In a 213-page report released on Tuesday, the New York-based human rights group said the Israeli regime was the “single authority” with primary control “over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea… and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.”

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the HRW, said, “This detailed study shows that Israeli authorities… are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

“It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there,” he said.

The report is based on robust sourcing, including human rights documentation, official planning documents, and statements by officials.

AFP cited Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at HRW, as saying that there had been warnings for years that “apartheid is around the corner.”

“I think it’s quite clear that that threshold has been crossed,” Shakir said.

The HRW listed the sweeping movement restrictions on Palestinians, the seizure of Palestinian-owned land, and the forcible displacement of Palestinians as examples of the policies that constituted crimes of apartheid and persecution by the Israeli regime.

“Denying millions of Palestinians their fundamental rights, without any legitimate security justification and solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish, is not simply a matter of an abusive occupation,” Roth said. “These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another.”

The group stressed that the ICC should “investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated” in the crimes of apartheid and persecution.

Last month, The Hague-based court announced that it had opened a formal investigation into Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

Reuters cited Shakir as saying that the HRW would send its report to the ICC prosecutor’s office, “as we normally do when we reach conclusions about the commissions of crimes that fall within the Court’s jurisdiction.”

HRW also urged countries to “impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on officials responsible for committing these crimes” and to reconsider their ties with Tel Aviv, including military cooperation.

“While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” Roth said.

The HRW report angered Israel, which slammed it as “preposterous and false” and accused the group of having an “anti-Israeli agenda.”

But HRW was not the first group to point to Israeli apartheid.

Earlier this year, B’Tselem, an Israeli advocacy group, said Israel was an “apartheid regime” that systematically oppressed the Palestinians via military occupation and racist laws.

The international movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) also said on Monday that the Israeli regime’s treatment of Palestinians amounted to “apartheid.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip during the Six Day War in 1967. It later had to withdraw from Gaza but has been occupying the other territories since.

About 700,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds since then. The international community views the settlements as illegal under international law but has done little to pressure the Israeli regime to freeze or reverse its policies.

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It noted that Palestinian neighborhoods have little to no room to expand while at the same time, nearby predominantly Israeli communities — most of which constructed on Palestinian-owned lands– are growing larger.

Moreover, many Israeli-populated towns have admissions committees, which effectively do not allow Palestinians to live there.

The HRW went on to say that the Israeli regime directly controls 93 percent of the land in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem (al-Quds), and the so-called Israel Land Authority (ILA) manages and allocates such pieces of land.

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HRW said the police, known as Carabineros, “committed serious human rights violations, including excessive use of force in the streets and abuses in detention, “during the ongoing Chile protests.

The New York-based right group had received hundreds of disturbing reports of abuse, including cases of beatings and sexual assault, Jose Miguel Vivanco, HRW’s director for the Americas, told a press conference in Santiago.

“We believe that the abuses are not isolated cases, they are not coincidences,“ said Vivanco, AFP reported.

The rights groups said in a statement it met with President Sebastian Pinera in Santiago on Tuesday, recommending a series of reforms to help prevent police misconduct.

The reforms were needed “in the wake of compelling evidence of excessive use of force and abuses against demonstrators and bystanders”.

Among its recommendations is a thorough reform of the Chilean police, including reviewing detention protocols for identity checks, setting up internal control mechanisms and strengthening police training.

 “We recognize the value of the Human Rights Watch report and the recommendations that have been made to us,“ said Lorena Recabarren, the Chilean minister with responsibility for human rights.

She said the findings “concern us and, of course, are ones we receive with pain.”

Meanwhile university student Gustavo Gatica became the first demonstrator to be left fully blind after being hit in the eyes by pellets fired by riot police on Nov 8 during a protest in Santiago.

Gatica’s case has become a symbol among the more than 200 demonstrators who have suffered eye injuries — often resulting in being blinded in one eye — from rubber bullets and pellets fired by riot police.

Due to the high number of injuries and pressure from humanitarian groups, police said they would stop using such weapons.

Meanwhile violent demos continued in Chile’s main cities, with looting and burning reported in places like La Serena and Iquique in the north, and San Antonio and Valparaiso, in central Chile.

In Santiago, thousands gathered for a March downtown that riot police eventually broke up by deploying water cannons.

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In a statement on Sunday, HRW Executive Director Ken Roth said that American citizen Omar Shakir, the US-based rights group’s director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, is to be deported from Israel on Monday over his support the BDS movement and condemned Israel for that.

The movement, which is a Palestinian-led campaign promoting a total and worldwide boycott against the Israeli regime, was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations and later turned international.

BDS, which was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, says it continues its efforts until it forces Israel to abide by “its obligations under international law” and end its occupation of Palestinian lands.

HRW rejected the idea that Shakir had supported the boycott movement against Israel, saying the occupying regime is, in fact, seeking to suppress criticism of policies towards Palestinians, according to Press TV.

Elsewhere in his statement, Roth said Tel Aviv tried “as much as it can” to silence efforts “spotlighting the human rights violations at the heart of the oppressive, discriminatory occupation (of Palestinian land).”

In a post on his Twitter account on Sunday, he noted that his expulsion was over his “human rights advocacy with HRW.”

“Israel is slated to deport me tomorrow over my work as HRW’s director in Israel,” Shakir said, adding, “It’s drawing a red line: free expression in Israel today doesn’t include basic rights advocacy (calling on businesses to refrain from complicity in abuses). We aren’t the first & won’t be the last.”

Thousands of volunteers worldwide have joined the BDS movement, which calls for people and groups across the world to cut economic, cultural and academic ties to Tel Aviv, to help promote the Palestinian cause.

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