Alwaght- Israel is imposing a regime of "apartheid" and racial discrimination against Palestinians, latest UN report said.
"Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole," the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), said in a report published on Wednesday.
A former human rights investigator for the United Nations in Palestine, Richard Falk, as well as Virginia Tilley, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University co-authored the report for the ESCWA.
The report said the "strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people" was the main method through which Israeli regime imposes apartheid.
Falk, who has served as the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, had said Israeli policies had unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
On the "basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence," the report said, "Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid."
"However, only a ruling by an international tribunal in that sense would make such an assessment truly authoritative," it said.
The new finding divides Palestinians into four groups oppressed through "distinct laws, policies and practices."
Palestinian territories have witnessed tensions ever since Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in al-Quds in August 2015. At least 285 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October that year.
