'Apartheid' Israel fury

REPORT: DECADES OF DISCRIMINATION OF PALESTINIANS INTENSIFYING

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HIT A WALL. A Palestinian uses a rope to climb over a section of Israel's controversial wall that separates the West Bank from Jerusalem in Beit Hanina in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

(AFP)

Decades of discrimination and segregation of Palestinians by Israel in the West Bank were intensifying, the United Nations said yesterday, calling on the country to end its "apartheid system".

In a new report, the UN rights office said the "systematic discrimination" against Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories had "drastically deteriorated" in recent years.

"There is a systemic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank," UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

"Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends, or harvesting olives - every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel's discriminatory laws, policies and practices," he added.

"This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before."