A/HRC/4/17 page 19 East Jerusalem in this way.11 Now there is a new problem: Israel has started to refuse the renewal of visas for Palestinians with foreign passports. Israel does not permit non-Jewish foreigners to receive residency rights in the OPT, but previously it allowed foreign passport holders, many of whom were born in Palestine, to renew their tourist visas every three months. The discontinuation of this policy since the election of the Hamas Government has resulted in persons who have lived in the OPT for years being denied visas and refused re-entry to the OPT. Consequently families are separated by the exclusion from the OPT of family members with foreign passports. Businessmen, students, lecturers, health-care and humanitarian workers have also been affected. Many “illegal” spouses continue to live in the OPT, but they do so in constant fear of arrest and expulsion. Why Israel has chosen to follow this vindictive policy is a matter of speculation. Is it for reasons of security? Or demography? A punishment for the election of Hamas? Or is it a wish to remove articulate critics of Israel? VII. RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND APARTHEID 49. Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1966 defines “racial discrimination” as meaning “any distinction, exclusion, restriction preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. This convention only requires States to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination. Another convention, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973, goes further and criminalizes practices of racial segregation and discrimination that, inter alia, involve the infliction on members of a racial group of serious bodily or mental harm, inhuman or degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest or the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of a racial group by denying to such a group basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of movement, when such acts are committed “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”. 50. Israel vehemently denies the application of these Conventions to its laws and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Despite this denial, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel’s laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Israelis are entitled to enter the closed zone between the Wall and the Green Line without permits while Palestinians require permits to enter the closed zone; house demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are carried out in a manner that discriminates against Palestinians; throughout the West Bank, and particularly in Hebron, settlers are given preferential treatment over Palestinians in respect of movement (major roads are reserved exclusively for settlers), building rights and army protection; and the laws governing family reunification (para. 48 above) unashamedly discriminate against Palestinians. It is less certain that the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is violated. The IDF inflicts serious bodily and mental harm on Palestinians, both in Gaza (paras. 8-13 above) and the West Bank (para. 42 above); over 700 Palestinians are held 11 Badil, Displaced by the Wall (September 2006).