Ex-Mossad chief: ‘There is an apartheid state’ in the West Bank

Former head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo, said that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank amounts to apartheid. 

“There is an apartheid state here. In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state,” Pardo told Associated Press.

“Israel needs to decide what it wants. A country that has no border has no boundaries,” he added.

Pardo, who headed the Mossad from 2011-2016, is the latest former senior Israeli official to use the term apartheid to describe the reality in the West Bank.

Last month, former head of the IDF’s Northern Command said there is “absolute apartheid” in the West Bank, comparing the situation to Nazi Germany.

“For 56 years there hasn’t been democracy there. There is absolute apartheid,” Amiram Levin told KAN Public Broadcaster.

Levin, who also served as deputy director of the Mossad and commanded the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, said that “the IDF, which is forced to exert sovereignty there, is rotting from the inside. It’s standing by, looking at the settler rioters and is beginning to be a partner to war crimes.”

“These are deep processes. I am not angry at the Palestinians, I am angry at us. We are killing ourselves from the inside,” he added.

The IDF has admitted that it failed to stop several terror attacks committed by settlers against civilian Palestinians in recent months, including a pogrom in the village of Huwara, where some 400 settlers burned houses and cars in the middle of the night.

According to the UN, nearly 600 settler attacks against Palestinians were registered in the first six months of 2023, marking a sharp rise in attacks since the formation of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right government.

Levin compared the situation in the West Bank, where nearly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation, to Nazi Germany.

“It’s hard for us to say it, but it’s the truth. Walk around Hebron, look at the streets. Streets where Arabs are no longer allowed to go on, only Jews. That’s exactly what happened there, in that dark country,” Levin said, stressing that it’s better to “deal with it, even if it is hard, than to ignore it.”