TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Israel’s education minister says it bans groups calling Israel an “apartheid state” from attending schools – a move targeting one of the country’s human rights groups after it began describing both Israel , as well as its control of the Palestinian territories as a single apartheid system.
The term explosive, long seen as taboo and used for the most part by the country’s harshest critics, is vehemently rejected by Israeli leaders and many ordinary Israelis.
Education Minister Yoav Galant wrote on Twitter late Sunday that he had instructed the ministry’s director general to “prevent the entry of organizations that call Israel an” apartheid state “or that degrade Israeli soldiers from teaching in schools.”
“The Ministry of Education, under my leadership, has raised the banner of the progress of Jewish, democratic and Zionist values and is acting accordingly,” he said. It was not immediately clear whether he had the authority to ban speakers from schools.
In a report published last week, rights group B’Tselem said that while Palestinians live under various forms of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank, they have blocked Gaza, annexed East Jerusalem and in Israel itself, they have fewer rights than Jews throughout the area. between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
B’Tselem said he would not be discouraged by the minister’s announcement and that, despite that, the group held a video conference on the subject on Monday at a school in the northern city of Haifa.
“B’Tselem is determined to keep its mission of documenting reality, analyzing it and making our findings known to the Israeli public and around the world,” he said in a statement.
Adalah, an Arab legal rights group, said it had appealed to the country’s attorney general to overturn Galant’s directive, saying it was done without proper authority and that it intended to “silence legitimate voices.”
Israel passed a law in 2018 that provided for lectures or school activities by groups supporting legal action against Israeli soldiers abroad. The law appears to have been drafted in response to Breaking the Silence, a group of whistleblowers for former Israeli soldiers who oppose policies in the occupied West Bank. It was unclear whether Galant’s decree had its roots in the 2018 law.
Israel has long presented itself as a thriving democracy. Arab citizens themselves, who make up about 20% of its 9.3 million population, have citizenship rights, but often suffer from discrimination in housing and other areas. Arab citizens of Israel have representatives in parliament, serve in government bureaucracy and work in various fields with Jewish Israelis.
Israel took control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war – lands that house nearly 5 million Palestinians and that Palestinians want for a future state.
B’Tselem and other rights groups say the borders between Israel and the West Bank disappeared long ago – at least for Israeli settlers, who can travel freely back and forth, while their Palestinian neighbors need permits to enter. Israel.
Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but imposed a blockade after the Palestinian militant group Hamas took power there two years later. He considers the West Bank a “disputed” territory whose fate should be determined in peace talks with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, the autonomous government for its Palestinian residents.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 through an internationally unrecognized movement and considers the entire city its unified capital. Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem are Israeli “residents,” but not citizens with the right to vote.
Israel strongly rejects the term apartheid, saying the restrictions it imposes on Gaza and the West Bank are temporary security measures. Most Palestinians in the West Bank live in areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority, but those areas are surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and Israeli soldiers can enter at any time. Israel has full control over 60% of the West Bank.
B’Tselem argues that by dividing territories and using various means of control, Israel masks a reality that underlies the fact that about 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians live under a single system with extremely unequal rights.