different areas and controlled under different legal regimes – military occupation, de facto and de jure annexation and colonization. • Socio-political fragmentation through the disintegration of the national and collective identity of the people as a result of the reclassification and imposition of an artificial legal hierarchy based on place of residence. Consequently, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are instead named ArabIsraelis, Bedouins and Druze; those residing in the occupied Palestinian territory are instead West Bankers, Jerusalemites and Gazans; and those in exile hold no status at all. Interactions and connections between Palestinians are heavily restricted; their experience of Israeli repression differ as a result of the distinct legal regimes of oppression; and their rights, access and identity are altered in order to undermine their collective unity and cohesiveness as a people. Israel uses these fragmentation policies as a tool to assert domination and maintain control over the Palestinian people, dividing the collective and disconnecting it from its territory. Thereby, it erodes the two requisite elements - a people and a land - necessary to the actual exercise of the right to selfdetermination. In turn, this fragmentation weakens the Palestinian collective will, identity, and eventually the capacity to resist Israeli suppression.55 1.2.3. Isolation Isolation relates to the whole range of laws, regulations and administrative decisions, policies and practices aimed at splitting an already fragmented people and their communities. Isolation mechanisms aim at confining, concentrating, separating and disconnecting communities of one particular area from another. As a subset of an apartheid system, isolation practices violate Article 2(c) of the Apartheid Convention, which refers to “any […] measures calculated to prevent a racial group […] from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group […].”56 Isolation, as pursued by Israel, constitutes a micro-fragmentation, that complements the broader fragmentation, and through which Israel fastens its security fist in order to undermines Palestinian political, cultural, social and economic cohesion and development. This can be seen in Israel’s permit regime, which includes military gates and checkpoints between 55 See withdrawn report issued by UNESCWA, supra 2, 4. 56 Convention on Apartheid, supra 34, art.2(c). 21