Amnesty joins rights groups in accusing Israel of apartheid

Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israel has maintained 'a system of oppression and domination' over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948, one that meets the international definition of apartheid.

With the release of a 278-page report compiled over a period of four years, the London-based rights group joins Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B'Tselem in accusing Israel of apartheid — both within its borders and in the occupied territories.

Their findings are part of a growing international movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute. Those efforts have gained strength in the decade since the peace process ground to a halt, as Israel has consolidated its control over the occupied territories and soured on the idea of a Palestinian state.

Israel rejects any allegation of apartheid, saying its own Arab citizens enjoy equal rights. It granted limited autonomy to the Palestinian Authority at the height of the peace process in the 1990s and withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

But Amnesty and the other groups say the very fragmentation of the territories in which Palestinians live is part of an overall regime of control designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.