Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved a major military escalation in the Gaza Strip if Palestinian fighters don’t stop firing rockets into southern Israel. Israel also moved Monday to completely cut off Palestinians’ access to a fishing zone off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

This comes as Human Rights Watch said for the first time that Israel is committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In a report and accompanying video released today, Human Rights Watch said Israeli authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity.

Human Rights Watch video: “Israeli authorities maintain a two-tier system which privileges Jewish Israelis over Palestinians. The means used by Israeli authorities in the occupied territory amount to the systematic oppression needed to establish the crime of apartheid. Israeli authorities have committed a range of abuses against Palestinians. In the occupied territory, those abuses include mass land confiscation, the denial of residency rights and the suspension of civil rights, and rise to the threshold of inhumane acts and severe abuses of the fundamental rights of Palestinians.”