The former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, clearly condemned Israel’s actions in the oPt and suggested it may be guilty of the crime of apartheid in an article that was published in The Financial Times on June 29. He claimed that Israel has clearly demonstrated its intention to maintain its structural domination and oppression of the Palestinian people, and observed that “[the new Israeli government] is currently led by a prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who publicly rejects Palestinian rights and has long called for annexation of the 60 per cent of the West Bank designated under the Oslo Accords as Area C”.
He observed: “[A] powerful state is controlling another people through an open-ended occupation, settling its own people on the land in violation of international law and enforcing a legal regime of institutionalised discrimination.”
He also proposed a new approach, noting that “[c]alls for a return to unconditional bilateral talks every time there is a fresh flare-up in fighting will only serve to perpetuate the status quo if these root causes are not addressed.”
He concluded by calling on the international community to confront the consequences of Israel’s actions. He tentatively welcomed the International Criminal Court’s investigation of alleged war crimes (which, in his view, “gives grounds for modest hope”) but also observed that the lack of international legal accountability has effectively enabled Israel to ignore various UN resolutions including the aforementioned UNSCR 2334.
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