A Threshold Crossed Quotes

“Every day a person is born in Gaza into an open-air prison, in the West Bank without civil rights, in Israel with an inferior status by law, and in neighboring countries effectively condemned to lifelong refugee status, like their parents and grandparents before them, solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“In the Negev in Israel, Israeli authorities have refused to legally recognize 35 Palestinian Bedouin communities, making it impossible for their 90,000 or so residents to live lawfully in the communities they have lived in for decades. Instead, authorities have sought to concentrate Bedouin communities in larger recognized townships in order, as expressed in governmental plans and statements by officials, to maximize the land available for Jewish communities. Israeli law considers all buildings in these unrecognized villages to be illegal, and authorities have refused to connect most to the national electricity or water grids or to provide even basic infrastructure such as paved roads or sewage systems. The communities do not appear on official maps, most have no educational facilities, and residents live under constant threat of having their homes demolished. Israeli authorities demolished more than 10,000 Bedouin homes in the Negev between 2013 and 2019, according to government data. They razed one unrecognized village that challenged the expropriation of its lands, al-Araqib, 185 times.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli government has pursued an intent to maintain
the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians throughout the territory it controls. In
the OPT, including East Jerusalem, that intent has been coupled with systematic
oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three
elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“80 percent of the Mountain Aquifer’s water recharge area lies beneath the West Bank, Israel directly extracts about 90 percent of the water that is withdrawn from the aquifer annually, leaving Palestinians only the remaining 10 percent or so to exploit directly.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Israeli authorities also maintain primary control over water resources in the West Bank and allocate water in a discriminatory fashion to Palestinians. [...] Military orders established in the first 18 months of the occupation in 1967 and 1968 granted the army full authority over water-related issues in the West Bank, declared water resources state property, and barred Palestinians from establishing or using water installations without a permit. In 1982, Israeli authorities transferred ownership of water resources and supply from the Civil Administration to the national Israeli water company, Mekorot, while continuing to vest the Civil Administration with regulatory control.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“According to B’Tselem, there are more than 40 kilometers of West Bank roads that authorities prohibit Palestinians from traveling on and another 19 kilometers of West Bank roads, not including in Hebron, on which Palestinian travel is restricted. 291 Israeli forces in Hebron prohibit Palestinians from walking on large sections of what used to be the central thoroughfare of the city as part of a policy of making those areas “sterile” of Palestinians, as per the parlance of the Israeli army.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Some regard the settlement enterprise as vital for security. 189 Whatever the motive, it is unacceptable to pursue this aim through a strategy of seeking to dominate Palestinians, maintaining a discriminatory system, and engaging in tactics that either have an insufficient security justification or otherwise violate international law. An intent to ensure security neither negates an intent to dominate, nor grants a carte blanche to undertake policies that go beyond what international law permits. While security grounds can justify a range of restrictive measures under international humanitarian and human rights law, a strategy that seeks to promote security by ensuring the demographic advantage of one group of people through discrimination or oppression has no basis under international law.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“On July 7, 1967, exactly one month after the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of the Labor Party said, “The security and the land are in Israeli hands.” 182 In a party meeting that year, Eshkol clarified that authorities “covet the dowry, not the bride,” 183 an apparent reference to wanting the West Bank without the Palestinians who live there. Fifty-two years later, on July 10, 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu of the Likud said, “Israeli military and security forces will continue to rule the entire territory, up to the Jordan [River].” 184 He added on May 28, 2020, that “we are the ones dictating security rules over the entire territory,” describing West Bank Palestinians as “subjects.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“In a 1990 interview with an Israeli newspaper, Teddy Kollek (mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993) said:
"For Jewish Jerusalem, I did something in the past twenty-five years. For East Jerusalem? Nothing! What did I do? Nothing. Sidewalks? Nothing. Cultural institutions? Not one. Yes, we installed a sewerage system for them and
improved the water supply. Do you know why? Do you think it was for their good, for their welfare? Forget it! There were some cases of cholera there, and the Jews were afraid that they would catch it, so we installed sewerage
and a water system against cholera.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“While states are sometimes associated with a religious or ethnic identity, a states’ prerogative to define its own identity and promote it is not unlimited; it is not a license to violate the fundamental rights of others. Laws and policies adopted by the Israeli government to preserve a Jewish majority have afforded benefits to Jews at the expense of the fundamental rights of Palestinians.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“States should [...] vet agreements, cooperation schemes, and all forms of trade and dealing with Israel to screen for those directly contributing to the commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, mitigate the human rights impacts, and, where not possible, end the activities and funding found to facilitate these serious crimes.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“In light of the decades-long failure by Israeli authorities to rein in serious abuses, the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor should investigate and prosecute individuals credibly implicated in the crimes against humanity of apartheid or persecution.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Legitimate security concerns can be present among policies that amount to apartheid, just as they can be present in a policy that sanctions the use of excessive force or torture.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“The discriminatory allocation of resources contributes to the starkly different realities faced by Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem. Seventy-two percent of Palestinian families live below the poverty line, as compared to 26 percent of Jewish families. Despite this, the Israeli government maintains 6 welfare offices, or offices that provide information to residents looking to receive government aid or other services, in Palestinian neighborhoods, but 19 in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. 32% of Palestinian students in East Jerusalem do not complete 12 years of education, as compared to 1.5% of Jewish students in Jerusalem.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“After seizing the West Bank in 1967, Israel unilaterally annexed 72 square kilometers, including the eastern part of Jerusalem and land that belonged to 28 surrounding West Bank villages, to the Jerusalem municipality. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any other country, with the recent exception of the United States under President Donald Trump, that recognizes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which remains occupied territory under international law.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“These policies create a reality where a Jewish citizen of any other country who has never been to Israel can move there or to a West Bank settlement and automatically gain citizenship, while a Palestinian refugee expelled from his home and languishing for more than 70 years in a refugee camp in a nearby country cannot move to either Israel or the OPT.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“States should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals responsible for the continued commission of these serious crimes and condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps towards ending their commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Crimes against humanity can serve as the basis for individual criminal liability in international fora, as well as in domestic courts outside of Israel and the OPT under the principle of universal jurisdiction.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“The finding of crimes against humanity should prompt the international community to reevaluate its approach to Israel and Palestine.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Sharon’s push to Judaize the Negev, as well as the Galilee, developed against the backdrop of the government’s decision to withdraw Jewish settlers from Gaza. After ending Jewish settlement there, Israel began to treat Gaza effectively as a territorial jurisdiction whose population it could consider as outside the demographic calculus of Jews and Palestinians who live in Israel and in the vast majority of the OPT—the West Bank including East Jerusalem—that Israel intends to retain. Israeli officials at the time acknowledged the demographic objectives behind the move. Amid the push to withdraw settlers from Gaza, Sharon said in an August 2005 address to Israelis, “Gaza cannot be held onto forever. Over one million Palestinians live there and they double their numbers with every generation.”

Peres said the same month, “We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution