In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank—which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria—and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This territory was the heartland of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon, and successive Israeli governments have been unable or unwilling to give it up. Since then, more than half a million Israelis have settled there, making an Israeli withdrawal inconceivable even if Palestinian leaders were sincerely willing to agree to peace in exchange.

Settlement of the occupying power’s citizens...

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank—which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria—and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This territory was the heartland of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon, and successive Israeli governments have been unable or unwilling to give it up. Since then, more than half a million Israelis have settled there, making an Israeli withdrawal inconceivable even if Palestinian leaders were sincerely willing to agree to peace in exchange.

Settlement of the occupying power’s citizens in occupied territory is forbidden under international law, but Israel’s judicial system has found ways to uphold the enterprise. Over the decades, Israel connected the settlements to each other and to Israel proper with a grid of roads that effectively turned the West Bank, at least for the settlers, into part of Israel. East Jerusalem was officially annexed, according its inhabitants permanent resident status though not Israeli citizenship. The rest of the territory, with about three million Palestinian Arab residents, is in political limbo, “temporarily” occupied for over half a century, with no prospect of real change in the foreseeable future.

This occupation, with its attendant injustices, is the core subject of a 280-page report released last week by Amnesty International, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”

In the first decades after 1967, Israel described the situation on the West Bank as an “enlightened occupation.” The instruction of Palestinian farmers in modern farming techniques, the establishment of a handful of universities and the rapid appearance of modern appliances in every Arab home were touted as benefits of this experiment.

But as the Amnesty report searingly demonstrates, the military government imposed on the West Bank now controls almost every aspect of the inhabitants’ lives. Permits are required to travel to Israel or abroad, to build houses and factories, to receive medical treatment. Travel within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is tightly controlled by dozens of checkpoints.

Over the decades, soldiers and police maintained control using mass arrests, trial by military courts or administrative detention without trial, torture, beatings, house destructions, selective deportation of “troublemakers” and collective punishments. In recent years, the army and police have allowed settlers to regularly uproot Arab olive groves and beat and harass farmers with impunity.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, May 2021.

Photo: anas baba/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Israel argues that its actions in the West Bank are necessary to prevent terrorism. During the past two decades, security forces of the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls roughly half the West Bank, have also helped suppress terrorism, though Israeli military units often enter the PA’s area to round up suspects. The security cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security services has kept the fundamentalist Hamas and other terrorist organizations at bay. Nonetheless, the PA-controlled areas abound in armed groups.

In defining this state of affairs as “apartheid,” the Amnesty report joins many left-wing critics, including some Israelis, in comparing Israel to the regime that governed South Africa until 1994. The use of terms like racism and apartheid is a way to engage and influence readers in the U.S. and Europe, where race is a burning issue.

It’s true that some Israeli actions in the West Bank, such as travel restrictions, resemble apartheid. But racism is not what underlies the Israeli-Arab relationship, and occasionally the report displays some uneasy recognition on this score. In a tucked away and un-highlighted passage, its authors write: “This report does not seek to argue that...any system of oppression and domination as perpetrated in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] is…the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa.” In other words, we’re not really talking about apartheid here, as the title claims. Nonetheless, the report frequently uses the words “race,” “racism” and “racial” to define Zionism and Israeli policies.

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land. ”

Instead, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land. The Amnesty report obliquely acknowledges this when it “charges” that Israelis define Israel as “the nation-state of the Jews.” Of course, that definition is correct. Fortunately or unfortunately, the world is divided into nation-states—with a few exceptions, including the U.S.—and Israel is the Jews’ nation-state, just as the 22 member states of the Arab League are Arab nation-states. Most of them define themselves that way in their constitutions.

The failure of the charge of apartheid to capture the Israeli reality is especially clear when it comes to the 1.9 million Arabs living within the borders of pre-1967 Israel, who are full citizens. The Amnesty report charges that “while Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote in national elections, in practice their right to political participation is limited,” but this is sheer nonsense. True, during the first 18 years of Israel’s existence, its Arab citizens lived under military government and their freedom of movement and employment was strictly controlled. The government argued, not without justification, that the Palestinians had just tried to destroy Israel in the 1948 War and remained a security threat.

But since 1966, Israel’s Arabs have enjoyed “equality,” as the country’s Declaration of Independence promised. They have been and are free to express their political views, their freedom of movement is unrestricted, and they vote in national and local elections. They are fully represented in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in both anti-Zionist and Zionist parties. In fact, the Islamist-Arab Ra’am party, the United Arab List, is currently part of the governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Israeli Arab doctors fill Israel’s hospitals, and Arab youngsters fill Israel’s universities, though there are still relatively few Arab professors. For decades, Arabs in small numbers have served in the Israeli military and border police, and the number of such enlistees is steadily growing. It used to be common for Jewish landlords to refuse to rent apartments to Arabs, but in recent years, a small but growing number of Arabs live in Jewish neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, Carmiel, Upper Nazareth and other areas. A handful of Jews live in Arab villages.

Many Israeli Arabs resent the fact that “their” Palestine has become a Jewish state—a feeling that spilled into public view during the Israel-Hamas conflict last year, when riots and communal violence erupted between Arabs and Jews. But most seem to have made their peace with life in Israel, appreciating the prosperity, the social and health benefits, and, yes, the freedom that the Jewish state guarantees. Most Israeli Arabs, to judge by opinion polls, aren’t eager to be inducted into a Palestinian Arab state should one arise next door.

If that did happen, many if not most Israeli Jews would regard it as a mortal threat. After Israel completely withdrew its settlers and military from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas took over and began to rain down rockets on Israel’s nearby settlements, eventually sending missiles flying toward Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport. Hamas would likely gain control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew, allowing it to bombard Israel’s population centers. Hamas rule would allow Iran to install forces and weapons on the West Bank, as it has already done in Lebanon.

The Amnesty report makes a series of recommendations to improve the lot of Palestine’s Arabs, both in Israel and in the occupied territories. The most far-reaching of these is to allow the mass return of Palestinian refugees—there are now some six million on the U.N. rolls. If implemented, such a return would create instant anarchy and an Arab majority and would result fairly quickly in the dissolution of Israel. The world would then have 23 Arab states and no Jewish state.

In its preamble the report states: “We believe that…compassion with [sic] people everywhere can change societies for the better.” Indeed, the report abounds with compassion for Palestine’s Arabs. But no Jewish state? Where is the compassion in that?

—Mr. Morris is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern Studies at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His books include “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War” and, most recently, “The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924.”