Israel Appears To Be An Apartheid State
EDITORIAL: Israel Is Acting Like An Apartheid State
By William Jones and D. S. Mitchell
What is Apartheid?
The 1973 Apartheid Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defined apartheid as systematic and institutionally entrenched domination and repression by one racial group over another through “inhumane acts.” Among such acts are:
- Arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group
- Measures designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups
- Forcible transfer
- Expropriation of landed property
- Denial of the right to leave and to return to their country and the right to a nationality
South African apartheid analogy
Palestinian scholar Fayez Sayegh identified Zionist racism as akin to apartheid South Africa in his 1965 book Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. British journalist David Hirst wrote of “apartheid Israeli-style” in his 1977 book The Gun and the Olive Branch. Edward Said described Israeli Jewish racist and colonial practices against Palestinians as “de facto apartheid” throughout his 1979 classic The Question of Palestine.
Mandela Sounded Alarm in 1994
After apartheid collapsed in South Africa in 1994, anti-apartheid leaders, from Nelson Mandela to Desmond Tutu, expressed horror at Israeli policies, and several African National Congress visitors to Israeli-occupied Palestine described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; as “worse than apartheid.” Today, two primary groups live in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT): Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. One primary sovereign, the Israeli government.
Intent to Maintain Domination
A stated aim of the Israeli government is to ensure that Jewish Israelis maintain domination across Israel and the OPT. The Knesset in 2018 passed a law with constitutional status affirming Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people, “declaring that within that territory, the right to self-determination “is unique to the Jewish people,” and establishing “Jewish settlement” as a national value. Israeli authorities have adopted policies to mitigate what they have openly described as a demographic “threat” that Palestinians pose.
The Judaization
Those policies include limiting the population and political power of Palestinians, granting the right to vote only to Palestinians who live within the borders of Israel as they existed from 1948 to June 1967, and limiting the ability of Palestinians to move to Israel from the OPT and from anywhere else to Israel or the OPT. Other steps are taken to ensure Jewish domination, including a state policy of “separation” of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, which prevents the movement of people and goods within the OPT, and “Judaization” of areas with significant Palestinian populations, including Jerusalem as well as the Galilee and the Negev in Israel.
Systematic Oppression and Institutional Discrimination
To implement the goal of domination, the Israeli government institutionally discriminates against Palestinians. The intensity of this discrimination varies according to different rules established by different government entities across Israel.
Separate And Unequal
The OPT, which Israel has recognized as a single territory encompassing the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli authorities treat Palestinians separately and unequally compared to Jewish Israeli settlers. In the occupied West Bank, Israel subject Palestinians to draconian military law and enforces segregation, prohibiting Palestinians from entering Jewish settlements. Israel imposes a generalized closure, sharply restricting the movement of people and goods—policies that Gaza’s other neighbor, Egypt, often does little to alleviate, and in fact often compounds with its own closures. In annexed East Jerusalem, Israel provides thousands of Palestinians living there with a legal status that weakens their residency rights by conditioning them on the individual’s connections to the city, among other factors. This level of discrimination amounts to systematic oppression.
An Inferior Status
In Israel, which the vast majority of nations consider being the area defined by its pre-1967 borders, the two-tiered citizenship structure and bifurcation of nationality and citizenship result in Palestinian citizens having a status inferior to Jewish citizens by law. Palestinians in Israel have the right to vote and stand for Israeli elections. However, these rights do not empower them to overcome the institutional discrimination they face from the same Israeli government. These include widespread restrictions on accessing land confiscated from them, home demolitions, and effective prohibitions on family reunification.
The Dominant Group
The fragmentation of the Palestinian population, in part deliberately engineered through Israeli restrictions on movement and residency, furthers the goal of domination and helps obscure the reality that the same Israeli government is repressing those same Palestinians. The repression is effected in varying degrees in different areas, for the benefit of the same Jewish Israeli dominant group.
Inhumane Acts and Other Abuses of Fundamental Rights
Israeli authorities are carrying out a range of brutal acts in the OPT. These include sweeping restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, confiscation of much of their land, and imposition of harsh conditions, such as allowing 4 hours of electrical power to each Palestinian home in each 24 hour period. This has led to thousands of Palestinians leaving their homes under conditions that amount to forcible transfer. There is also suspension of basic civil rights, such as freedom of assembly and association, depriving Palestinians of the opportunity to have a voice in their everyday affairs.
Systematic Discrimination
Since the founding of the Israeli state, the government has systematically discriminated against and violated the rights of Palestinians inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Israel has refused to allow Palestinians access to the millions of dunams of land confiscated. Israeli authorities have refused to permit more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled in 1948 and their descendants to return to Israel or OPT. Israel has imposed blanket restrictions on legal residency, which block many Palestinian spouses and families from living together in Israel.
What needs to be done to end this oppression, and how?
It is a wake-up call to the international community, the United States and Europe in particular that Israel must end its uncivilized behavior toward its Palestinian citizens and neighbors by immediately agreeing to do the following:
- Re-designate parts of the West Bank currently falling under full Israeli administration (Area C) as areas that fall under partial or full Palestinian administration (Areas B or A);
- Remove impediments to Palestinian economic development;
- End home demolitions and other forms of collective punishment;
- Remove obstacles to Palestinian elections in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza;
- Alleviate restrictions on movement and access;
- Gradually releases Palestinian prisoners
- Allow the reopening of Palestinian institutions, such as the Orient House, in East Jerusalem.
Look At The Evil You Wrought
I understand that the people of the Jewish religion have been abused and mistreated and murdered, but that does not give the Israeli government the right to persecute, mistreat, steal the land, and murder Palestinians in their goal to create an ethnically pure Jewish (religious) state.
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2021/05/16/opinion-gaza-unrest-16205/
References
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57154557
https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/israeli-apartheid-factsheet
