Apartheid
In Israel Palestine!
Viability In Annapolis?
By Eileen Fleming
26 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Will Annapolis end with more than handshakes and photo ops? Is a viable
Palestinian state even possible?
Will the fruit of Annapolis
reap justice which is the way to security
and peace in the Holy Land or will we see what American Israeli peace
activist and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Jeff Halper, Founder and Coordinator
of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions predicts?
"In the end, the Palestinians
may get 80-90% of the West Bank, but they do not get a viable state.
They will have sterile swatches of territory whereas Israel retains
control of the borders, movement of people and goods both within the
Palestinian state and between it and the countries around, much of the
country's arable land, almost all its water, the Palestinians' airspace
and even control of their communications. The Palestinian state is deprived
of a viable economy. Given that 60% of Palestinians are under the age
of 18 and that mini-state must absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees,
its prospects for being a viable, stable and truly independent state
are nil given the unspoken parameters outlined in the Bush letter. [1]
"There will be a Palestinian
state. Israel has an urgent demographic need to get the almost four
million Palestinians of the occupied territories off its hands. It might
even attempt to "swap" a couple hundred thousand Israeli Arab
citizens of the Galilee Triangle under the pretense of giving the Palestinians
more land. The crucial question is: will it be a viable state? If it's
true that Olmert intends that Israel permanently retain the settlement
blocs, an Israeli "greater" Jerusalem and effective control
of the entire country to the Jordan River, then we will merely be substituting
a sophisticated form of apartheid for occupation. The devil is in the
details.' [IBID]
In Issue 46 of Naim Ateek's, CORNERSTONE, a quarterly publication of
Sabeel Ecumenical liberation Theology Center, Ateek wrote, "Israel
has effectively made Gaza a big prison [one and a half million people
in] a Bantustan, in which it is systematically assassinating its leaders
and reducing its people to abject misery and poverty. The firing of
qassam rockets provides Israel with an excuse to keep oppressing the
Palestinians in Gaza.
"In the West Bank, Israel
still has two major objectives: The first is
the confiscation of more Palestinian land and the completion of its
Separation [in Hebrew: Hafrada, in Afrikaan: Apartheid] Wall. Israel
seeks not only separation but the dispossession [Hebrew: Nishool] of
Palestinians. These two Hebrew words are essential in describing Israel's
goal of apartheid." [Page 2]
"The truth which is known to all; through its army, the government
of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it
occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into
a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp."- Israeli Minister
of Education, Shulamit Aloni quoted in the popular Israeli newspaper,
Yediot Acharonot on December 20, 2006,
"An apartheid society is much more than just a 'settler colony'.
It
involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original
inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader
caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges." [2]
Apartheid can also be summed
up as a structured process of gross human rights violations perpetrated
against a conquered ethnic majority by a state and society mainly controlled
by an invading ethnic minority and its descendants, mainly immigrants
that have been deemed part of the ethnic elite.
The following nine categories
make up the necessary, sufficient, and defining characteristics of apartheid
regimes:
1. Violence: Apartheid is
a state of war initiated by a de facto
invading ethnic minority, which at least in the short term originates
from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of apartheid
most if not all members of the invading group originate from a
different continent. The invading ethnic minority and its self-defined
descendants then continue to dominate the indigenous majority by means
of their military superiority and by their continuous threats and uses
of violence.
2. Repopulation: Apartheid
is also a continuation of depopulation and population transfer. One
example is seen in the obliteration of the indigenous Bedouins that
Israel denies free movement to graze their herds and are silently transferring
the Bedouins to new locales, such as atop of garbage dumps.
3. Citizenship: The indigenous
people are often denied citizenship in their own country by the apartheid
state authorities, which are ironically and irrationally, run and staffed
by the recent arrivals to the country.
4. Land: Apartheid entails
land confiscation, land redistribution and forced removals, almost without
exception to the benefit of the invading ethnic minority. Usually, members
of the ethnic majority are forced on to barren and unfertile soils,
where they must also try to survive under impoverished and overcrowded
conditions.
5. Work: Apartheid displays
systematic exploitation of the indigenous class in the production process
and different pay or taxation for the same work.
6. Access: There is ethnically
differentiated access to employment, food, water, health care, emergency
services, clean air, and other needs, including the need for leisure
activities, in each case ensuring superior access for the favored ethnic
community.
7. Education: There are also
different kinds of education offered and forced upon the different ethnic
groups.
8. Language: A basic apartheid
characteristic is the fact that only
very few of the invaders and their descendants ever learn the
language(s) of the indigenous victims.
