Israel and apartheid

Allegations of Israeli apartheid draw a controversial analogy between Israel's treatment of Arab citizens of Israel or Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and South Africa's treatment of non-whites during the apartheid era.

Those who use the analogy argue that that the separate roads, infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources afforded to Palestinian and settler populations in the Israeli-occupied territories constitute a system of apartheid, which translates as "apartness." {fact} Some of those who make the allegation also use it in reference to the alleged second-class citizenship of Arab citizens of Israel.

Those who reject the analogy argue that it is political slander intended to malign Israel by singling it out, and say that Israeli security needs justify the practices that prompt the analogy. In relation to the situation within Israel itself, they also claim that Arab citizens, like other Israeli citizens, enjoy substantial rights — including the right to vote and be elected to the Israeli parliament, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech and various other civil liberties that were not available to the blacks of South Africa.[14]

Policy analyses between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa

Adam and Moodley argue that notwithstanding universal suffrage within Israel proper,

"if the Palestinian territories under more or less permanent Israeli occupation and settler presence are considered part of the entity under analysis, the comparison between a disenfranchised African population in apartheid South Africa and the three and a half million stateless Palestinians under Israeli domination gains more validity."

Conversely, StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, argues,

"Apartheid was an official policy, enacted in law and brutally enforced through police violence, of political, legal and economic discrimination against blacks. Apartheid is a political system based upon minority control over a majority population. In South Africa, blacks could not be citizens, vote, participate in the government or fraternize with whites. Israel, a majority-rule democracy like the U.S., gives equal rights and protections to all of its citizens. It grants full rights and protections to all Arab inhabitants inside of Israel, a reality best exemplified by Israel’s Arab members of parliament. Israeli citizens struggle with prejudices amongst its many minorities, just as all multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracies do, but Israel’s laws try to eradicate – not endorse – prejudices. The Palestinian Authority, not the Israeli government, governs the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Like many Arab nations, the PA does not offer equal rights and protections to its inhabitants. Branding Israel an apartheid state is inaccurate – and emotional propaganda."

Unlike South Africa, where Apartheid prevented Black majority rule, within Israel itself there is currently a Jewish majority.

Citizenship, personal status and family law

Israeli law does not differentiate between Israeli citizens based on ethnicity. Arab citizens have the same rights as all other Israeli citizenss, whether they are Jews, Christians, Druze, etc. These rights include suffrage, political representation and recourse to the courts. The Knesset (Israel's legislature) includes Arab Israelis and Arab citizens who participate fully in Israeli political, cultural, and educational life. The process for attaining citizenship, however, has sometimes been a matter of controversy. A statute known as the "Citizenship and Family Unification Law" denies the status of citizenship or residency to spouses of Israeli citizens who are residents of Gaza or the West Bank. [15]

Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank are not Israeli citizens. In apartheid South Africa, "Blacks" and "Coloureds" could not vote and had no representation in the South African parliament.

Marriage law

The Nationality and Entry into Israel Law, passed by the Knesset on 31 July 2003, forbids married couples comprising an Israeli citizen and a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip from living together in Israel. The law does allow children from such marriages to live in Israel until age 12, at which age the law requires them to emigrate. The law was originally enacted for one year, extended for a six month period on 21 July 2004, and for an additional four month period on 31 January 2005. "On 27 July 2005, the Knesset voted to extend the law until 31 March 2006, with minor amendments." The law was narrowly upheld in May 2006, by the Supreme Court of Israel on a six to five vote. Israel's Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, sided with the minority on the bench, declaring: "This violation of rights is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality." Zehava Gal-On, a founder of B'Tselem and a Knesset member with the Meretz-Yachad party, stated that with the ruling "The Supreme Court could have taken a braver decision and not relegated us to the level of an apartheid state."

Adam and Moodley cite the marriage law as an example of how Arab Israelis "resemble in many ways 'Colored' and Indian South Africans." They write: "Both Israeli Palestinians and Colored and Indian South Africans are restricted to second-class citizen status when another ethnic group monopolizes state power, treats the minorities as intrinsically suspect, and legally prohibits their access to land or allocates civil service positions or per capita expenditure on education differentially between dominant and minority citizens."

