The Israeli government directly and indirectly attacked the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch following its release yesterday (19 December) of a report entitled Separate and Unequal: Israel's Discriminatory Treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Mark Regev, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted that "unfortunately over the past years a series of documented cases have shown Human Rights Watch reports to have clearly been polluted by an anti-Israel agenda." And while Netanyahu did not mention Human Rights Watch or its report explicitly, he noted that “we must expose the hypocrisy of human rights organizations that turn a blind eye to the most repressive regimes in the world, regimes that stone women and hang gays, and instead target the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.”
“This is yet another one-sided report,” added Regev.
Israeli officials failed to respond to the detailed evidence in this 166 page report, which demonstrates how Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in so-called Areas C, over which Israel maintains exclusive control. The report is based on case studies comparing Israel's starkly different treatment of settlements and nearby Palestinian communities. Most alarming for the Israeli government, the report further calls on the US and EU member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and which violate international law.
On International Human Rights Day earlier this month, Israeli officials further demonstrated their official attitude to human rights by holding a conference with the inflammatory and one-sided group NGO Monitor. In a joint press conference with NGO Monitor staff, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon noted that human rights organizations “have been manipulated and used either by terror organizations or other elements to try and strip the right of self-defence from democracies.”
According to the HRW report, "Palestinians face systematic discrimination merely because of their race, ethnicity, and national origin, depriving them of electricity, water, schools, and access to roads, while nearby Jewish settlers enjoy all of these state-provided benefits. While Israeli settlements flourish, Palestinians under Israeli control live in a time warp - not just separate, not just unequal, but sometimes even pushed off their lands and out of their homes ...Discrimination of the kind practiced daily in the West Bank should be beyond the pale for anyone.”