RAMALLAH, Aug. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Aaron Gandhi, grandson of the late Indian Prime Minister Mahatma Gandhi, described Thursday's situation in the Palestinian territories as similar to the apartheid that once preyed South Africa.

    What Israel is doing is similar to or maybe worse than the radical discrimination procedures that were once in South Africa, Gandhi said at a news press held at the Ambassador Hotel in east Jerusalem.

    He also criticized the Israeli checkpoints erected around and in Jerusalem, saying that "a city like Jerusalem must be all opened, so everyone could reach it and visit it".

    Leading a delegation of an organization called "The Nonviolenceand Peace", Gandhi arrived in Jerusalem on Tuesday for a weeklong visit to the West Bank and Israel to encourage peaceful resistance to end the nearly four years of fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants.

    Gandhi closely examined the security wall that Israel isbuilding in the West Bank during a tour in the Old city of Jerusalem.

    He praised Jerusalem as marvelous with its ancient streets, adding "it must be respected by everyone".

    In addition, Gandhi visited relatives of Palestinian prisoners, who are sitting in before the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem to show solidarity with the hunger-striking prisoners in Israeli jails.

    Gandhi called upon the international community to curb violence in the Palestinian territories and save the Palestinian prisoners. Gandhi spent his childhood in South Africa. At the age of 12, he went to India to live with his grandfather, the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. In 1991, he founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1995 he became a US citizen.

    Gandhi said that he will inform the officials in the United States as well as his students about the security wall and Israel's humiliation measures against the Palestinians.

    He called upon Israel to stop violence against the Palestinians, end its occupation of the Palestinian territories and resolve the problems in peaceful ways.

    Gandhi is scheduled to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah as well as Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officials. Enditem