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Alive and Well in Palestine

   One of the most tragic historical ironies of the twentieth century was that in the same year as the State of Israel was founded (1948), the government of South Africa enacted the apartheid laws. That defined and controlled every aspect of the social and economic life between the black majority and the white minority.

    Both happened for the same reason - namely to enable a small self-selected group of people to appropriate to itself the land rights and resources of the country, at the expense of the majority. In the case of South Africa , this entitlement to the country’s resources was judged by skin colour; while in Israel entitlement came through religion. In both cases, these entitlements were at the expense of an indigenous population that made up the largest part of the country.

    The maintenance of this ‘entitlement’ led both to implement an “us here, them there” form of territorial segregation. In South Africa, the five million whites eventually controlled 87 per cent of all arable land and all cities, while what came to be known as Bantustans, homelands for 35 million black South Africans, made up the remaining 13 per cent. Inside white ruled South Africa, the black majority had very few rights, they were tightly controlled by the police and other security forces, were actively discriminated against and were seen as being ‘inferior’ to whites in every way. This is strikingly similar to the Palestine of today, where the State of Israel covers 78 per cent of the original British mandate, while the West Bank and Gaza make up the other 22 per cent. As with the former apartheid regime in South Africa , Israel , in order to maintain its control of Palestine ’s natural and human resources, practices an extreme form of institutionalised and systematic racial discrimination.

     In South Africa, the privileged minority sought to disenfranchise the black majority and turn it into a minority by the creation of ‘Homelands’ (Bantustans), to which all black people would theoretically belong, and would be eventually relocated to.

     In Palestine , Israel ’s problem is essentially the same - it needs to prevent a large minority, the Palestinians, from achieving equality with the Jews of Israel. Were this to happen, Jews would no longer have a justification for their deliberate policy of exclusion, based on a racist policy that is known as Zionism. To maintain its supremacy, Israel would have to choose between four options: to revert to the previous stalemate, establish a formal system of apartheid, exterminate or expel all Palestinians, or make peace and allow the establishment of a workable fully autonomous Palestinian State .

    By its recent actions in the West Bank and Gaza, destroying the human and material infrastructure of the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority, it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel wants to develop a new set of rules for the separation between itself, and the Palestinians that will see a formal system of apartheid being established throughout both, Israel and the occupied territories, allowing for the total disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people.

    Using the pretext of assisting U.S. President George W. Bush to “ fight terrorism wherever it may be found,” the present Israeli government, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, is imposing ever-harsher restrictions on the Arab population of Palestine . These restrictions, along with the manipulation of public opinion, both within Israel and America , signal that they now see Bantustans for Palestinians, as the best way to maintain their control of all of Palestine ’s resources and its indigenous Arab population. These ‘tightly controlled Bantustans’, surrounded by the Israeli army and heavily armed settlers, would serve to isolate and disenfranchise the Arab population and enable Israel to expand further by taking over nearly all the land, currently owned by Palestinians.

    1993 saw the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa . It was the year that black South Africans, inspired by the leadership of Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Desmond Tutu, finally achieved the freedom they had fought so tirelessly for. Yet, in the same year in Oslo , the seeds of a new apartheid regime were sown in Palestine , seeds that are now coming to fruition, nurtured by successive Israeli governments and leaders.

    In South Africa, the apartheid regime categorised the population by colour into three basic racial types: white, coloured and black, then further defining the third category, ‘black’ by tribal affiliation, transferring them to ‘Tribal Homelands’. Between 1960 and 1984, the South African government transferred over 3,5 million blacks from white controlled areas to these barren wastelands. Black South Africans, who remained in the 87 per cent of the country claimed by the whites, had very few rights and were forced to live in townships that were effectively ghettos, controlled by the police and army.

    In Palestine , the Oslo accord stipulated that the West Bank and Gaza should be contiguous territory. However, Israel has, since the agreement, pursued a policy that hinges on isolating one from the other, while at the same time isolating the Arab communities in both. This strategy is evidenced by the illegal expansion of settlements in both, the West Bank and Gaza that seeks to maintain Israel ’s territorial domination through population and housing development. Encircled by Israeli settlements, cut off by the bypass roads, and controlled by the Israeli army, Israel is stealthily creating its own Bantustans , even within the limited territory granted to the Palestinians under the accords signed in Oslo . By separating Israelis from Palestinians in this way, Palestinians can be isolated and quarantined even in the meager 23 per cent of Palestine that has been granted to them.

    Settlers are actively encouraged and funded by the Israeli government to appropriate Palestinian land and construct settlements in what is considered by international law to be occupied territory. In 2000, the Israeli government confiscated over 10,000 acres of Palestinian land, nearly half of which was given over to the establishment of new settlements; 1,000 acres were given to the Israeli civil administration, and the rest was used to build a bypass road. This is a direct infringement of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which clearly states “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer part of its civil population into territories it occupies.”

    It seems clear, based on the Israeli unspoken policy of apartheid, that in time all Palestinian population centers and villages will be cut off from one another and become Bantustans . As Palestinians are not allowed to build within 500 metres of Israeli settlements and roads, once enclosed, these fixed areas will not be able to cope with the natural growth of their communities. This will mean they will have to rely on Israel economically, for scarce resources such as water, and their freedom of movement, because Israeli will control all the land between these enclaves.

    These ‘enclaves’ would be known as ghettos in Europe , and would be easily recognised by a Jew from Russia , Poland or Germany . He would have had exactly the same experiences as the Palestinians now. And, like the Palestinians, he too would have yearned for freedom, justice and the recognition of his human rights. He too, rose up to fight against tyranny based on racial or religious superiority of one people over another. This is what makes the imposition of apartheid so repugnant in Palestine . For it is the same people, the Jews, who themselves have experienced this form of racial and religious oppression, who are now inflicting it on others.

    The implementation of apartheid policies against the Palestinian people is a crime against humanity, just as the racial laws of South Africa were a crime against all black South Africans. So why are the voices of an outraged international community, that were so loudly vocal in their condemnation of apartheid in South Africa , so silent on apartheid in Palestine ? Where are the sanctions by the governments of the world, the condemnation of the international media that inspired the anti-apartheid movement, the celebrities, and the songs that eventually brought apartheid to an end in South Africa ? Is our global consciousness selective? The Palestinian people will, just like the black South Africans before them, continue to live under a state of occupation, constrained and oppressed by others and denied the right to self-determination until these institutions and organisations find their voice again.