produced two political deadlocks and then a coalition unable to work through its differences, Leibler expressed hope this election “will result in a governing coalition with a clear majority”.
“The threat from COVID hasn’t gone away, and the economic rehabilitation from the pandemic is only just beginning,” he said.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel is heading towards its fourth election in two years, March 23. Here is what we may reasonably expect this time.
Midnight yesterday was the deadline for declaring parties. There were mergers and droppings-out on the right and on the left. In Israeli politics, a governing coalition needs to principally garner a majority of 61 seats out of the 120 Knesset seats, and this is done by coalitions of smaller parties. Yet there is a threshold level of 3.25% (4 seats) which is an incentive against being too fragmented, because if a party falls below the threshhold, its votes may be lost.
The biggest single party in Israeli politics today is Likud, by far. It currently polls at around 30 seats. It used to have a rival bloc called Blue and White. That centrist bloc, led by Benny Gantz (who came into politics two years ago boasting of having bombed Gaza back to the “stone age” as army Chief of Staff) is now not even clearing the electoral threshold in the r