UN accuses Israel of West Bank 'apartheid'

GENEVA: The United Nations said decades of discrimination and segregation of Palestinians by Israel in the West Bank were intensifying, and called on the country to end its 'apartheid system'. In a new report, the UN rights office said the 'systematic discrimination' against Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories had 'drastically deteriorated' in recent years.
'There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,' UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement. 'Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives — every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel's discriminatory laws, policies and practices,' he added.
'This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before.' A number of independent experts affiliated with the UN have described the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories as an 'apartheid' but this marks the first time a UN rights chief has applied the term. — AFP