9. Thought: Finally, apartheid
contains ideologies or 'necessary
illusions' in order to convince the privileged minorities that they
are inherently superior and the indigenous majorities that they are
inherently inferior. Much of apartheid thought is shaped by typical
war propaganda. The enemy is dehumanized by both sides' ideologies,
words and other symbols are used to incite or provoke people to violence,
but mostly so by the invaders and their descendants. [IBID]
Americans for Middle East
Understanding, Inc. constructed an extensive historical timeline of
events that occurred simultaneously in South Africa and Israel, from
which I excerpt:
On July 5, 1950, Israel enacted
the Law of Return by which Jews
anywhere in the world, have a "right" to immigrate to Israel
on the
grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have
never been there before. On July 14, 1952: The enactment of the
Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the
only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious
group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic
citizenship. [3]
In 1953, South Africa's Prime
Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to
visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a
source of inspiration for white South Africans. [IBID]
In 1962, South African Prime
Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews "took Israel from the Arabs
after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree
with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." [IBID]
On August 1, 1967, Israel
enacted the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens
of non-Jewish nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish
National Fund lands, well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member
Uri Avnery stated: "This law is going to expel Arab cultivators
from the land that was formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews."
[IBID]
On April 4, 1969, General
Moshe Dayan is quoted in the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz telling students at Israel's Technion Institute
that "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.
You
don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame
you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the
books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There
is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former
Arab population."[IBID]
On April 28, 1971: C. L.
Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime
Minister John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid
problem, namely how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote:
"Both South Africa and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They
were built by pioneers originating abroad and settling in partially
inhabited areas." [IBID]
On September 13, 1978, in
Washington, D.C. The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed
by President Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242
and 338, which prohibit acquisition of land by force, call for Israel's
withdrawal of military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza,
and prescribe "full autonomy" for the inhabitants of the territories.
Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all settlement activity during
the subsequent peace talks. Once
back in Israel, however, the Israeli prime minister continues to
confiscate, settle, and fortify the occupied territories. [IBID]
On September 13, 1985, Rep.
George Crockett (D-MI), after visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank,
compares the living conditions there with those of South African blacks
and concludes that the West Bank is an instance of apartheid that no
one in the U.S. is talking about. [IBID]
In July 2000, President Bill
Clinton convenes the Camp David II Peace Summit between Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
Clinton—not Barak—offers Arafat the withdrawal of some 40,000
Jewish settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, all of
which are interconnected by roads that cover approximately 10% of the
occupied land. Effectively, this divides the West Bank into at least
two non-contiguous areas and multiple fragments. Palestinians would
have no control over the borders around them, the air space above them,
or the water reserves under them. Barak calls it a generous offer. Arafat
refuses to sign.
[IBID]
August 31, 2001: Durban,
South Africa. Up to 50,000 South Africans march in support of the Palestinian
people. In their "Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid and
the Struggle for Palestine" they proclaim: "We, South Africans
who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial mentality, see Israeli
occupation as a strange survival of colonialism in the 21st century.
Only in Israel do we hear of 'settlements' and 'settlers.' Only in Israel
do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over hilltops, demolish homes,
uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools, churches and mosques,
plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous population's
freedom of
movement and right to earn a living. These human rights violations were
unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid
Israel." [IBID]
October 23, 2001: Ronnie
Kasrils, a Jew and a minister in the South African government, co-authors
a petition "Not in My Name," signed by some 200 members of
South Africa's Jewish community, reads: "It becomes difficult,
from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression
expressed by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression
experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule." [IBID]
Three years later, Kasrils
will go to the Occupied Territories and
conclude: "This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures,
the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets
attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after
month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armored vehicles
and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale."
[IBID]
April 29, 2002: Boston, MA.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he is "very deeply distressed"
by what he observed in his recent visit to the Holy Land, adding, "It
reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa." The Nobel
peace laureate said he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians
at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police
officers prevented us from moving about. Referring to Americans, he
adds, "People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong
because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful. Well, so what?
The apartheid government was very powerful, but today
it no longer exists." [IBID]
On October 27, 2007, in Boston, sponsored by FOSNA/Friends of Sabeel
North America, Jeff Halper, Naim Ateek, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and
scores of other justice and peace seeking citizens addressed the Apartheid
Paradigm in Israel Palestine to a SRO crowd.
In his Keynote address Tutu
remarked, "Between the root of human solidarity and the fruit of
human wholeness, there is the hard work of telling the truth. From my
experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has
grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's
faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. No
one takes up this work on a
do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it…
An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task,
but because nothing is more important in the current situation than
to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying
to what one sees and hears.
"What do I see and hear
in the Holy Land? ...I have to tell the truth:
I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in
South Africa…I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter
days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country…I have to tell
the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South
Africa, too.
"Some people are enraged
by comparisons between the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There
are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not
be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover,
for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid
era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is
necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change...I
have seen it and heard it, and so to this truth, too, I am compelled
to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the
Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much
reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope." [4]
"HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are.
The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
[1] http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.
asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=413
[2] Apartheid Ancient, Past,
and Present Systematic and Gross Human
Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and
Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
[3] The Link, "About
That Word Apartheid", April-May 2007, Published
by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc.
[4] (c) Copyright 2007 The
New York Times Company
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