Often when “Israeli Apartheid” is talked about the argument that you always hear is: “There are no Jews-only park benches in Israel” which is a strange argument. There are many Jews-only things in Israel and furthermore apartheid is, according to international law, not defined according to unequal access to park benches.
In its most specific meaning, the word Apartheid (Afrikaans for separation) refers to the system of laws, policies and practices implemented by the white minority in South Africa to repress and exploit the indigenous African majority. In Israel, the word Hafrada (Hebrew for separation) is used to refer to the general policy of separation the Israeli government has adopted and implemented over the Palestinians in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS).
In 1976, the world witnessed the signing of the International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. According to this convention, Apartheid is a Crime against Humanity, and applies to all cases where policies are implemented “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”. The convention gave examples of policies that are often used to establish and maintain this domination, all of which are used by the Israeli authorities against non-Jews and particularly against Arabs.
In 1967, Israel occupied the WB and GS, ethnically cleansing a further 250,000 Palestinians from their homes after 720,000 were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Both the WB and GS are populated by large number of Palestinians and this has placed Israel in a dilemma. This is because it wants to control the land but escape responsibility for the Palestinians, so in response it created fenced-in Bantustans in GS and the WB.
Israel has built 24 foot high and 720km long (double the length of the Green Line) concrete Wall. It is clear that the wall does not run along the Green Line, which separates Israel from the WB, but rather runs through the WB. This means the annexing Palestinian land and divides the WB into small Bantustans. Furthermore it hugely restricts the movement of Palestinians within the WB.
As well as the Wall over 300 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks divide the WB into 420 different enclaves with no freedom of movement for Palestinians between them. Settler -only highways are off limits for Palestinians who are forced to drive with different colour number plates to distinguish them from Israeli settlers.
Palestinians in the WB are subject to a different set of laws to Israeli settlers living in the same area. The military laws that apply to Palestinians in the WB regulate every aspect of life.
Curfews are regularly placed on Palestinian areas that place all residents under de-facto house arrest. The city of Nablus, for example, was under 24-hour curfew for 5 consecutive months in 2002.
In the WB/GS, Israeli soldiers and police have killed over 4,850 Palestinians since September 2000.
Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained. Currently over 10,000 Palestinians from the WB/GS are being held as political prisoners, more than 2,000 without ever being charged or facing trial. The Israeli military will regularly drive through Palestinian areas and call for all Palestinian males between 15 and 50 to leave their houses and gather in a central area where they will be detained.
Torture is used against virtually every Palestinian arrested by the Israeli military or police. Regular beatings, being tied in contorted positions, denial of food and prevention of the use of the bathroom are common experiences in Israeli prisons.
Around 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. These demolitions often occur without warning where residents are forced to flee their homes with whatever belongings they can carry.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid of which the occupation is nothing more than a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in their stake in the political community. It was an apartheid mentality that nourished the desire of establishing and maintaining a state with a Jewish demographic majority and character. It is apartheid law that creates a wall of discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens of the Israeli state. It is an Apartheid mentality that prompts some Israeli Jews to view their Arabs living under Israel as a “demographic threat”.
Section 7A of the Israeli Basic Law prevents anyone running for the Israeli Knesset (parliament) if they do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state and thus bars anyone who wants to change the apartheid character of the state by parliamentary participation.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) owns around 14% of the land in Israel, and is prohibited by its constitution from selling or leasing this land to Palestinians, around 2/3 of this land was taken from Palestinian refugees. Through its 50% representation on the council of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the JNF has a substantial influence over more than 93% of the land in Israel.
Some Israeli towns set criteria that prevent Arab citizens from purchasing homes or living in the town. The Israeli state regularly passes legislations that prevent Arab from reaching their lands or redefines areas as nature reserves or forests that can then be confiscated.
There are over 100,000 (9% of Palestinian citizens of Israel) Palestinian citizens of Israel living in villages that the Israeli government does not officially recognise. These villages existed prior to the establishment of Israel but were simply declared as non-existent with the adoption of the Israeli Planning and Construction Law in 1965 and do not appear on any map. Although the residents of these villages are officially Israeli citizens, they are denied basic services such as housing, water, electricity, education and health care. Furthermore the Israeli authorities regularly demolish some of these villages.
Up to 420,000 of Arabs living under Israel are internal refugees “internally displaced persons” in Israel, between 46,000 and 48,000 Arabs became displaced in 1949 within what became Israel. Over fifty years later, this group (including the children of the displaced) represents about 150,000 to 200,000 persons. If you also include the Bedouins who were ordered in 1949 to move into a close area under military rule in the Negev and now for the most part live in “unrecognized villages”, the estimate the number of displaced is 250,000-420,000.
The well-planned ethnic cleansing, in 1948, of 720,000 indigenous people was apartheid practice par excellence. It is apartheid which prevents the expelled and their descendants from returning: this apartheid denies residence to expellees from the Galilee, but grants it, not just to Israeli-born Jews, but to Jews all over the world.
Since 1948, the Israeli military and police have continually carried out massacres of Palestinians who are living under Israel, in the WB and the GS and those in neighbouring countries. For example, in 1956, Israeli police in Kufr Qassem killed 49 Palestinian citizens of Israel after a curfew was placed on the village without warning.
Another argument I often hear is “if Israel was an apartheid, Arabs in Israel would not be able to vote” which completely ignores the fact that Arabs living under Israel today are the remains of the Arab population who still live there despite all the efforts by Israel to expel them. They are merely allowed the to vote in Israeli elections because they are a minority in the Israeli political system that has their voices sidelined. The fact that Palestinians within Israel have the right to vote is nothing more than a way to hide the reality of apartheid and does not undermine the apartheid nature of the state of Israel.
The past few years have seen a significant increase of literature and analysis which has argued that Israel is apartheid state. Also figures in the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa, including figures such as Nelson Mandela, and archbishop Desmond Tutu who has repeatedly made the statement that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is analogous if not worse than South African apartheid. Even the current Israeli PM tactfully acknowledged apartheid when he said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper: “If the two-state solution collapsed we (Israel) would face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights”.
Naji Mohamed
najimohamed@actionpalestine.org
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Ph.D., Special to PalestineChronicle.com
Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts.
I just returned from my latest trip to Palestine, or at least to the part of Palestine I still have access to as a Palestinian Christian. You see, we Palestinians from the Bethlehem area (the birthplace of Jesus) are now denied entry to over 90 percent of Palestine and even to our capital and major economic center, Jerusalem (which is merely 7 miles from Bethlehem).
Israeli colonies dot the landscape from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan on land stolen from the native people. Six of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are now refugees or displaced people and the remaining Palestinians live in increasingly shrinking and impoverished ghettos (Ã la South African Bantustans at the time of Apartheid).
In all areas we visited the trend is the same: maximizing geography (under Israeli control) and minimizing demography (Palestinians on their land). Israeli authorities have evolved ingenious ways of ethnic cleansing since the more direct uprooting practiced in 1947-1949, when 850,000 Palestinians were driven out. The details of how this is done differ from area to area. A few examples may illustrate this.
The Gush Etzion block of colonies (Gilo, Har Gilo, Efrata etc) was successful in destroying the Palestinian economy in the Southern West Bank (from Jerusalem to Hebron). Jewish colonial settlers live in subsidized housing built on stolen Palestinian land and drive to Western Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without ever seeing the victims or noticing their plight. But movement of Palestinians is impossible between Arab Jerusalem and its suburbs like Bethlehem and Alkhader or areas farther south. This killed the Palestinian economy on both sides of the apartheid wall. Jerusalem’s Arab old city is a ghost town compared to what it was just 20 years ago. And the unemployment rate in Bethlehem is twice what it was in the US during the height of the Great Depression.
The old city of Hebron, near the Ibrahimi Mosque (the mosque of Abraham), is deserted. Tens of thousands of local Palestinians (and thousands of foreigners) used to flock to this busy commercial district until the few extremist Israeli settlers (with Israeli government support and protection) literally just moved in uninvited. They took over whole buildings or, in some cases, just the upper floors. They go on rampages, making life impossible for the native Palestinians. From the upper story rooms they squat in, they throw trash at the shops and pedestrians below. They routinely shoot at Palestinian civilians and destroy shops.
Thus some 400-500 colonial racists (under the protective eye of over 5,000 Israeli occupation soldiers, many of them from the settlements) control the lives and destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of native Palestinians. It is as if 400-500 KKK members where put in the middle of New York’s Harlem and were given permission and protection (with 5,000 white soldiers) to do what they want with the black population.
In this season of fruits and vegetables, villagers still try to sell products from their shrinking land holdings. But this brings much less money than in the old days when they had more land and were free to move and sell their products in large cities like Jerusalem or Jaffa or Nablus (or even to other countries). The cancer of the settlements built on Palestinian lands grows more destructive, while politicians stall with talk of a fictional “two-state solution” and “Israeli [but not Palestinian] security”. Israel’s plan was to do ethnic cleansing and colonization and then use any Palestinian resistance as justification (“security”) for further colonization activities. But Israel’s colonization continued even in times of relative calm (e.g. the seven years between the first largely nonviolent uprising and the more recent and more violent uprising).
All of this is done contrary to International law and with full US military, diplomatic, and economic support. It is also not in the interest of a just peace nor in our US national interests.
While the US infrastructure is decaying, the Israel lobby convinced President Bush to propose giving Israel $30 billion more of our tax money over the next 10 years. If Congress succumbs, as it did in the past, the consequences for US interests can only be dire among 300 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims (not only in increased violence but the erosion of US economic power and interests around the world).
Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) along the same lines that helped transform Apartheid South Africa. That effort must now be intensified for the sake of all inhabitants, not only of Western Asia but also in the USA and around the world.
-Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, PhD is the author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.” He served on the faculties of Duke and Yale Universities.
by Azmi Bishara
LA TIMES
(Link)
May 3, 2007
Amman, Jordan — I AM A PALESTINIAN from Nazareth, a citizen of Israel and was, until last month, a member of the Israeli parliament.
But now, in an ironic twist reminiscent of France’s Dreyfus affair — in which a French Jew was accused of disloyalty to the state — the government of Israel is accusing me of aiding the enemy during Israel’s failed war against Lebanon in July.
Israeli police apparently suspect me of passing information to a foreign agent and of receiving money in return. Under Israeli law, anyone — a journalist or a personal friend — can be defined as a “foreign agent” by the Israeli security apparatus. Such charges can lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
The allegations are ridiculous. Needless to say, Hezbollah — Israel’s enemy in Lebanon — has independently gathered more security information about Israel than any Arab Knesset member could possibly provide. What’s more, unlike those in Israel’s parliament who have been involved in acts of violence, I have never used violence or participated in wars. My instruments of persuasion, in contrast, are simply words in books, articles and speeches.
These trumped-up charges, which I firmly reject and deny, are only the latest in a series of attempts to silence me and others involved in the struggle of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel to live in a state of all its citizens, not one that grants rights and privileges to Jews that it denies to non-Jews.
When Israel was established in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. My family was among the minority that escaped that fate, remaining instead on the land where we had long lived. The Israeli state, established exclusively for Jews, embarked immediately on transforming us into foreigners in our own country.
For the first 18 years of Israeli statehood, we, as Israeli citizens, lived under military rule with pass laws that controlled our every movement. We watched Jewish Israeli towns spring up over destroyed Palestinian villages.
Today we make up 20% of Israel’s population. We do not drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus. We vote and can serve in the parliament. But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life.
More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel’s “Bill of Rights” — defines the state as “Jewish” rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.
Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.
Most of our children attend schools that are separate but unequal. According to recent polls, two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live next to an Arab and nearly half would not allow a Palestinian into their home.
I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel’s illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.
This may discomfort Jewish Israelis, but they cannot deny us our history and identity any more than we can negate the ties that bind them to world Jewry. After all, it is not we, but Israeli Jews who immigrated to this land. Immigrants might be asked to give up their former identity in exchange for equal citizenship, but we are not immigrants.
During my years in the Knesset, the attorney general indicted me for voicing my political opinions (the charges were dropped), lobbied to have my parliamentary immunity revoked and sought unsuccessfully to disqualify my political party from participating in elections — all because I believe Israel should be a state for all its citizens and because I have spoken out against Israeli military occupation. Last year, Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman — an immigrant from Moldova — declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel “have no place here,” that we should “take our bundles and get lost.” After I met with a leader of the Palestinian Authority from Hamas, Lieberman called for my execution.
The Israeli authorities are trying to intimidate not just me but all Palestinian citizens of Israel. But we will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world. Our community leaders joined together recently to issue a blueprint for a state free of ethnic and religious discrimination in all spheres. If we turn back from our path to freedom now, we will consign future generations to the discrimination we have faced for six decades.
Americans know from their own history of institutional discrimination the tactics that have been used against civil rights leaders. These include telephone bugging, police surveillance, political delegitimization and criminalization of dissent through false accusations. Israel is continuing to use these tactics at a time when the world no longer tolerates such practices as compatible with democracy.
Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, April 9, 2007; 12:00 AM
(link)
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. “They are taking our communal lands,” he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. “They don’t want us to live here. They want us to leave.”
Har Homa, dwarfing nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.
Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question “Peace Not Apartheid.” But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a “two-state solution” seem increasingly difficult.
The security wall has led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths because of conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli casualties declined. In a minor incident last week of the type that goes unnoticed internationally, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troopers killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell. The Britain- based organization Save the Children estimates that half the children in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.
Palestinians argue that things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the Catholic Brothers of De La Salle, with an enrollment that is 70 percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a year ago. Ahmad al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was held for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S.-backed boycott following the election victory of the extremist group Hamas in early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority destitute, crippling government services. Deprived of help from the authority, with the economy in a shambles, city governments are bankrupt. Bethlehem’s mayor, Victor Batarseh, has a special problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight in the city of Christ’s birth. Out of money and credit, he is ready to lay off the city’s 165 staffers.
Batarseh, a U.S. citizen who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, is pinned down in Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.
Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes’ drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.
Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.
Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land’s Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem University faculty, told Smith and me: “We live the same life as Muslims. We are Palestinians.”
Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity’s birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress.