• B’Tselem says Israel serially abuses Palestinians’ human rights
• Billboards put up in West Bank ahead of US president’s visit to Ramallah

Arab News

LONDON: Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is protesting against the country’s “apartheid” system during the visit of US President Joe Biden.

He arrived on Wednesday as part of a tour of the region — his first since becoming president. Arriving in Tel Aviv, Biden described the US-Israeli relationship as “bone-deep.”

B’Tselem has put up banners in the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem ahead of his visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, reading: “This is apartheid.” Biden is due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in Ramallah.

Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, said the US has repeatedly permitted Israel to violate human rights, adding: “When the (US) attitude changes, so will the (Israeli) regime.”

Other rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, also accuse Israel of apartheid against the Palestinian people, something the Israeli government denies.

In a report published in February, Amnesty said Palestinians are treated as an “inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights,” forced to live with “cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion which amounts to crimes against humanity.”

It added that Palestinians are subject to “massive” land and property confiscations, unlawful killings, “forcible transfers” and movement restrictions.