The Establishment of the Department:
The Anti-Discrimination & Apartheid Department was established in mid-2022, as a specialized institution concerned with combating Apartheid that the occupying State practices against the Palestinian people in various places of its existence, and as one of the main PLO departments, headed by the PLO Executive Committee member, Mr. Ramzi Rabah.
The Anti-Apartheid Department held the first national conference against apartheid on 11-12-2022, in cooperation with a number of partners (the NGO Network, the BDS movement, the Human Rights Organizations Council, the Ministry of Justice and the Anti-Apartheid Committee of the Palestinian National Council). The department developed the conclusions of the Conference into an action strategy, formulated into the appeal that emerged following the first national conference, which bore the title "Towards a global front to combat and end the Israeli settler-colonial regime and apartheid."
Definition of the Department:
The PLO Anti-Apartheid Department is the channel and official body in charge of following up combating the Israeli apartheid regime, which the Israeli Occupation State is establishing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The department carries out its responsibilities and activities through national, Arab and international campaigns, as well as with the concerned international institutions and organizations, and through networks of Governmental and non-governmental organizations, private and civil society institutions, parties, trade unions, parliamentarians,
activists and experts, and human rights associations; concerned with opposing the Israeli occupation and its racist policies in Palestine.
The Vision of the Department:
The Anti-Apartheid Department considers that confronting and exposing all manifestations of the apartheid regime and settler colonialism, its repercussions on our people, and the tireless work to hold the occupying state accountable and condemn it internationally, is an integral part of the national liberation battle that our people and its political and societal forces are waging to get rid of occupation and settlements, wrest freedom and independence, and end the oppression and racial injustice that our people suffer across both sides of the Green Line, including ensuring the recognition of the national identity of our people in the 1948 territory, and to achieve their full right to equal rights.
The Objectives of the Department:
The department seeks, through networking with the network of human rights and humanitarian organizations, Arab and international civil society institutions, and the distinguished role of expatriate Palestinian communities, to build a global front against the Israeli apartheid Enhancing the role ofregime and to achieve the following objectives: international institutions, especially the UN and its General Assembly, Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice, to assume their role in applying the International Law to the issue of the Israeli Apartheid State, and to prosecute it for its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Developing the means and tools to be used in the battle to end the apartheid regime, hold the occupying state accountable, and achieve the legitimate Palestinian rights, foremost of which is the right to self-determination, and the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign State along the borders of June 4, 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of refugees to return to their homes in accordance with Resolution 194.
Increasing societal and international awareness of the theoretical and practical knowledge and intellectual foundations of the practices of the occupying State and Israeli apartheid, and forming a lobbying public opinion so that the states would adopt effective measures to implement the rights stipulated in international resolutions and International Law towards Palestinian rights, and to fulfill the obligations recognized in the International Law and other international conventions to punish the Israeli apartheid state.
Apartheid as One of the Tools of Israeli Settler Colonialism
Since the occupation of Palestine, the Zionist movement has sought to obliterate the Palestinian identity through daily racist practices against Palestinians in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, and within the Green Line, to change the geopolitical; the Arab historical and cultural landscape of the Palestinian land, where it practiced a policy of emptying the land of its inhabitants through campaigns of ethnic cleansing and displacement. The Zionist movement is still working on displacing many villages and towns across all of the historical Palestine. It also prevents the expression of the Palestinian national identity in Jerusalem and its villages, in the Negev and within the Green line, in addition to enacting and implementing many racist laws.
The Israeli apartheid exists in the Israeli legal system as well as in its military systems.
Examples of that, to name few of these, many laws were enacted, such as; the racial “Nationality Law”, the Present Absentee Law (1950), the Absentee Property Law (1950), the Basic Law of
Israel Land (1960), the Law Preventing Family Reunification, the Emergency Law, The Annexation in the West Bank, and other laws that are based on the colonial concept of substitution. The apartheid regime practiced by the Israeli Occupation State against the Palestinians in the 1967- occupied territories was not limited to the military orders issued in the form of laws and instructions, but rather went beyond that to include orders, laws, procedures, regulations, and conditions to affect all aspects of Palestinian life including human, social, health, economic, and security conditions, in addition to private property that is violated every day with military orders to confiscate the land and establish settlements, as well as erect military checkpoints and obstruct or prevent the movement of citizens. It also established the separation and apartheid expansion wall with the aim of confiscating more land and annexing it permanently, separating the Palestinian areas so that they become isolated and disjointed cantons, and undermining the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state, in addition to preventing the Palestinians from exercising their basic and legitimate right to self-determination.
The Department and the International Law in the face of Israeli apartheid
The work of the department is anchored on important global decisions, agreements, reports and documents issued by international human rights organizations, prominent personalities, and Israeli institutions, most notably:
- The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965).
- The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3068 of November 30, 1973.
- IV Geneva Convention.
- The report of Human Rights Watch and the report of Amnesty International, which explains, with documents and facts, the racial persecution and apartheid regime that Palestinians in the occupied territories are subjected to.
- The report of the Israeli B'Tselem organization, one of the most important and largest human rights organizations in the occupying state, which confirms the existence of the apartheid regime and racial discrimination in the Palestinian territories.
- The report, documented with objective and scientific facts, by the United Nations Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) team, which revealed the features of the Israeli apartheid regime, which persecutes the Palestinians at home, in the occupied territories, and abroad.
- The Durban Conference against Racism in South Africa in 2001, organized by the United Nations, which criticized the occupying power as a racist regime; which is the worst in modern history.
- The book issued by US President Jimmy Carter in 2006, under the title "Palestine Peace, Not Apartheid", is considered one of the most important documents that expose the apartheid system that the occupying state is building in the Palestinian territories.