Military service, inter-religious marriage, and property ownership

In July 2007, following a Knesset vote in favour of a new law intended to reverse the court decision in the Qaadan v. Katzir case, Israeli attorney and former Minister of National Infrastructure Yossi Paritzky wrote an opinion piece titled "Our apartheid state" in Ynet, in which he alleged that "[t]hree racist, discriminatory decisions undermine Israel's democratic character…Israel decided to be like apartheid-era South Africa, and some will say even worse countries that no longer exist". These decisions are:

• Extension of the Tal Law from the original five years to ten years.
• Bans on inter-religious marriage.
• Ban on Arab citizens buying and leasing land owned by the Jewish National Fund.

Political rights, speech, voting and representation

Palestinians living in the non-annexed portions of the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights in Israel, but are subject to the policies of the Israeli government. Israel has created roads and checkpoints in the West Bank for security reasons, to prevent uninhibited movement of suicide bombers and militants in the region. According to the pro-Palestinian human rights NGO B'Tselem, such policies isolate some Palestinian communities. Marwan Bishara, a teacher of international relations at the American University of Paris, has claimed that the restrictions on the movement of goods between Israel and the West Bank as "a defacto apartheid system".

• Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that,

  "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."

Public spaces and accommodations

The features of petty apartheid do not exist within Israel, according to Benjamin Pogrund:

"The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasized at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes. Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not."

Arab citizens of Israel are eligible for special perks, as well as affirmative action. The city of Jerusalem gives Arab residents free professional advice to assist with the house permit process and structural regulations, advice which is not available to Jewish residents on the same terms.

In an op-ed for the Jerusalem Post, Gerald Steinberg, Professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, argued that "Black labor was exploited in slavery-like conditions under apartheid; in contrast, Palestinians are dependent on Israeli employment due to their own internal corruption and economic failures."

Land and infrastructure

93.5% of the land inside the Green Line is not held by private owners. 79.5% of the land is owned by the Israeli Government through the Israel Land Administration, and 14% is privately owned by the Jewish National Fund. Under Israeli law, both ILA and JNF lands may not be sold, and are leased under the administration of the ILA.

Journalist Chris McGreal reported that as a result of the government controlling most of the land, the vast majority of land in Israel is not available to non-Jews. In response, Alex Safian of the media watch-dog CAMERA has argued that this is not true -- according to Safian, the 79.5% of Israeli land owned directly by the ILA is available for lease to both Jews and Arabs, sometimes on beneficial terms to Arabs under Israeli affirmative action programs. While Safian concedes that the 14% of Israeli land owned by the JNF is not legally available for lease to Israel's Arab citizens, he argues that the ILA often ignores this restriction in practice.

Safian also noted that although there are formal restrictions on the lease of JNF land, which is privately owned by the JNF, "in practice JNF land has been leased to Arab citizens of Israel, both for short-term and long-term use. To cite one example of the former, JNF-owned land in the Besor Valley (Wadi Shallaleh) near Kibbutz Re'em has been leased on a yearly basis to Bedouins for use as pasture." There are other assessments of Israeli land policy. Representative of a dissenting view is that of Leila Farsakh, associate professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Boston, according to whom, after 1977, "[t]he military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) expropriated and enclosed Palestinian land and allowed the transfer of Israeli settlers to the occupied territories: they continued to be governed by Israeli laws. The government also enacted different military laws and decrees to regulate the civilian, economic and legal affairs of Palestinian inhabitants. These strangled the Palestinian economy and increased its dependence and integration into Israel." Farsakh holds that "[m]any view these Israeli policies of territorial integration and societal separation as apartheid, even if they were never given such a name." Along similar lines, B'Tselem wrote in 2004 that "Palestinians are barred from or have restricted access to 450 miles of West Bank roads, a system with 'clear similarities' to South Africa's former apartheid regime". In October 2005 the Israel Defense Force stopped Palestinians from driving on the main road through the West Bank; B'Tselem described this as a first step towards "total 'road apartheid'". Criticism of Israeli policies on similar grounds has arisen from, among others, Haggai Alon, a senior defence advisor.

