Apartheid and Persecution in International Law: A Case Study of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

The following research article critically analyzes the question of whether the legal classifications in this research article (including the Israeli policies and practices, as applied in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) may be classified legally as a crime against humanity through the prism of International Criminal Law (namely the crimes of apartheid and persecution as envisaged in the Apartheid Convention of 1973 and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of 1998). With lots of documentary evidence, human rights reports, legal documents and field reports, the paper establishes that Israeli government sustains a regime of racial domination over the Palestinians through systematic oppression, legal dualism, territorial fragmentation and inhumane activities, such as land confiscation, restriction of movement, home demolition and denial of civil, economic and political rights. The article also evaluates the political and economic impacts of this regime, among them enforced dependency, de-development, and institutionalized discrimination in finance. It analyses the international accountability systems, such as the jurisdiction of the ICC on the OPT, the applicability of the universal jurisdiction, and the paradigm of the new discourse on the issue of genocide. After a critical examination of the law, the study concludes that the line is crossed about the existence of apartheid and persecution and urges immediate international intervention, ambassadorial and financial, to put the apartheid edifice in its place and to reinstate the rights and dignity of the Palestinian population. This case study is part of the developing jurisprudential discourse on structural violence, settler colonialism, and racial oppression before the international law framework. Keywords: Apartheid, Persecution, Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories, International Criminal Law, Settler Colonialism, Movement Restrictions, Legal Dualism