retaliation, which includes not mentioning issues that are of most ‘controversy’, such as the issue of Palestinian refugees.186 Israel’s ability to maintain its impunity is thus further aggravated by the international community’s lack of political will to confront Israel and risk international alienation. The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has confirmed this in an unprecedented way. The US and EU rightfully took rapid measures, including sanctions, to hold Russia accountable for its military operation and alleged war crimes, speaking of the rules-based world order and the rights of refugees. However, this stands in massive contrast to the reactions that western states have given to Israel’s more than 74 years of ongoing Nakba and half-century military occupation and crimes, whereby both have been directly complicit in enabling Israeli aggression, especially through the former’s unwavering military aid and the latter’s unwillingness to take a hardline on Israeli racist policies.187 In fact, the international community, rather than implementing practical measures to hold Israel accountable, is adopting policies that exponentially shrink the already miniscule Palestinian civil society space. This includes the previously discussed practices of political conditional funding, equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, criminalizing legitimate resistance (such as the BDS), and marginalizing UNRWA. The international community continues to undermine the legal rights that Palestinians are entitled to as well as the international forums and judicial bodies that they resort to. This is especially evident in the EU’s boycott of Item 7 in the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), a position that is increasingly concerning given the absence of Item 7 in the 50th Human Rights Council Session’s (13 June - 8 July 2022) Programme of Work.188 Furthermore, Member States operate within a policy of double standards, punishing other States for the very same crimes that Israel continues to freely and openly commit against the Palestinian people. The international community thus lacks the political will to respect and ensure the rights for all people living in Mandatory Palestine as well as those in exile who are due to return and refuses to acknowledge that colonialism has been the guiding axiom of the Zionist-Israeli enterprise, operating at the expense of Palestinian self-determination. 1.3.7. Recent Recognitions of Israel as an Apartheid State and their Shortcomings The call to recognize Israel as a state which practices a system of apartheid is not new; the accusation goes at least as far back as 1965, as detailed in Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, which compared the racial systems of domination between the Israeli government 186 See, for example, UNGA, A/HRC/50/21 (n 184). IMEU, ‘IMEU Policy Analysis #6: Accountability for Russia, Impunity for Israel in US Policy’ (IMEU, 30 March 2022) <https://imeu.org/article/imeu-policy-analysis-6-accountability-for-russia-impunity-for-israel-in-us> accessed 3 October 2022. 188 Found at UNHRC, ‘50th regular session of the Human Rights Council (13 June – 8 July 2022)’ (UNHRC, 2022) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/regular-sessions/session50/regular-session> accessed 3 October 2022. 187 36