High Court decision on public land

In March 2000, Israel's High Court ruled in Qaadan v. Katzir that the government's use of the JNF to develop public land was discriminatory due to the agency's prohibition against leasing to non-Jews. According to Alexandre Kedar of the Haifa University Law School "Until the Supreme Court Qaadan v. Katzir decision, Arabs could not acquire land in any of the hundreds of settlements of this kind existing in Israel..

Security, counter-terrorism and military

Supporters of the West Bank barrier consider it to be largely responsible for reducing incidents of terrorism by 90% from 2002 to 2005. Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, stated in 2004 that the barrier is not a border but a temporary defensive measure designed to protect Israeli civilians from terrorist infiltration and attack, and can be dismantled if appropriate. The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the barrier is defensive and accepted the government's position that the route is based on security considerations.

A permit and closure system was introduced in 1990 by the Oslo Accords, intended to reduce suicide bombings and other Palestinian violence. Leila Farsakh maintains that this system imposes "on Palestinians similar conditions to those faced by blacks under the pass laws. Like the pass laws, the permit system controlled population movement according to the settlers’ unilaterally defined considerations." In response to the al-Aqsa intifada, Israel modified the permit system and fragmented the WBGS [West Bank and Gaze Strip] territorially. "In April 2002 Israel declared that the WBGS would be cut into eight main areas, outside which Palestinians could not live without a permit." John Dugard has said these laws "resemble, but in severity go far beyond, apartheid's pass system".

In 2003 the Israeli government announced Operation Defensive Shield, a project of fences and other physical obstacles to prevent Palestinians crossing into Israel. Mohammad Sarwar, John Pilger, and Mustafa Barghouti and others have described the resultant West Bank barrier as an "apartheid wall".

The Israeli disengagement plan

In January 2004, Ahmed Qureia, then the Palestinian Prime Minister, said that the building of the West Bank barrier, and the associated Israeli absorption of parts of the West Bank, constituted "an apartheid solution to put the Palestinians in cantons." He predicted that Israel's unilateralism could prompt an end to the Palestinian efforts towards a two-state solution, and instead shift favour towards a one-state solution. When asked for comment on Qureia's statement, Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, responded by affirming U.S. commitment to a two-state solution while saying, "I don't believe that we can accept a situation that results in anything that one might characterize as apartheid or Bantuism."

Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that,

"More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."

An academic paper by Professor Oren Yiftachel, Chair of the Geography Department at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, predicted that Israel's unilateral disengagement plan will result in "creeping apartheid" in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel itself. Yiftachel argues that, "Needless to say, the reality of apartheid existed for decades in Israel/Palestine, but this is the first time a Prime Minister spells out clearly the strengthening of this reality as a long-term political platform.". Yiftachel argued that the plan would entrench a situation that can be described as "neither two states nor one," separating Israelis from Palestinians without giving Palestinians true sovereignty.

Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli political scientist and the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, predicted that the interim disengagement plan would become permanent, with the West Bank barrier entrenching both the isolation of Palestinian communities and the existence of Israeli settlements. He warned that Israel is moving towards the model of apartheid South Africa through the creation of "Bantustan" like conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Economist, in an article on the debate over withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, asserted that "Keeping the occupied land will force on Israel the impossible choice of being either an apartheid state, or a binational one with Jews as a minority."

Michael Tarazi, a Palestinian proponent of the binational solution has argued that it is in Palestine's interest to "make this an argument about apartheid," even to the extent of advocating Israeli settlement: "The longer they stay out there, the more Israel will appear to the world to be essentially an apartheid state".

The motivation(s) of Israeli policies

Critics of the claim that Israel is motivated by racism argue that, unlike apartheid, Israeli practices, even if they deserve to be criticized, are not prompted by racial hatred. Benjamin Pogrund writes:

"In any event, what is racism? Under apartheid it was skin colour. Applied to Israel that's a joke: for proof of that, just look at a crowd of Israeli Jews and their gradations in skin-colour from the "blackest" to the "whitest"... Occupation is brutalising and corrupting both Palestinians and Israelis... [b]ut it is not apartheid. Palestinians are not oppressed on racial grounds as Arabs, but, rather, as competitors — until now, at the losing end — in a national/religious conflict for land."

