Quotessence
Home / Authors / Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllPalestineApartheidWest BankSettlement

Famous Human Rights Watch Quotes

“Some regard the settlement enterprise as vital for security. 189 Whatever the motive, it is unacceptable to pursue this aim through a strategy of seeking to dominate Palestinians, maintaining a discriminatory system, and engaging in tactics that either have an insufficient security justification or otherwise violate international law. An intent to ensure security neither negates an intent to dominate, nor grants a carte blanche to undertake policies that go beyond what international law permits. While security grounds can justify a range of restrictive measures under international humanitarian and human rights law, a strategy that seeks to promote security by ensuring the demographic advantage of one group of people through discrimination or oppression has no basis under international law.”

PalestineSettlementApartheid
Book:A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
Create image

“On July 7, 1967, exactly one month after the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of the Labor Party said, “The security and the land are in Israeli hands.” 182 In a party meeting that year, Eshkol clarified that authorities “covet the dowry, not the bride,” 183 an apparent reference to wanting the West Bank without the Palestinians who live there. Fifty-two years later, on July 10, 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu of the Likud said, “Israeli military and security forces will continue to rule the entire territory, up to the Jordan [River].” 184 He added on May 28, 2020, that “we are the ones dictating security rules over the entire territory,” describing West Bank Palestinians as “subjects.”

PalestineWest Bank
Book:A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
Create image

“According to B’Tselem, there are more than 40 kilometers of West Bank roads that authorities prohibit Palestinians from traveling on and another 19 kilometers of West Bank roads, not including in Hebron, on which Palestinian travel is restricted. 291 Israeli forces in Hebron prohibit Palestinians from walking on large sections of what used to be the central thoroughfare of the city as part of a policy of making those areas “sterile” of Palestinians, as per the parlance of the Israeli army.”

PalestineApartheidWest Bank
Book:A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
Create image