[ A step-by-step look at how apartheid was pioneered in South
Africa and replicated by Israel.]
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CALL ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE?  
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Ellen Davidson
October 30, 2023
The Indypendent
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_ A step-by-step look at how apartheid was pioneered in South Africa
and replicated by Israel. _

Israeli and Palestine activists hold a banner during a protest to
block the new Route 4370 Israeli highway near the Palestinian town of
Anata, January 23, 2019. , © 2019 Ilia
Yefimovich/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

 

What does it mean to call Israel an apartheid state?

The word, meaning literally “apartness,” originally referred to
policies introduced in South Africa in 1948. Al-though presented as a
path of equal but separate development of racial groups in that
country, like “separate but equal” in this country, it was
anything but.

Under apartheid people were classified as “native,” “colored,”
“Asian,” or “white,” and these designations determined access
to land, schools, resources, etc. Apartheid laws served to reserve the
vast majority of the land for white South Africans, relocating the
non-white population to socalled bantustans far from the areas they
had lived in for many years. In the white-controlled areas, nonwhites
were denied political rights, including the right to vote, since they
were considered citizens of the ostensibly independent “homelands”
set up by the apartheid government, which consisted of small unviable
enclaves with no resources or opportunities for work or economic
development.

The system also included identity cards that nonwhite people had to
carry in order to live, work, or even travel in particular parts of
the country. These notorious “pass laws” were the main instrument
of control and existed until 1986.

This web of restrictive laws was enforced by a brutal police state,
and thousands of South Africans, mainly Black and “colored,” were
imprisoned, tortured or killed.

After decades of internal resistance both armed and nonviolent, and an
international campaign to isolate South Africa economically and
politically, the laws were repealed in the early 1990s and a new
constitution was adopted in 1993.

Apartheid now refers to any system of racial segregation and is deemed
a crime against humanity by the U.N. Apartheid Convention.

So why have Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli
human rights group Bet’selem and many others declared Israel to be
an apartheid state? One of the central tenets of the South African
system was dispossession from the land and control of resources by
white settlers. Israel has replicated this process. In
Israel/Palestine, the land that is nominally under Palestinian control
constitutes 22% of historic Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were made permanent exiles in 1947–48, as Zionist
militias terrorized and massacred whole villages. Many more were
forced out by the invasion in 1967, when the Israeli army took over
the West Bank and Gaza in an occupation that continues to this day.

Even the land that is supposed to make up an eventual Palestinian
state, according to proponents of a two-state solution, is not
contiguous; it is divided between the Occupied West Bank and Gaza,
which, although not technically occupied, is blockaded on both its
land and sea borders by Israel. The West Bank itself is split up into
enclaves increasingly surrounded by and encroached on by Israeli
settlements. It is further atomized by Israel’s “separation
barrier” (which Palestinians call the apartheid wall), which at
times goes through the center of villages (in one case through the
middle of an elementary school playground) and cuts off farmers from
their agricultural lands. The territory is riddled with checkpoints
and other military installations, and criss-crossed with roads that
are reserved for Israeli settlers There are numerous laws both inside
Israel’s formal borders and in the Occupied Territories that make
clear the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens and
residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Just to mention a few:

* In 2021 the Israeli parliament adopted the Jewish Nation-State Law,
which identifies Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish people, thus
formalizing the inferior status of the Palestinian people. The Supreme
Court of Israel upheld the law. The current government holds as one of
its guiding principles: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and
inalienable right over all areas of the Land of Israel.”

* Jews from anywhere in the world are eligible to become citizens of
Israel while holding on to their previous citizenship. Non-Jews can
apply for citizenship, but they must renounce their previous
citizenship, must have lived for three years as a permanent resident,
must and demonstrate knowledge of the Hebrew language (Israel is
nominally a bilingual state, Arabic and Hebrew). Palestinian refugees
who were born in what has since become Israel are not allowed to
return and claim citizenship.

* Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are increasingly cut off
from life in their city by the wall snaking through it. As it becomes
impossible for them to get to commercial and other districts, they
turn to other areas for their needs, they risk losing their Jerusalem
residency permits and access to the city and government services.

* Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are subject to arbitrary
“administrative detention” for up to six months, at which point
their detention can be renewed, leading to many Palestinians being
held in prison for years on end with no charge and no legal recourse.

* Resources in the Occupied West Bank are disproportionately
allocated to the Israeli settlements. For example, settlements use up
to 10 times as much water per capita as Palestinian communities, and
the Palestinians are charged higher prices.

* Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to the control of the
Israeli military, whereas residents of illegal Israeli settlements in
the region are not. In fact, rules of engagement for Israeli military
in the West Bank forbid them from firing on or arresting Israeli
settlers, even when they are armed and violent.

* Palestinians in Gaza have no freedom of movement at all. The entire
region is blockaded by Israel, which controls travel in and out.

* Palestinian homes both inside Israel and in the West Bank are under
constant threat of demolition because Israeli authorities deny
building permits to Palestinians (Al-Araqib, a Bedouin village in the
Negev, has been demolished more than 200 times since 2010). Israeli
settlements on the West Bank, which are illegal under international
law, are protected by the Israeli military.

* Because of the presence of Jewish settlers, many streets in the
city of Hebron are off-limits to the Palestinian residents. They are
called “sterilized” by the IDF. There are three levels of
sterilization: Palestinians may not open businesses on the street,
Palestinians may not drive vehicles on the street, and Palestinians
may not walk on the street, even if their home is on that street. The
city is dotted with ladders between rooftops used to access homes
whose residents cannot walk in or out their own front doors.

These are just some examples of the daily repression and humiliation
faced by Palestinians inside Israel and under occupation. No wonder
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in 2014, “I know
first-hand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its
borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved
South Africa are painfully stark indeed.”

In a call to replicate the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign
that ultimately helped bring an end to South Africa’s racist regime,
he said, “Those who continue to do business with Israel, who
contribute to a sense of ‘normalcy’ in Israeli society, are doing
the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing
to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.”

_The Indypendent is a monthly New York City-based newspaper and
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