Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories 2020

Israel’s institutionalized system of discrimination that afflicts Palestinians in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) has long been acknowledged, and condemned, by Palestinian and international organizations, including Human Rights Watch, B’T Selem and Adalah, naming the system for what it is: apartheid.
 
In this report, although Amnesty International does not use the word ‘apartheid’ in their reports, it nonetheless does describe Israel’s institutionalized human rights violations in both Israel and the oPt, on racial grounds, that correspond to the ‘inhuman acts’ listed in the Apartheid Convention.  
 
Amnesty documents how Israel has used force and intimidation in various situations, including during home demolitions, to displace hundreds of Palestinians, and also describes how it has deployed excessive force during ‘law enforcement’ activities. 
 
In the reporting period, Israeli forces operating in the oPt arbitrarily and unlawfully killed Palestinians that posed no imminent threat, including children. It also arbitrarily detained thousands of Palestinians in its prisons, and held hundreds more in administrative detention without charge or trial. Detainees, including children, were tortured and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment and the perpetrators were not held to account but instead enjoyed complete impunity. Israel also used checkpoints and roadblocks to impede Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank.
 
Those who sought to report these abuses, including human rights activists and journalists, were also targeted, both in the oPt and Syrian Golan Heights. Violence against Palestinian women also persisted, especially in Israel, where at least 21 women were killed as a result of gender-based violence. Israel’s illegal blockade ofthe Gaza Strip violated the human rights of its residents by imposing collective punishment and restricting freedom of movement, unlawful killings and excessive use of force.