Michael Kinsley's article "It's Not Apartheid", published in Slate (subtitled: Jimmy Carter's moronic new book about Israel") and the Washington Post (subtitled: "Carter Adds to the List Of Mideast Misjudgments"), states that Carter "makes no attempt to explain [the use of the word 'apartheid']" and refers to Carter's usage of the term as "a foolish and unfair comparison, unworthy of the man who won -- and deserved -- the Nobel Peace Prize..."

"To start with, no one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan... Furthermore, Israel has always had Arab citizens.... No doubt many Israelis have racist attitudes toward Arabs, but the official philosophy of the government is quite the opposite, and sincere efforts are made to, for example, instill humanitarian and egalitarian attitudes in children. That is not true, of course, in Arab countries, where hatred of Jews is a standard part of the curriculum."

Citing what he calls "the most tragic difference," Kinsley concludes: "If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?"

Criticism of the "Israeli apartheid" usage for its inherent implication of racism has been widespread. In 2003, South Africa's minister for home affairs Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi said that "The Israeli regime is not apartheid. It is a unique case of democracy". According to Fred Taub, the President of Boycott Watch, "[t]he assertion ... that Israel is practicing apartheid is not only false, but may be considered libelous. ... The fact is that it is the Arabs who are discriminating against non-Muslims, especially Jews." Similarly, in 2004, Jean-Christophe Rufin, former vice-president of Médecins Sans Frontières and president of Action Against Hunger, recommended in a report about anti-Semitism commissioned by French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin that the charge of apartheid and racism against Israel be criminalized in France. He wrote:

"[T]here is no question of penalising political opinions that are critical, for example, of any government and are perfectly legitimate. What should be penalised in the perverse and defamatory use of the charge of racism against those very people who were victims of racism to an unparalleled degree. The accusations of racism, of apartheid, of Nazism carry extremely grave moral implications. These accusations have, in the situation in which we find ourselves today, major consequences which can, by contagion, put in danger the lives of our Jewish citizens. It is why we invite reflection on the advisability and applicability of a law ... which would permit the punishment of those who make without foundation against groups, institutions or states accusations of racism and utilise for these accusations unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism."

The idea that "Israeli apartheid" implies a policy of racial or other discrimination against Arabs or Muslims has been rejected by other prominent figures. In 2004's The Trouble with Islam Today, Irshad Manji argues that the allegation of apartheid in Israel is deeply misleading, noting that there are in Israel several Arab political parties; that Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers; and that Arab parties have overturned disqualifications. She also points to Arabs like Emile Habibi, who have been awarded prestigious prizes. She also observes that Israel has a free Arab press; that road signs bear Arabic translations; and that Arabs live and study alongside Jews. She also claims that Palestinans commuting from the West Bank are entitled to state benefits and legal protections.

Policies in Israel compared to the West Bank and Gaza

Benny Morris, one of the most widely quoted scholars on the Arab-Israeli conflict, told CAMERA:

"Israel is not an apartheid state — rather the opposite, it is easily the most democratic and politically egalitarian state in the Middle East, in which Arabs Israelis enjoy far more freedom, better social services, etc. than in all the Arab states surrounding it. Indeed, Arab representatives in the Knesset, who continuously call for dismantling the Jewish state, support the Hezbollah, etc., enjoy more freedom than many Western democracies give their internal Oppositions. (The U.S. would prosecute and jail Congressmen calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Govt. or the demise of the U.S.) The best comparison would be the treatment of Japanese Americans by the US Govt ... and the British Govt. [incarceration] of German emigres in Britain WWII ... Israel's Arabs by and large identify with Israel's enemies, the Palestinians. But Israel hasn't jailed or curtailed their freedoms en masse (since 1966 [when Israel lifted its state of martial law]).

Morris later added: "Israel ... has not jailed tens of thousands of Arabs indiscriminately out fear that they might support the Arab states warring with Israel; it did not do so in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 or 1982 — despite the Israeli Arabs' support for the enemy Arab states."

"As to the occupied territories, Israeli policy is fueled by security considerations (whether one agrees with them or not, or with all the specific measures adopted at any given time) rather than racism (though, to be sure, there are Israelis who are motivated by racism in their attitude and actions towards Arabs) — and indeed the Arab population suffers as a result. But Gaza's and the West Bank's population (Arabs) are not Israeli citizens and cannot expect to benefit from the same rights as Israeli citizens so long as the occupation or semi-occupation (more accurately) continues, which itself is a function of the continued state of war between the Hamas-led Palestinians (and their Syrian and other Arab allies) and Israel."

President Carter has frequently reiterated the point that his "use of 'apartheid' does not apply to circumstances within Israel." Regarding the title of his book Carter has said:

"It's not Israel. The book has nothing to do with what's going on inside Israel which is a wonderful democracy, you know, where everyone has guaranteed equal rights and where, under the law, Arabs and Jews who are Israelis have the same privileges about Israel. That's been most of the controversy because people assume it's about Israel. It's not.

"I've never alleged that the framework of apartheid existed within Israel at all, and that what does exist in the West Bank is based on trying to take Palestinian land and not on racism. So it was a very clear distinction."

"Apartheid" in political discussion

Comparisons between Israeli policies and apartheid have been made by groups and individuals, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other South African anti-apartheid leaders, Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Israeli journalists, the Syrian government, pro-Palestinian student groups in the UK, U.S., and Canada, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem.

Heribert Adam of Simon Fraser University and Kogila Moodley of the University of British Columbia, in their 2005 book-length study Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians, apply lessons learned in South Africa to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They divide academic and journalistic commentators on the analogy into three groups:

• "The majority is incensed by the very analogy and deplores what it deems its propagandistic goals."
• "'Israel is Apartheid' advocates include most Palestinians, many Third World academics, and several Jewish post-Zionists who idealistically predict an ultimate South African solution of a common or binational state."
• A third group which sees both similarities and differences, and which looks to South African history for guidance in bringing resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Adam and Moodley also suggest that political actors such as former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak used the analogy "self-servingly in their exhortations and rationalizations" and that such actors "have repeatedly deplored the occupation and seeming 'South Africanization' but have done everything to entrench it."

Political discourse concerning Israel

Contemporary global political discourse regarding Israel incorporates usages of, and controversy over, the phrase "Israeli apartheid" and its variations. In response to such usages, Israel's supporters have argued that human rights violations exist in other nations, notably including Arab majority states critical of Israel, and yet Israel receives disproportionate scrutiny.

In part, analysts like Adam and Moodley argue, this controversy over terminology arises because Israel as a state is unique in the region. To its own citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish, Israel is perceived as a Western democracy and is thus likely to be judged by the standards of such a state. Western commentators, too, may feel "a greater affinity to a like minded polity than to an autocratic Third World state." Israel also claims to be a spiritual home for a worldwide Jewish diaspora and a strategic outpost of the Western world which "is heavily bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers" who can be viewed as sharing a collective responsibility for its behaviors. Radical Islamists, according to some analysts, "use Israeli policies to mobilize anti-Western sentiment", leading to a situation in which "(u)nconditional U.S. support for Israeli expansionism potentially unites Muslim moderates with jihadists." As a result of these factors, according to this analysis, the West Bank Barrier — nicknamed the "apartheid wall" — has become a critical frontline in the War on Terrorism.

Some analysts add that many Israelis are Holocaust survivors and their descendants, and are therefore expected to be particularly careful not to repeat ethnic discrimination, noting that the anti-Apartheid resistance that formed against South Africa was disproportionately Jewish. This argument is also made by Ali Abunimah, creator of the Electronic Intifada website and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah writes that "[m]any liberal Zionists were active in the antiapartheid struggle and cannot accept that the Israel they love could have anything in common with the hated apartheid regime."

At the same time, Adam and Moodley note that Jewish historical suffering has imbued Zionism with a subjective sense of moral validity that the whites ruling South Africa never had: "Afrikaner moral standing was constantly undermined by exclusion and domination of blacks, even subconsciously in the minds of its beneficiaries. In contrast, the similar Israeli dispossession of Palestinians is perceived as self-defense and therefore not immoral." They also suggest that academic comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa that see both dominant groups as "settler societies" leave unanswered the question of "when and how settlers become indigenous," as well as failing to take into account that Israeli's Jewish immigrants view themselves as returning home. "In their self-concept, Zionists are simply returning to their ancestral homeland from which they were dispersed two millennia ago. Originally most did not intend to exploit native labor and resources, as colonizers do." Adam and Moodley stress that "because people give meaning to their lives and interpret their worlds through these diverse ideological prisms, the perceptions are real and have to be taken seriously."

Adam and Moodley also argue that "apartheid ideologues" who justified their rule by claiming self-defense against "African National Congress(ANC)-led communism" found that excuse outdated after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereas "continued Arab hostilities sustain the Israeli perception of justifiable self-defense."

Adam and Moodley argue that notwithstanding universal suffrage within Israel proper, "if the Palestinian territories under more or less permanent Israeli occupation and settler presence are considered part of the entity under analysis, the comparison between a disenfranchised African population in apartheid South Africa and the three and a half million stateless Palestinians under Israeli domination gains more validity."

Adam and Moodley contend that the relationship of South African apartheid to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been misinterpreted as "justifying suicide bombing and glorifying martyrdom." They argue that the ANC "never endorsed terrorism," and stress that "not one suicide has been committed in the cause of a thirty-year-long armed struggle, although in practice the ANC drifted increasingly toward violence during the latter years of apartheid."

Adam and Moodley conclude their book by arguing that "Israel has the capacity to reach a meaningful compromise, but has yet to prove its willingness. The Palestinian mainstream has the willingness, but lacks the capacity, to initiate a fair settlement."

Israel and the United Nations

Israel and the "crime of apartheid"

Israel has been accused by Palestinian organizations and their supporters of the crime of apartheid, a controversial element in international law. For example, in 2006, at the UN-sponsored International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People, Phyllis Bennis, co-chair of the International Coordinating Network on Palestine, opened the speeches of the civil society at the first plenary of the conference by alleging "Once again, the crime of apartheid [is] being committed by a United Nations Member State [Israel]."

The crime of apartheid first became part of international law in 1973 when the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It defined it as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group ... over another racial group ... and systematically oppressing them." All the major Western countries refused to ratify it. At the outset the US stated: "[W]e cannot...accept that apartheid can in this manner be made a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law..."

In 2002, a different definition of the crime of apartheid was provided by Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The crime of apartheid was listed as one of several crimes against humanity, and was defined as including inhumane acts such as torture, imprisonment, or persecution of an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, or other grounds, "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

No mechanism exists to prosecute any state for the crime of apartheid except referral from the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court, and no such referral has ever taken place.

Other UN-related Allegations of Israeli apartheid

• John Dugard, a South African professor of international law and an ad hoc Judge on the International Court of Justice, serving as the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories described the situation in the West Bank as "an apartheid regime ... worse than the one that existed in South Africa." In 2007, in advance of a report from the United Nations Human Rights Council, Dugard wrote that "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." Referring to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank, he wrote, "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose [...] is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

The Human Rights Council, at which John Dugard made his allegations, has been criticized by the United States, Kofi Annan, and several other nations for demonizing Israel, having passed eight resolutions condemning Israel, and none condemning any other country. In a speech that was banned from being put on the Human Rights Council's record, the leader of the NGO UN Watch said that (Arab) dictators in control of the council had turned the original dream of the Human Rights council into a "nightmare", by focusing only on Israel so as to ignore what was going on in their own countries (such as the genocide in Darfur).

The allegation was made at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. The conference was criticized by the United States and Israel, who described it as disproportionally and unfairly demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. The resolution was not supported by a single Western country. Both Australia and Canada made statements accusing the conference of "hypocrisy". For example, the Canadian delegation stated:

"Canada is still here today only because we wanted to have our voice decry the attempts at this Conference to de-legitimize the State of Israel and to dishonor the history and suffering of the Jewish people. We believe, and we have said in the clearest possible terms, that it was inappropriate - wrong - to address the Palestinian-Israel conflict in this forum. We have said, and will continue to say, that anything - any process, any declaration, any language - presented in any forum that does not serve to advance a negotiated peace that will bring security, dignity and respect to the people of the region is - and will be - unacceptable to Canada."

Danny Rubinstein, a columnist at Ha'aretz also reportedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa during a United Nations conference at the European Parliament in Brussels on 30 August 2007, stating: "Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status."

Usage by contemporary political and media figures

• Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, Camp David Accords negotiator, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author of the 2006 book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, maintained in that book that Israel's options included a "system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed ..." Carter has also argued that the Israeli system is in some cases more onerous than that of the apartheid government of South Africa. Carter's use of the term "apartheid" has been calibrated to avoid specific accusations of racism against the government of Israel, and has been carefully limited to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. For instance, in a news release, Carter described discussing his book and his use of the word "apartheid" with the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix, and noted, "I made clear in the book's text and in my response to the rabbis that the system of apartheid in Palestine is not based on racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land and the resulting suppression of protests that involve violence."

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Agency (NSA) advisor to President Carter commented that the absence of a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is likely to produce a situation which de facto will resemble apartheid.

• Yakov Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations accused Israel--an ally of the US in the Cold War against the Soviets-- of promulgating a "racist policy of apartheid against Palestinians" following the imposition of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the Six-Day War of 1967. At this time the Soviet Union was waging propaganda campaigns against the Israeli regime in international forums.

• Raja G. Khouri, a member of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and former president of the Canadian Arab Federation, supports the apartheid analogy, and holds that the Israeli policies in question are not motivated by racism.

British journalist Melanie Phillips has criticized Desmond Tutu for comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa. Having made the comparison in an article for The Guardian in 2002, Tutu stated that people are scared to say the "Jewish lobby" in the U.S. is powerful. "So what?" he asked. "The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust." Phillips wrote of Tutu's article: "I never thought that I would see brazenly printed in a reputable British newspaper not only a repetition of the lie of Jewish power but the comparison of that power with Hitler, Stalin and other tyrants. I never thought I would see such a thing issuing from a Christian archbishop ... How can Christians maintain a virtual silence about the persecution of their fellow worshippers by Muslims across the world, while denouncing the Israelis who are in the front line against precisely this terror?"

In December, 2006, Maurice Ostroff of the Jerusalem Post criticized Tutu for being well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided: "If he took the opportunity during his forthcoming visit to impartially examine all the facts, he would discover - to his pleasant surprise - that accusations of Israeli apartheid are mean-spirited and wrong-headed... He would find that whereas the apartheid of the old South Africa was entrenched in law, Israel's Declaration of Independence absolutely ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race, or gender.

Political scientist Norman Finkelstein, an outspoken opponent of Israeli policies toward Arabs and author of numerous books relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict such as Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995), The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years (1998), and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005), defends Carter's analysis in Palestine Peace Not Apartheid as in his view both historically accurate and non-controversial outside the United States: "After four decades of Israeli occupation, the infrastructure and superstructure of apartheid have been put in place. Outside the never-never land of mainstream American Jewry and U.S. media, this reality is barely disputed." In claiming the apartheid comparison "is a commonplace among informed commentators", Finkelstein cited such a comparison by historian Benny Morris, a widely quoted scholar on the Arab-Israeli conflict (whom Finkelstein has also fiercely criticized in other contexts). Morris responded to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America that

"Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian. ... As to the occupied territories, Israeli policy is fueled by security considerations (whether one agrees with them or not, or with all the specific measures adopted at any given time) rather than racism (though, to be sure, there are Israelis who are motivated by racism in their attitude and actions towards Arabs) — and indeed the Arab population suffers as a result. But Gaza's and the West Bank's population (Arabs) are not Israeli citizens and cannot expect to benefit from the same rights as Israeli citizens so long as the occupation or semi-occupation (more accurately) continues, which itself is a function of the continued state of war between the Hamas-led Palestinians (and their Syrian and other Arab allies) and Israel."

Political commentary on Israel by South Africans

• In 2002 Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote a series of articles in major newspapers, comparing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to apartheid South Africa, and calling for the international community to divest support from Israel until the territories were no longer occupied.

