Arab-Israeli lawmaker rejects 'apartheid' charge
'If there's discrimination in a certain area, then we'll say just that'
Ra’am party head Mansour Abbas said Thursday he would not use the word “apartheid” to describe the legal system governing the relations between Jews and Arabs within the country.
Amnesty International last week joined two other prominent rights groups in saying that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians within its borders and in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza amount to a multi-tiered regime of separation and discrimination resembling the one enacted in South Africa until the 1990s.
Israel rejects the allegations as anti-Semitic, saying that, among other things, they are inconsistent with the rights and freedoms enjoyed by its Arab citizens.
“I would not call it apartheid,” Abbas said in response to a question at an online event organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a DC-based think tank.
“I prefer to describe the reality in objective ways,” he added. “If there's discrimination in a certain area, then we'll say that there's discrimination in that specific area.”
The official did not specify whether he believed the label was an accurate descriptor for the West Bank, where more than 2.5 million Palestinians live alongside nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers with Israeli citizenship.