A/HRC/4/17 page 23 60. Today there are over 460,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (para. 32 above). Moreover, Israel has appropriated agricultural land and water resources in the West Bank for its own use. This aspect of Israel’s exploitation of the West Bank appears to be a form of colonialism of the kind declared to be a denial of fundamental human rights and contrary to the Charter of the United Nations as recalled in the General Assembly’s Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples of 1960 (Resolution 1514 XV). 61. Israel’s practices and policies in the OPT are frequently likened to those of apartheid South Africa (see, for example, Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid (2006)). On the face of it, occupation and apartheid are two very different regimes. Occupation is not intended to be a long-term oppressive regime but an interim measure that maintains law and order in a territory following an armed conflict and pending a peace settlement. Apartheid is a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks, the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial separation and white security. Freedom of movement was restricted by the “pass system” which sought to restrict the entry of blacks into the cities. Apartheid was enforced by a brutal security apparatus in which torture played a significant role. Although the two regimes are different, Israel’s laws and practices in the OPT certainly resemble aspects of apartheid, as shown in paragraphs 49-50 above, and probably fall within the scope of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. 62. Colonialism and apartheid are contrary to international law. Occupation is a lawful regime, tolerated by the international community but not approved. Indeed over the past three decades it has, in the words of the Israeli scholar Eyal Benvenisti, “acquired a pejorative connotation”.13 What are the legal consequences of a regime of occupation that has continued for nearly 40 years? Clearly none of the obligations imposed on the occupying Power are reduced as a result of such a prolonged occupation.14 But what are the legal consequences when such a regime has acquired some of the characteristics of colonialism and apartheid? Does it continue to be a lawful regime? Or does it cease to be a lawful regime, particularly in respect of “measures aimed at the occupants’ own interests”?15 And if this is the position, what are the legal consequences for the occupied people, the occupying Power and third States? Should questions of this kind not be addressed to the International Court of Justice for a further advisory opinion? It is true that the 2004 Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has not had the desired effect of 13 The International Law of Occupation (1993), p. 212. 14 See A. Roberts “Prolonged Military Occupation: The Israeli-Occupied Territories Since 1967” (1990) 84, American Journal of International Law 44, 55-57, 95. 15 Benvenisti, op. cit (note 13), p. 216.