Apartheid

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines apartheid as “a former social system in South Africa in which black people and people from other racial groups did not have the same political and economic rights as white people and were forced to live separately from white people.” Customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court define it as “inhumane acts . . . committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” For almost two decades, the term “apartheid” has been used to describe the conditions of Palestinians living under Israel’s settler-colonial occupation. Former US President Jimmy Carter made the comparison in his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, published on September 18, 2007. B’Tselem, an Israel human rights organization, and Human Rights Watch in New York both published analyses drawing the same conclusion in early 2021.