A UN human rights envoy has likened Israel'streatment of Palestinians in occupied territory to"apartheid", and said that failure to tackle the situationwill make it hard to solve abuses elsewhere.

John Dugard, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in thePalestinian territories, made his remarks to the UN Human Rights Council onThursday.

Dugard, a South African lawyer, said restrictions onmovement and separate residential areas gave a sense of "deja vu" toanyone with experience of apartheid, noting that apartheid was "contraryto international law".

He said: "Of course there are similarities between theOPT [Occupied PalestinianTerritory] and apartheid South Africa."

He also told the council that the situation "places indanger the whole international human rights enterprise".

He said that Western states would never rally support amongdeveloping nations for effective action against perceived abuses elsewhere,such as Sudan's Darfur, unless they tackled the plight of Palestinians.

Israeldismissed the statement and Dugard's regular reports to the council as"one-sided, highly selective and unreservedly biased".

Dugard, who was appointed to his position in 2001, saidthat Gaza was an imprisoned society and that thesituation in the West Bank was little better.

'Reign of terror'

He said about 500,000 Israeli settlers were now livingin the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

"Settlers, largely unrestrained by the Israel DefenceForces [the Israeli military], subject many Palestinians to a reign of terror -particularly in Hebron,"he said.

Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said such language was "inflammatory andinciteful" and would not contribute to a "process of constructivedialogue between Israeland the Palestinians".

Source:Agencies