colonial context and would treat racial domination “as a standalone feature of the Israeli state, disconnected from the settler-colonial enterprise in Palestine”.196 Indeed, this Western narrative dominates the mentioned reports; Yesh Din’s legal opinion is the only one of these publications that mentioned Israel’s strategy of colonization, though the NGO has limited this discussion only to the West Bank. The other three reports do not even mention the word ‘colonization’ once in their 512 collective pages, and none of the four reports discuss Zionism as a violent ideology of racism and colonial domination. The concept of apartheid is thus depicted by these reports “as a free-floating event, to be condemned by everyone but impossible to understand or redress”.197 The lack of will of Western and Israeli NGOs to recognize Israel as a colonial-apartheid state is evident through their conduct; for example, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both demonize any form of Palestinian resistance in blatant disregard of multiple UN resolutions reaffirming the right of a people to resist colonial domination through all available means.198 Similarly, after publishing its report, Amnesty International published a press release where it stated that it “does not consider that Israel labelling itself as a ‘Jewish State’ in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate”,199 disregarding one of the main elements of Israel’s system of Jewish and racial supremacy over the Palestinian people and further highlighting the lack of genuine understanding of Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime often prevalent in Western NGOs’ conduct. Thus, employing the apartheid framework in the Palestinian context is necessary to highlight the extent to which Israel operates within a system of colonial domination over the Palestinian people, and it can be used strategically in the international arena to encourage Member States, corporations, and individuals to end Israeli impunity. However, apartheid must be considered as a tool of Israeli colonization in order to bring forth real decolonization based on a human rights approach and “premised on the long-standing rejection of Zionism as a racist and settler-colonial project”.200 196 Lana Tatour, ‘Why calling Israel an apartheid state is not enough’ (Middle East Eye, 18 January 2021) <https://www. middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-calling-israel-apartheid-state-not-enough> accessed 3 October 2022. 197 El Aasar (n 195). 198 See, for example, UNGA Res A/RES/34/44 (n 62), art 2. 199 Amnesty International, ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity’ (Amnesty International, 1 February 2022) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israelsapartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/> accessed 3 October 2022. 200 Rania Muhareb, ‘International Law and the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Movement’ (Al-Shabaka, 23 March 2022) <https://al-shabaka.org/memos/international-law-and-the-palestinian-anti-apartheid-movement/> accessed 3 October 2022. 38

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