A striking new United Nations report has, for the first time, described Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank as an “apartheid system.”
The report, published on Wednesday by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), detailed decades of discrimination, segregation, and unequal laws that have systematically restricted Palestinians’ rights to movement and access to water, land and basic services.
“There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,” said UN rights chief Volker Turk in a statement. “This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.”
A number of independent experts affiliated with the UN have described the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories as an “apartheid” but this marks the first time a UN rights chief has applied the term.
Independent human rights groups have long called Israel an apartheid state, well before the latest UN rights chief’s report. Israeli rights group B’Tselem, as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, called Israel a regime operating apartheid segregation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
What prompted the UN to also take this stance?
The UN report said that Israeli authorities treat illegal settlers and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank under two distinct legal systems, resulting in inequality.
Violence by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinians has been rising since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in 2023, often occurring with the acquiescence, support, or participation of Israeli security forces, worsening the humanitarian and security situation in the region.
According to Palestinian figures, more than 1,066 Palestinians have been killed and 10,300 injured in these attacks in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.
The UN report also points out how Palestinians continue to face large-scale Israeli confiscation of land and restricted access to essential resources, including water and farmland.
This systematic dispossession undermines their livelihoods and contributes to ongoing economic and social marginalisation, leaving many Palestinians without homes or means to sustain themselves, the report says.
These policies also deepen dependency and limit opportunities for education, healthcare, and community development for the Palestinian people on their own lands.
The separation wall in the occupied West Bank has also been described by rights groups as an apartheid measure, carving up Palestinian land, segregating communities, and enforcing unequal access and movement.
More than 500,000 Israelis now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Despite being considered illegal under international law, illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand rapidly, often amid killings of Palestinians and almost complete impunity for perpetrators, according to the UN.
Such settlements also cause restrictions of movement within and between Palestinian areas, as the UN report also focuses on checkpoints and permit systems.
The occupied West Bank is crisscrossed by an extensive network of roads reserved for illegal Israeli settlers, hundreds of military checkpoints, and barriers that divide Palestinian cities and villages, severely restricting freedom of movement.