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
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