‘Judge, Jury, Occupier’,

Report Exposes Zionist Regime’s Apartheid Military Court System

Date: 08 March 2021 - 21:58

News ID: ۸۸۳۵۵

WEST B ANK (Dispatches) – A new report by the UK charity War on Want has further exposed the Zionist regime’s two-tier racist legal system in a detailed analysis of the military court system in the occupied West Bank operated by the occupying regime.
Titled, ‘Judge, Jury, and Occupier’, the London-based anti-poverty charity exposes how the occupying regime’s military court system upholds its illegal occupation in the West Bank by enforcing repressive laws on the Palestinian population; suppressing dissent, quashing resistance to occupation, and deepening its military rule.
There are two legal systems operating in parallel for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, said the report, explaining that there is "Palestinian law and Israeli military law, the latter of which is codified through thousands of military orders”.
"Israeli military orders are issued by the Israeli military and they take precedence over Palestinian law. Israeli military orders enforce Israel’s illegal occupation and are not for the benefit of Palestinian society. Israel’s military orders serve as an apparatus of repression, as documented and articulated by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights experts,” said War on Want launching its report last week.
‘Judge, Jury, and Occupier’ debunks the common myth that Palestinians are granted self-rule since the 1993 Oslo Accords. It exposes how Palestinians have no means of escaping the occupying regime’s racist military judicial system, which has created a "separate and unequal” reality. For example, Zionist settlers arrested in the West Bank are tried in civilian courts inside the occupied territories, whereas Palestinians are tried in military courts.
The treatment of the two populations in such discriminatory manner was branded recently as apartheid by B’Tselem in a landmark position paper. According to the Israeli human rights group, the Zionist regime was guilty of "advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.”
The Zionist regime views Palestinians as a ‘security threat’ from birth, claims the report. Since 1967, for example, the occupying regime has decreed more than 411 Palestinian organizations illegal, including all the major Palestinian political parties. Palestinian civilians are then prosecuted for "membership and activity in an unlawful association”, a key tool in Israel’s repression of anti-occupation activism.
This report examines the operation of the Zionist regime’s military courts, as well as their corollary institutions, the prisons, and detention centers across the West Bank, East al-Quds, and inside the occupied territories where Palestinian detainees awaiting trial and serving sentences are held. It also looks specifically at how this system of courts and prisons upholds and extends the regime’s illegal occupation across the West Bank and impacts the lives of Palestinians across their historic homeland.