2. SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY
2.1 SCOPE This report documents and analyses Israel’s institutionalized and systematic discrimination against Palestinians. It focuses on the main and foundational elements of Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and against Palestinian refugees who are outside Israel and the OPT. The report examines Israeli legislation, policies and practices that affect Palestinians in all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control (Israel and the OPT), or where their rights are effectively controlled by Israel. Amnesty International researched and compiled this report within the framework of the definition of apartheid under international law, to determine whether discriminatory and exclusionary Israeli law, policies and practices against Palestinians amount to apartheid as a violation of public international law, a serious human rights violation and a crime against humanity. This report is not comprehensive and should not be read as an exhaustive analysis of all forms of discrimination experienced by Palestinians within Israel and the OPT (or indeed of all forms of discrimination committed within Israel and the OPT). Amnesty International has documented serious violations of human rights committed by Israel against Palestinians in both Israel and the OPT, and raised concerns about the consequences of such violations for Palestinians, since the 1960s. The organization has also documented violations committed by Palestinian authorities or armed groups against Palestinians and Israelis, which are not the focus of this report.1 Similarly, this report does not imply that discrimination exclusively affects Palestinians in Israel and the OPT. It does not focus on discrimination experienced by other minority groups, such as the Druze and Circassians, but it refers to some of the policies that affect the enjoyment of their rights in Israel. The geographical scope of this report is limited to Israel and the OPT. The report does examine Israeli laws, policies and practices that affect the rights of Palestinian refugees outside Israel and the OPT by denying them the right to nationality and residency in their homes in Israel and the OPT, and how this denial affects Palestinians living within Israel and the OPT. However, it does not address the situation of Palestinian refugees in their host countries, which Amnesty International has researched and reported on elsewhere.2
1.
See Amnesty International, Palestine (State of), amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of
2. Amnesty International, “Seventy+ Years of Suffocation”, nakba.amnesty.org/en; Amnesty International, Exiled and Suffering: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (Index: MDE 18/010/2007), 17 October 2007, amnesty.org/en/documents/mde18/010/2007/en; Amnesty International, Iraq: Human Rights Abuses against Palestinian Refugees (Index: MDE 14/030/2007), 1 October 2007, amnesty.org/en/ documents/mde14/030/2007/en; Amnesty International, Denied Refuge: Palestinians from Syria Seeking Safety in Lebanon (Index: MDE 18/002/2014), 1 July 2014, amnesty.org/en/documents/mde18/002/2014/en
ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS CRUEL SYSTEM OF DOMINATION AND CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY Amnesty International
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