More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jewish and half Palestinian, live in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under the same regime. In public, political, legal and media discourses, the common perception is that these are two separate regimes, each acting on its own, separated by the Green Line. One regime, within the borders of the sovereign state of Israel, is a permanent democracy, with a population of some 9 million, all of them Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects.
This accepted distinction ignores crucial facts: that this "temporary" reality has persisted for more than 50 years; that hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers live in more than 280 permanent settlements in the West Bank; and that Israel has de jure annexed East Jerusalem and de facto annexed the rest of the West Bank.
Most importantly, it obscures the fact that the entire area is organised on one principle: to promote and perpetuate the supremacy of one group - the Jews - over another - the Palestinians. Israel has enacted more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Since 1948, Israel has pursued institutionalised policies of racial segregation as a means of securing its dominance over the Palestinian people. These policies aim to privilege the Jewish Israeli population while controlling Palestinians and denying them equal rights.
Segregation is implemented through separate legal regimes for Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in the same area. For example, Israeli Jewish settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are governed by Israeli civil law, including criminal law, while Palestinians also living in the occupied West Bank, with the exception of East Jerusalem, are governed by Israeli military. law. Israel was criticised for violating the right to equality in a 2012 report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Describing the existence of two separate legal systems in the West Bank, the committee said it was "appalled by the hermetic nature of this segregation. The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is to design the space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews live their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. By contrast, Palestinians live in a space fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights, granted or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews.