Israel and apartheid: Difference between revisions

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Allegations of Israeli apartheid draw a controversial analogy from South Africa's treatment of non-whites during the apartheid era to Israel's treatment of Arabs living in the West Bank and Israel. Those who reject the analogy argue that it has no basis in fact, and that applying the term "apartheid" is intended as political slander to malign Israel. They assert that legitimate Israeli security justify the practices that prompt the analogy ^[1] and argue that the practices of many other countries, to which the term is not applied, more closely resemble South African apartheid. ^[2]

The term

Use of the term

Heribert Adam of Simon Fraser University and Kogila Moodley of the University of British Columbia write that, in the "ideological battle" of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, "frequent references to apartheid are made wherein Palestinians are equated with black South Africans." ^[3] They write that academic and journalistic commentators on the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" can be mainly divided 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. ^[4]

The term has been used by diverse groups and individuals across the political spectrum, including Desmond Tutu and other South African anti-apartheid leaders, Jimmy Carter, members of the Knesset, ^[5] Palestinian-rights activists,^[6] the Syrian government,^[7] student groups in the UK, U.S., and Canada (where "Israeli apartheid week" is held on many campuses), ^[8] the Congress of South African Trade Unions, ^[9], the Canadian Union of Public Employees, white supremacist David Duke,^[10] Holocaust denier Paul Grubach of the Institute for Historical Review,^[11] and anti-Semitic groups such as Jew Watch. Some have accused Israel of the crime of apartheid as defined by the International Criminal Court, ^{[12] [13][14]} though Israel, like many countries, has not ratified the Rome Statute. "Various other political actors also use the South-African analogy self-servingly in their exhortations and rationalizations," write Adam and Moodley, such as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, while not necessarily endorsing the analogy. ^[4]

Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset, describes Israel's political discourse about the Palestinians as revolving around the ideas of separation, apartheid, and transfer. He argues that an apartheid system is already in place, with the West Bank and Gaza Strip separated into "cantons," and Palestinians required to carry permits to travel between them. ^[15] Azmi Bishara, another member of the Knesset and the first Arab-Israeli to run for Prime Minister of Israel, argues that the Palestinian situation has been caused by "colonialist apartheid." If a solution is not found, he writes, Israel will "entrench its apartheid system" through unilateral disengagement, leaving the Palestinians in "isolated cantons." ^[16]

Adam and Moodley write that human rights violations exist in many nations in the Third World, as well as among Israel's Arab nation-state critics, yet Israel receives disproportionate scrutiny. ^[17] For its Jewish majority and Arab citizens, they argue, Israel is a Western democracy and is judged by the standards of one; similarly, Western commentators feel "a greater affinity to a like minded polity than to an autocratic Third World state." ^[17] In addition, Israel acts as a "spiritual home and sanctuary," for the Jewish diaspora. Israel, which "is heavily bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers", is also a strategic outpost of the Western world who can be viewed as sharing a collective responsibility for its behaviors.^[17] Radical Islamists, in the meantime, "use Israeli policies to mobilize anti-Western sentiment"; in the streets of Iraq, for example, American soldiers are called "Jews." As a result of these factors, the West Bank Barrier — nicknamed the "apartheid wall" — has become a critical frontline in the War on Terrorism. ^[17]

Adam and Moodley argue that many Israelis are Holocaust survivors and their descendants, and are therefore expected to be particularly careful not to repeat ethnic discrimination; ^[17] the anti-Apartheid resistance that formed against South Africa was disproportionately Jewish. ^[18] 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." ^[19]

At the same time, Jewish historical suffering has given Israel a claim to moral validity that the whites ruling South Africa never had. ^[18] Academic comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa that see both dominant groups as "settler societies" fail to take into account that Israeli's Jewish immigrants view themselves as returning home; ^[20] the Israeli "dispossession of Palestinians" is perceived by them as self-defense. ^[18] Afrikaner leaders who justified their policies by claiming to be fighting against ANC communism found that excuse outdated after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereas continued Arab hostilities sustain the Israeli view that it is acting in self-defense, argue Adam and Moodley. ^[21]

Commentators who have used the term

• Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, used the analogy on a Christmas visit to Jerusalem, 25th Dec 1989 when he said in a Haaretz article, "I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa."^{[citation needed]} In 2002, Tutu said that he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa" and that he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about". ^[22] Tutu also added that "Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through", and stated that a letter signed by several hundred other prominent Jewish South Africans had drawn an explicit analogy between apartheid and current Israeli policies.^[23][24]

• Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, Camp David Accords negotiator, and Nobel Peace Prize winner wrote a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid that criticizes Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories. ^[25]
• Uri Davis, an Israeli-born academic and Jewish member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote a book Israel: An Apartheid State (1987) that drew parallels between Israel and South Africa.^[26]
• 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." ^[27]. Dugard has since become an outspoken critic of the separation barrier and of Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.^[28]
• Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister of South Africa, widely considered the architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, stated 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," ^[29]
• Yakov Malik, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, accused Israel in December 1971 of promulgating a "racist policy of apartheid against Palestinians.^[30]

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, ^[31] Ronnie Kasrils, ^[32] Winnie Madikizela-Mandela,^[33] Arun Ghandhi, ^[34] and Dennis Goldberg.^[35]

Israelis who have compared the separation plan to apartheid include political scientist Meron Benvenisti, ^[36] and Ami Ayalon, Israeli admiral and former leader of the Israel Security Agency. ^[37] Shulamit Aloni, former education minister and a former leader of Meretz, and Tommy Lapid, leader of the liberal Shinui, used the term "apartheid" when describing a bill proposed by the government of Ariel Sharon to bar Arabs from buying homes in "Jewish townships" within Israel proper. ^[38][39][40]

Criticism of the term

Critics argue that the term is inaccurate, anti-Semitic (or New anti-Semitism), dangerous, ^[41] and used as a rhetorical device to isolate Israel. ^[1]

Ian Buruma, Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York, finds the comparison to be "intellectually lazy, morally questionable, and possibly even mendacious." Though he disagrees with Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in his view:

Inside the state of Israel, there is no apartheid. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest minority within its borders of any country in the Middle East. The official figure for Copts in Egypt is 10%. Non-Jews, mostly Arab Muslims, make up 20% of the Israeli population, and they enjoy full citizen's rights. Israel is one of the few Middle Eastern states where Muslim women are allowed to vote.^[2]

British journalist Melanie Phillips has crticized 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." ^[42] 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?" ^[43]

In 2002, Lee Bollinger, then President of Columbia University, said that the analogy of Israel to South Africa at the time of apartheid, "is both grotesque and offensive". ^[44] David Matas, senior counsel to B'nai Brith Canada, argues that the starting point for anti-Zionists is the "vocabulary of condemnation", rather than specific criticism of the practises of Israel. He writes that "any unsavoury verbal weapon that comes to hand is used to club Israel and its supporters. The reality of what happens in Israel is ignored. What matters is the condemnation itself. For anti-Zionists, the more repugnant the accusation made against Israel the better."^[1] Because apartheid is universally condemned, and a global coalition helped to bring down the South African apartheid regime, anti-Zionists "dream of constructing a similar global anti-Zionism effort", writes Matas. "The simplest and most direct way for them to do so is to label Israel as an apartheid state. The fact that there is no resemblance whatsoever between true apartheid and the State of Israel has not stopped anti-Zionists for a moment." ^[1]

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 ^[45] commissioned by French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin^[46] that the charge of apartheid and racism against Israel be criminalized in France.^[41] 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.^[41]

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".^[47] 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."^[48]

In The Trouble with Islam Today, Irshad Manji lists a number of issues that she argues show the allegation of apartheid in Israel to be misleading. She writes that Arabs can run for office; there are several Arab political parties; and Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers. In 2003, when two Arab political parties were disqualified for supporting terrorism, the judiciary overturned the disqualifications. Women and the poor can vote. Emile Habibi, an Arab, was awarded the Israel Prize for literature. Hebrew-speaking children are encouraged to learn Arabic. Road signs are bilingual. Arabs, Jews, and others study side-by-side in universities, and live in the same apartment buildings. Palestinans who commute from the West Bank are entitled to state benefits and legal protections. Israel has a free Arab Press, Al-Quds. ^[49]

The issues

Arguments for the term

Occupation of the West Bank

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 occupied territories that isolate Palestinian communities. ^[50] Policies also restrict the movement of goods between Israel and the West Bank, and into the Gaza Strip. Marwan Bishara, a teacher of international relations at the American University of Paris, has compared the restrictions on movement to apartheid pass laws. ^[16] Israel maintains that these roads and checkpoints are important to its self-defense.

According to Leila Farsakh, 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 ..." Many view these Israeli policies of territorial integration and societal separation as apartheid, even if they were never given such a name." ^[51]

Israeli West Bank barrier

The Israeli West Bank barrier, which has also been called the "apartheid wall" — 88% of barrier is currently fenced and 11.5% walled^[52] — isolates Palestinian communities in the West Bank and consolidates the annexation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlements. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, over one million Arabs on the Israeli side of the barrier are citizens of Israel and constitute 15% of Israel's population. ^[53]

The Israeli foreign ministry says that the West Bank barrier will cause no transfer of population and that none of the estimated 10,000 Palestinians (0.5%) who will be left on the Israeli side of the barrier (based on the February 2005 route) will be forced to migrate.^[54] The barrier has been presented as a reasonable and necessary security precaution to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism. Supporters of the barrier consider it to be largely responsible for reducing incidents of terrorism by 90% from 2002 to 2005.^[55][56][57] 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.^[58] 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. ^[59]

Land policy inside the Green Line

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.^[60]

Critics say that as a result of this leasing arrangement, the vast majority of land in Israel is not available to non-Jews.^[29] In response, Alex Safian 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.^[60]

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.^[61] According to Dr. 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.^[62].

