Former Mossad chief Pardo says Israel enforcing 'apartheid' system in West Bank

[Eugene]

Source: Times of Israel and AP

Former Mossad chief Pardo says Israel enforcing ‘apartheid’ system in West Bank

Ex-spymaster, now an outspoken critic of his former boss PM Netanyahu, warns Israel faces existential danger if it doesn’t decide borders with Palestinians

By AP and TOI STAFF
Today, 5:33 pm Updated at 7:15 pm

A former head of the Mossad intelligence agency told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Israel is enforcing an “apartheid” system in the West Bank, joining a tiny but growing list of retired officials to endorse an idea that remains largely on the fringes of Israeli discourse and international diplomacy.

Tamir Pardo becomes the latest former senior official to compare Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank to apartheid, a reference to the system of racial separation in South Africa that ended in 1994.

Leading rights groups in Israel and abroad and Palestinians have accused Israel and its 56-year military rule of the West Bank of morphing into an apartheid system that they say gives Palestinians second-class status and is designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

A handful of former Israeli leaders, diplomats and security officials have warned that Israel risks becoming an apartheid state, but Pardo’s language was even more blunt.

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Read more: https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-mossad-chief-pardo-says-israel-enforcing-apartheid-system-in-west-bank/