Amnesty International has called Israel an apartheid state that treats the Palestinians as an inferior racial group, joining the assessment of other human rights groups that the Jewish state vehemently rejects.

A year ago, the Israeli-based human rights organization B'Tselem caused an uproar when it said Israel's policy was aimed at securing "Jewish dominance from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean" and fit the definition of "apartheid."

Human Rights Watch in April became the first major international human rights organization to publicly make the same accusation.

The Amnesty report builds on these earlier calls and claims that Israeli-imposed apartheid exists in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel itself, where Arab citizens make up more than 20 percent of the population.

Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or in Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically denied their rights, said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard.

Israel's brutal policy of segregation, dispossession and isolation in all territories under its control is clearly tantamount to apartheid, the chief added.

Amnesty International noted that it did not compare Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to conditions in apartheid-era South Africa, but said that Israel's behavior and policies met the criteria for the crime of apartheid, as defined by international law.

Callamard told AFP that Arab citizens of Israel do not feel apartheid in the same way that Palestinians in Gaza do but that an apartheid regime exists in both places.

Earlier, the Israeli Foreign Ministry urged Amnesty to withdraw the report. Once upon a time, Amnesty was a respected organization that we all respected. Today, the opposite is true, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said.

Amnesty International cites lies spread by terrorist organizations, he added, calling the report out of touch with reality.