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Daniel Levy, who was an official negotiator for the Israeli government at the Oslo talks, made the comments at a UN Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East region, where speakers said they were alarmed by Israel's bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip and the raiding of NGO offices in the occupied West Bank.

"We know of certain developments that can at the same time be both politically uncomfortable and politically salient. The increasingly weighty body of scholarly, legal and public opinion that has designated Israel to be perpetrating apartheid in the territories under its control is just such a development," Levy said. [...]

Levy said the significance of the use of the term by rights groups and by Arab, African and Islamic groups at the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year could not be ignored.

"It will come as little surprise if this echoes and resonates in parts of the world that have experienced apartheid and settler colonialism and have gone through decolonisation," Levy, who was once a senior advisor to the Israeli prime minister's office, told the council.

"It is a paradigm that will also bring the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel into sharper relief."

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