TODAY marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, and the triumph of Jewish settler-colonialism in Palestine fathered by Britain and the United States.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the plan to partition Palestine into two states – one Arab and the other Jewish. It was done without consulting the Palestinians, who constituted two-thirds of the population then, a gross violation of the UN Charter.

The United States Truman administration, pressured by the Zionists, used bribes and threats to obtain the two-thirds majority required for sanctioning the partition.

Not long after the plan was adopted, the Zionists embarked on a terror campaign to expel Palestinians from their homes.

From December 1947 to end-1948, Zionist terrorist groups killed 13,000 Palestinians, forced 750,000 – more than half the Palestinian population – into exile and depopulated and destroyed more than 500 villages.

In the 1967 Israeli war on Egypt and Syria, another 250,000 Palestinians were expelled and became refugees. Today, the Palestinian refugee population numbers more than seven million, scattered all over the world.

The ethnic cleansing was witnessed by representatives in Palestine from the United Nations, the United States and Britain and reported in the media, and yet the major powers did nothing to stop this horrible crime.

UN observers submitted a report stating that Israeli policy was that of “uprooting Arabs from their native villages in Palestine by force or threat” but the UN secretary-general, a Norwegian, killed it by not publishing.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the illegal expropriation of Palestinian land are still continuing.

The West Bank has been colonised by building Jewish settlements in violation of international law. There are 300 Jewish-only civilian settlements with a population of 700,000 settlers segregated from the three million Palestinians living there. The settlers are subject to Israeli law and enjoy the same rights as Israeli citizens. On the other hand, the Palestinian population is subject to military laws, discriminated against and oppressed.

Gaza has been turned into the largest open-air prison by the Israeli embargo imposed since 2007.

Its economy and infrastructure for basic needs have been destroyed. People are living in abject poverty without adequate food, healthcare, housing and education.

After a five-year inquiry, the International Criminal Court prosecutor concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip by Israel, and decided to initiate an investigation.

Her decision was enthusiastically received by the victims of the crimes and human rights organisations but condemned by the US government.

The Zionist dream of a state exclusively for Jews in Palestine has morphed into a violent rogue apartheid state there. In 2017, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) published a report prepared by two eminent jurists, which concluded that, on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.

Under pressure from the Zionist lobbies and the US administration, the UN secretary-general withdrew the report.

Subsequently, Israeli and Western human rights organizations B’tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International published reports corroborating the finding of ESCWA. B’tselem’s report is headlined “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”.

In its 2022 report, Amnesty International concluded that “the totality of the regime of laws, policies and practices described in this report demonstrates that Israel has established and maintained an institutionalised regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis – a system of apartheid – wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948”.

The report accuses the international community of standing by as Israel has been given free rein to dispossess, segregate, control, oppress and dominate Palestinians. It warns that inaction in the face of these gross violations has contributed to undermining the international legal order and has emboldened Israel to continue perpetrating crimes with impunity.

In fact, some states, particularly the US, have been providing diplomatic cover, including at the UN Security Council, to shield it from accountability.

Former Israeli attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair wrote in 2022 that Israel’s ongoing domination over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is a gross injustice that must be urgently rectified. He said: “It is with great sadness that I must conclude that my country has sunk to such low political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime. It is time for the international community to recognise this reality as well.”

Early last year, outgoing UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk submitted his report to the UN Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. He concluded that “the political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory, which endows one racial-national-ethnic group (Jews) with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group (Palestinians) to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid”.

He recommends that the international community accept and adopt the findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations that apartheid is being practised by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond.

Apartheid is among the most serious crimes under international law and all states have a duty to cooperate to end it. The Apartheid Convention empowers states parties to exercise universal jurisdiction over the crime against humanity of apartheid. Thus, Israeli leaders and top military officials can be prosecuted and punished for the crime against humanity of apartheid.

Lynk calls on the UN to re-establish the Special Committee Against Apartheid to investigate any and all practices of systematic discrimination and oppression purportedly amounting to apartheid anywhere in the world, including the occupied Palestinian territory.

The US and other major Western powers have ignored the reports of the human rights organisations and the special rapporteur. They are complicit in Israel’s heinous crime of apartheid.

Their hypocrisy has been exposed by their conflicting responses to Russia’s Western-provoked invasion of Ukraine, and Israel’s apartheid and violence against the indigenous Palestinians.

They imposed crippling sanctions on Russia and rushed billions of dollars in aid and sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. In contrast, despite Israel’s practice of apartheid and contemptuous violations of international law and the UN Charter, they continue to provide political, economic, military and diplomatic support.

The Palestinian resistance to Jewish settler-colonialism has continued for over a century with great sacrifices and increasing determination. At the same time, the repression, violence and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli authorities of the indigenous population have intensified.

On May 11, despite the entrenched support for Israel in the US Congress, Congressman Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution there to formally recognise the Nakba. An unprecedented event, attended by supporters of the Palestinian cause, was held in Capitol Hill to commemorate Nakba. She told the crowd that “the Nakba happened in 1948 and it never ended”. This historic event is the fruit of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign launched by Palestinian civil society in 2005, modelled on the South African experience in ending apartheid there.

The campaign has been successful in Europe and the US. Churches have divested from companies that sustain the apartheid system, and prominent scientists and artistes have refused to participate in events in Israel.

The BDS campaign is also contributing to an increasing change in US public opinion, with support for Israel decreasing among young liberals including Jews. Polls this year show that among Democratic Party supporters, 49% sympathise with the Palestinians compared to 38% for Israelis.

The transformation is significant given the fact that, at one time, the Democratic Party was the bastion of Zionist interests and responsible for the creation of Israel. An encouraging trend is the increasing support among younger adults for the Palestinian cause.

What has been the response of Israel and the Zionist lobbies in the US and Europe to the growth of the BDS movement?

They regard the non-violent BDS campaign as a strategic threat and have pressured governments to pass legislation to criminalise it. They equate criticism of Israel and Zionism, a racist ideology, with anti-Semitism. In the US Congress elections, Israeli lobbies spent vast sums of money to campaign against candidates critical of Israeli policy towards Palestinians and sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle.

The time for dismantling the apartheid regime in Palestine has arrived. Governments and civil society organisations that uphold justice, human rights and democracy must support the BDS movement and intensify their efforts to end settler-colonialism and apartheid in Palestine. – May 15, 2023.

* Mohideen Abdul Kader reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.