Israel has created an apartheid state and it acts with impunity through the cover of its legal system. It has instituted several laws designed to subdue Palestinians. Through these laws – referred to as the ‘foundational laws’ – and a  deliberate use of language, it attempts to delegitimise the Palestinians.

The laws strip Palestinians of rights to life. The Absentee Property Law (1950) gives the state the authority to seize and take control of Palestinian homes and businesses they were forced to abandon in 1948; the Land Acquisition Law (1953) gives the Israeli state the right to legalise the seizure of the land that the state took through force between 1948 and 1952; the 1950 law of return grants Jews scattered worldwide the right to immigrate to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship; and the Nationality Law (1952), grants Jews born anywhere in the world more of a right to life in Palestine than many Palestinians born there.

This prejudice extends to Israel’s approach towards terrorism and is enshrined in its legal system. The Defense (Emergency) Regulations, a set of colonial-era laws introduced in 1945 by the British occupiers of Palestine, are absorbed into Israeli domestic law. 

The laws allow for the detention of Palestinian subjects without trial on the basis of secret evidence. Curfews and restrictions in movement are declared abruptly. They foster narratives that portray Arabs as a potential threat to the Israeli state.

These laws assist in dehumanising Palestinians. It allows the Israeli state to reach its own definition on what constitutes as terrorism. It also enables the imprisonment of subjects without a free and fair trial. Israeli laws are used to justify the bombing of a people on the premise of terrorism. 

Two critical questions face us as we witness the genocide in Gaza: Do Israeli lives matter more than Palestinian lives, and what indeed is terrorism if not the repeated bombings of a largely defenseless civilian population by an armed state?