Israel Guilty of Ethnic Cleansing and Apartheid, Says UN Rapporteur

By Umberto Bacchi

A UN human rights investigator has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and

 apartheid policies against Palestinians.

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian 

territories, said Israel carried out a "systematic and continued effort to change

 the ethnic composition of East Jerusalem".

Falk, an 82-year-old American, said that in recent years Israel had made it more 

difficult for Palestinians to reside there while encouraging the building of new 

Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law.

Falk, an emeritus law professor at Princeton University, said that more than 

11,000 Palestinians had lost their right to live in Jerusalem since 1996.

"The 11,000 is just the tip of the iceberg because many more are faced with

 possible challenges to their residency rights," he said.

Falk, who is Jewish, described Israeli policies as bearing "unacceptable 

characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing".

"What is called occupation is now more widely understood to be a form of

 annexation, the embodiment of apartheid in the sense that there's a 

discriminatory dual system of law, giving legal protection to the Israeli settlers

 and subjecting the Palestinian population under occupation to a continuing

 existence without rights," he said.

Falk said that the "realities on the ground" for the Palestinian people have

 worsened since he took up his post in 2008. He is due to step down later

 this month.

He said Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

 hampered the outcome of deadlocked peace talks between Tel Aviv and

 the Palestinian Authority.

"Every increment of enlarging the settlements or every incident of house 

demolition is a way of worsening the situation confronting the Palestinian

 people and reducing what prospects they might have as the outcome of

 supposed peace negotiations.

"There are other reasons for encouraging the idea that it's still possible to

 negotiate a settlement based on the two-state model, even though most 

informed observers regard it as highly implausible given the changes that

 have taken place during the period of occupation and given the outlook 

of the Netanyahu government," he said.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israel-guilty-ethnic-cleansing-apartheid-says-un-rapporteur-1441350?utm_content=buffer83cb6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer