1. Political-Legal Framework on the Right to Self-Determination “[I]f there is no country called Palestine it is not because there are no Palestinians. […] This people […] identified itself with the land it tilled and lived on […], the more so after an almost wholly European decision was made to resettle, reconstitute and recapture the land for Jews who were to be brought there from elsewhere […] Such as it is, the Palestinian actuality is today, was yesterday, and most likely tomorrow will be built upon an act of resistance to this new foreign colonialism”. Edward Said1 This 8th installment of BADIL’s series on Forcible Population Transfer: The Case of Palestine explores Israeli policies of segregation, fragmentation and isolation and the way in which these policies contribute to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian people. These policies constitute significant components within a broader Israeli apartheid regime, as they indeed reflect prohibited practices outlined in the Apartheid Convention. While having been significantly researched and slowly becoming an increasingly accepted reality in international discourse,2 a focus only on apartheid would ignore the basic objective that underpins the entire Zionist enterprise: the establishment of a ‘Jewish state’ on the whole of Mandatory Palestine. In that regard, the use of these apartheid practices of segregation, fragmentation, and isolation is not an end in and of itself, but is rather a mechanism designed to eliminate the Palestinian people by undermining their collectivity. Through this, Israel seeks to make the 1 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (London: Vintage, 1992), 5-8. 2 See withdrawn report issued by UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [UNESCWA], Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, E/ESCWA/ ECRI/2017/1, 15 March 2017, available at: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/ uploads/downloads/201703_UN_ESCWA-israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupationenglish.pdf; See also Virginia Tilley (ed.), Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Re-Assessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law (Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council, 2009), available at: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/research-data/view/4634 [accessed 28 February 2020]. 9