{"id":499497,"date":"2026-01-07T18:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/499497\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T18:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:27:14","slug":"united-nations-rights-office-accuses-israel-of-west-bank-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/499497\/","title":{"rendered":"United Nations rights office accuses Israel of West Bank ‘apartheid’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Nations on Wednesday said decades of discrimination and segregation of Palestinians by Israel in the West Bank were intensifying, and called on the country to end its \u201capartheid system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a new report<\/a>, the UN rights office said the \u201csystematic discrimination\u201d against Palestinians had \u201cdrastically deteriorated\u201d in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,\u201d UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives \u2013- every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel\u2019s discriminatory laws, policies and practices,\u201d he alleged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and\u00a0segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGet The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
\n\t\t\tby email and never miss our top stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n

A number of independent experts affiliated with the UN have described the situation in the Palestinian territories as an \u201capartheid\u201d but this marks the first time a UN rights chief has applied the term.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s mission the United Nations dismissed the report as \u201cabsurd and distorted accusations of racial discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

In said the report \u201ccompletely ignores fundamental facts that lie at the basis of the conflict, and that inform the actions and policies of the State of Israel, mainly the grave security threats that Israel faces\u201d and well as that the PA continues \u201cto encourage violence\u201d by paying stipends to terrorist who attack Israelis or their families.<\/p>\n

It said the UN human rights office has an \u201cinherently political driven fixation\u2026on vilifying Israel\u201d and questioned if the office had \u201cdemonstrated comparable attention through unmandated thematic reporting on situations such as Iran, Syria, Yemen, or Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel rejects any allegation of apartheid, saying its own Arab citizens enjoy equal rights. Israel also notes that it granted limited autonomy to the Palestinian Authority at the height of the peace process in the 1990s, giving it control over areas of the West Bank where the majority of Palestinians in the territory live.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIllustrative: IDF troops during a military operation in the West Bank, December 31, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Mounting settler violence<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s report said the Israeli authorities \u201ctreat Israeli settlers and Palestinians residing in the West Bank under two distinct bodies of law and policies, resulting in unequal treatment on a range of critical issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestinians continue to be subjected to large-scale confiscation of land and deprivation of access to resources,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

This had led to \u201cdispossessing them of their lands and homes, alongside other forms of systemic discrimination, including criminal prosecution in military courts during which their due process and fair trial rights are systematically violated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turk demanded Wednesday that Israel \u201crepeal all laws, policies and practices that perpetuate systemic discrimination against Palestinians based on race, religion or ethnic origin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discrimination was compounded by continuing and escalating settler violence, in many cases \u201cwith the acquiescence, support and participation of Israel\u2019s security forces,\u201d the rights office said.<\/p>\n

More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in settlements in the West Bank, controlled by Israel since 1967 and home to around three million Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tSettlers and Palestinians face off near Bethlehem, November 29, 2025. At center, a settler can be seen wielding his gun toward a Palestinian. (Screenshot, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)<\/p>\n

Violence in the West Bank has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.<\/p>\n

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the war started, according to the PA health ministry. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.<\/p>\n

During the same period, at least 65 civilians and Israeli security personnel have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes during raids in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The same period has also seen a major surge in attacks by settler extremists on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank. The IDF has recorded more than 750 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence since the start of 2025. The total for 2024 was 675 incidents.<\/p>\n

\u2018Almost complete impunity\u2019<\/p>\n

Since the Gaza war began, Israeli authorities had also \u201cfurther expanded the use of unlawful force, arbitrary detention and torture,\u201d the UN report said.<\/p>\n

Increased \u201crepression of civil society and undue restrictions on media freedoms (and) severe movement restrictions\u201d had also characterized \u201can unprecedented deterioration of the human rights situation\u201d in the West Bank, it said.<\/p>\n

There had also been rapid expansions of settlements, considered illegal under international law, even as unlawful killings of Palestinians were taking place \u201cwith almost complete impunity,\u201d the report charged.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tChildren stand next to a vehicle that was torched during a settler rampage in the early morning in the West Bank town of Ein Yabrud, December 17, 2025. (AP\/Nasser Nasser)<\/p>\n

Of the more than 1,500 killings of Palestinians that took place between the start of 2017 and September 30 last year, Israeli authorities had opened just 112 investigations, resulting in only one conviction, it pointed out.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Palestinians meanwhile remain arbitrarily detained by Israeli authorities, mostly under so-called \u201cadministrative detention,\u201d without charge or trial, it said.<\/p>\n

The report said it had found \u201creasonable grounds to believe that this separation, segregation, and subordination is intended to be permanent\u2026 to maintain oppression and domination of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, it stressed, amounts to a violation of an international anti-racism convention, \u201cwhich prohibits racial segregation and apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UN rights office on Wednesday urged Israel to end its \u201cunlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including by dismantling all settlements and evacuating all settlers, and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\tYou appreciate our journalism\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWe\u2019re really pleased that you\u2019ve read X Times of Israel articles<\/strong> in the past month. \n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

You clearly find our careful reporting valuable, in a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.<\/p>\n

Your support is essential to continue our work.<\/strong> We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically since October 7.<\/p>\n

So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community<\/strong>. For as little as $6 a month you’ll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE<\/strong>, as well as accessing\u00a0exclusive content\u00a0available only to Times of Israel Community members.<\/p>\n

Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tJoin Our Community\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tJoin Our Community\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\tAlready a member? Sign in to stop seeing this<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Nations on Wednesday said decades of discrimination and segregation of Palestinians by Israel in the West…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":499498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-499497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115855232287769290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}