• RESPONSES to Amnesty International 2022, issue 213, report generated huge media coverage, both positive and negative.

An opinion piece in the Independent by Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi said: “Amnesty’s new report – a comprehensive, extensive document is required reading. Research and expert analysis leaves no room for doubt; Israeli government policies towards Palestinians – including dispossession and forcible transfer – constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity.”

The Labour Party’s response stopped short of using the word “apartheid”, but called for the need to end “the extensive discrimination faced by Palestinians”.

And a further report by Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur, concluded that the situation in the OPT, Occupied Palestinian Territories, amounts to the crime of apartheid, and found Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the territories live “under a single regime which differentiates its distribution of rights and benefits on the basis of national and ethnic identity, and which ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other”.

The UK is about to enter into trade negotiations with Israel on a free trade agreement to supersede the rolled-over agreement from the EU that has applied since Brexit.

Amnesty will be urging the UK Department for International Trade to ensure that this trading relationship is established in such a way that it neither facilitates the maintenance and expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements nor acquiesces in Israel’s plans to annex the OPT. Anything less would be a breach of UK international human rights obligations.

The UK should also ensure that its agreement with Israel does not undermine any separate trading arrangements with the Palestinian Authority.

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