Israel’s checkpoints & borders expose its apartheid regime
Israeli forces stand guard as Palestinians pass through the Qalandia checkpoint on their way to attend the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, 20 February 2026
Daoud Kuttab writes in The New Arab on 3 June 2026:
Apartheid is increasingly used to describe how Israel treats Palestinians, yet its global defenders continuously claim that the state of Israel ensures equality for all. The charge of apartheid is often dismissed as they point to the continued existence of a thriving cadre of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are represented in various professions, including medicine and pharmacy. This, they claim, shows the absence of racial discrimination.
The fact is that Israel has passed laws that discriminate between Arabs and Jews in Israel. Adalah, the legal centre for the Arab minority in Israel, has documented more than fifty racist and discriminatory laws that favour Jews over Arabs in all aspects of life.
Most of these laws are cloaked in a veneer that may appear to justify applying the law to different groups, for example, those who served in the Israeli army and were members of Jewish military units before the establishment of the state of Israel or are members of Jewish religious institutions. Some settlers are also described as Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, this qualifying as belonging to a “different group”.
Restricting Palestinian movement
Of course, the greatest discrimination is that faced by the Palestinian people under occupation, who are denied any political rights and subjected to restrictions on the most basic freedoms, especially regarding movement within the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.
Israel’s discrimination is all too visible when you examine its roads, the behaviour of security at certain checkpoints versus others, and the regulations and treatments at border crossings. Travel on checkpoints used by many settlers, such as the Hizma checkpoint east of Jerusalem and the tunnel checkpoint for travellers in the south of the West Bank near Beit Jala, is usually fast, with few cars stopped. However, at nearby checkpoints used only by Palestinians, such as Qalandia and Rachel’s Tomb, every single car and traveller is stopped, IDs checked, and luggage trunks opened, causing at times hours-long delays.