'Apartheid': Arab countries including UAE, Jordan decry new Israeli law
A group of foreign ministers struck out at a new Israeli law requiring the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism in military courts.
A group of Arab and Muslim-majority states condemned new Israeli legislation expanding the use of the death penalty, describing Israel’s system of rule and judicial authority over Palestinians as amounting to apartheid.
What happened: The foreign ministers of UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia and Pakistan issued a statement on Thursday that “strongly condemned the Israeli occupying power’s enactment of a law … that allows the imposition of the death penalty in the occupied West Bank and its de facto application against Palestinians.”
It went on, “The ministers warned against the increasingly discriminatory, escalating Israeli practices that entrench a system of apartheid.”
While accusations of apartheid have been made by international organizations before, this coordinated, multi-state statement appears to be one of the clearest instances of Arab and Muslim-majority countries explicitly using the term in reference to Israeli policies.