• Other prominent South African anti-apartheid activists have used apartheid comparisons to criticize the occupation of the West Bank, and particularly the construction of the separation barrier. These include Farid Esack, a Muslim writer who is currently William Henry Bloomberg Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School, Ronnie Kasrils, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Dennis Goldberg, and Arun Ghandhi,

Hendrik Verwoerd, then prime minister of South Africa and the architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, said in 1961 that "The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." Israel was critical of apartheid through the 1950s and 60s as it built alliances with post-colonial African governments." For example, also in 1961, Israel voted for the General Assembly censure of Eric Louw's speech defending apartheid.

Ian Buruma has argued that even though there is social discrimination against Arabs in Israel and that "the ideal of a Jewish state smacks of racism", the analogy is "intellectually lazy, morally questionable and possibly even mendacious", as "[n]on-Jews, mostly Arab Muslims, make up 20% of the Israeli population, and they enjoy full citizen's rights" and "[i]nside the state of Israel, there is no apartheid".

Political usage among Israelis

• Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset argued that an apartheid system has already taken shape in that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are separated into "cantons" and Palestinians are required to carry permits to travel between them. Azmi Bishara, another Arab member of the Knesset, argued that the Palestinian situation had been caused by "colonialist apartheid."

• Michael Ben-Yair, attorney-general of Israel from 1993 to 1996 referred to Israel establishing "an apartheid regime in the occupied territories", in an essay included in the anthology The Other Israel, Voices of Refusal and Dissent.

• Some Israelis have compared the separation plan to apartheid, such as political scientist Meron Benvenisti, and journalist Amira Hass. Ami Ayalon, Israeli admiral and former leader of the Israel Security Agency criticized the model, claiming it "ha[d] some apartheid charertistics." Shulamit Aloni, former education minister, Israel Prize winner, and a former leader of Meretz, said that the state of Israel is "practicing its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population."

Other usage examples

Idi Amin Dada, former dictator of Uganda, compared Israel to South African apartheid in the United Nations General Assembly in 1975.

Academic and political activist Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen who describes himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew", has written several books on the subject, including Israel: An Apartheid State in 1987.

White supremacist David Duke, has described Israel as an apartheid state.

See also

• Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
• Academic boycotts of Israel
• Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law
• Hafrada (Separation)
• Israeli West Bank barrier
• Anti-Zionism

Further reading

• "No apartheid in the Middle East" The Guardian February 27 2007
• Avnery, Uri. "An Eskimo in Bantustan".
• Bard, Mitchell. "Myths & Facts Online. Human Rights in Israel and the Territories", American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.
• Barghouti, Omar. "Israeli Apartheid - Time for the South African Treatment".
• Buruma, Ian. "Do not treat Israel like apartheid South Africa", The Guardian, July 23 2002.
• Carey Ron et al. The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid. Verso, 2001. ISBN 1-85984-377-8
• Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-7432-8502-6
• Davis, Uri. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. Zed Books, 2004. ISBN 1-84277-339-9
• Dugard, John. Template:PDFlink 59th Session of the General Assembly Third Committee, Item 105, 28 October 2004
• Farsakh, Leila: "Israel an apartheid state?", Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003
• Falkson, Jock L. "An Apartheid State? Or The Greatest Lie Ever Told?"
• Pogrund, Benjamin. "Apartheid? Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote", MidEastWeb.
• Siegel, Jennifer. "Carter Book Slaps Israel With ‘Apartheid’ Tag, Provides Ammo to GOP", The Forward, October 17 2006.
• Shimoni, Gideon. "Deconstructing Apartheid Accusations Against Israel", Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 2 2007.
• Tutu, Desmond & Urbina Ian. Against Israeli apartheid.
• Template:PDFlink, United Nations, January 2006.
• Is Zionism Apartheid? at Zionism On The Web
• This Road is for Jews Only. Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel. By SHULAMIT ALONI
• "Labor MK Raleb Majadele to be appointed first Arab minister" By Yoav Stern, Haaretz
• Muslims in Europe - Discrimination
• An Old Story: Anti-Semitism, past and present by Jack Schwartz, NRO December 4 2001