Jerusalem (AFP) - Amnesty International on Tuesday labelled Israel an "apartheid" state that treats Palestinians as "an inferior racial group," joining the assessment of other rights groups which the Jewish state vehemently rejects.
A year ago, the Israeli-based human rights organisation B'Tselem drew fire when it asserted that Israeli policies had been designed to enforce "Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea" and met the definition of "apartheid".
New York-based group Human Rights Watch in April became the first major international rights group to publicly level the controversial allegation.
The report by London-based Amnesty builds on those previous calls in asserting that Israeli-enforced apartheid exists in occupied Palestinians territories and within Israel itself, where Arab citizens make up more than 20 percent of the population.
"Whether they live in Gaza, east Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
"Israel's cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid."
Amnesty stressed it was not comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to conditions in apartheid-era South Africa but said Israeli conduct and policies met the criteria for the crime of apartheid as defined under international law.
Callamard told AFP that Israel's Arab citizens "will not experience the apartheid in the same way" as a Palestinian in Gaza but that "the regime of apartheid" exists in both places.
In a statement released Monday, Israel's foreign ministry called on Amnesty to "withdraw" the report.
"Amnesty was once an esteemed organisation that we all respected.Today, it is the exact opposite," Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said.
"Amnesty quotes lies spread by terrorist organisations," he added, calling the report "divorced from reality".
"Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny."