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."^[63][64]

Employment

18% of the population within Israel's pre-1967 borders is Arab. "Only 3.7 percent of Israel's [government] employees are Arabs; Arabs hold only 50 out of 5,000 university faculty positions; and of the country's 61 poorest towns, 48 are Arab."^[65]

Identity cards

Israeli identity cards,^[66] required of all residents over the age of 16, indicate whether holders are Jewish or not by adding the person's Hebrew date of birth.

In a controversial article in the Guardian, journalist Chris McGreal reported that having indications of Jewish ethnicity on national identification cards is "in effect determining where they are permitted to live, access to some government welfare programmes, and how they are likely to be treated by civil servants and policemen."^[67] The same article also compared Israel's Population Registry Act, which calls for the gathering of ethnic data, to South Africa's Apartheid-era Population Registration Act.

Separation program

In response to the Intifada, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel began in 2002 to implement a "separation program" (Hebrew Hafrada) designed to physically separate Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank. The program includes fences and walls between Israeli and Palestinian areas, limitations on travel by Palestinians within the West Bank, ^[68] and Israeli-only roads. ^[69] Some critics of Israeli policy consider this program and the philosophy behind it to be a form of apartheid. ^[70]

Israel has created separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said "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".^[71] The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that the Israeli government gave its military approval to implement a plan to culminate in barring all Palestinians from roads used by Israelis in the West Bank. "The purpose is to reach, in a gradual manner, within a year or two, total separation between the two populations. The first and immediate stage of separation applies to the roads in the territories: roads for Israelis only and roads for Palestinians only," the newspaper said.^[72]

Israel described the features of the separation program not as methods of enforcing apartheid rule of Israel over the Palestinians, but rather as an unilateral approach to a two-state solution. Israel has dismantled Israeli settlements and withdrawn the army from the Gaza Strip.^{[citation needed]} The 2006 realignment plan of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for withdrawing the army from most of the West Bank. The West Bank barrier has been portrayed as one approach to such a solution.

Pass laws

A permit and closure system was introduced in 1990 by the Oslo Accords, imposing "on Palestinians similar conditions to those faced by blacks under the pass laws."^[73] Rather than ensuring "the control and supply of cheap labour" as in South Africa, this system was "introduced for security reasons."^[73] "Like the pass laws, the permit system controlled population movement according to the settlers’ unilaterally defined considerations."^[73] In response to the al-Aqsa intifada, Israel modified the permit system and fragmented the WBGS [West Bank and Gaze Strip] territorially.^[73] "In April 2002 Israel declared that the WBGS would be cut into eight main areas, outside which Palestinians could not live without a permit."^{[73] [74]}

Marriage

The Nationality and Entry into Israel Law,^[75] passed by the Knesset on 31 July 2003, forbids married couples comprising an Israeli citizen and a Palestinian from an occupied territory from living together in Israel.^[76] The law does allow children from such marriages to live in Israel until age 12, at which age the law requires them to emmigrate.^[77] This is reminiscent of South African apartheid immigration laws, which adversely affected Indian practices of endogamy, in that they were forbidden from importing brides from their native country as they had done for generations prior to the apartheid regime.^[76] Israel cites security, and not fears of further drain on minority status, as white South Africans did, as reason for this immigration policy.^[76]

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."^[78] 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."^[79] 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." ^[80]

Arguments against the term

Legal status of Israeli Arabs

• Israeli law does not differentiate between Israeli citizens based on ethnicity. Israeli Arabs have the same rights as all other Israelis, whether they are Jews, Christians, Druze, etc. These rights include suffrage, political representation and recourse to the courts. Israeli Arabs are represented in the Knesset (Israel's legislature) and participate fully in Israeli political, cultural, and educational life. In apartheid South Africa, "Blacks" and "Coloureds" could not vote and had no representation in the South African parliament.^[81]

• "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."^[82] Arabs who are not citizens of Israel have the same rights and privileges as all other non-citizen foreign workers in Israel.^{[citation needed]}

• The features of petty apartheid do not exist in Israel. Jews and Arabs use the same hospitals, Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, Jews and Arabs eat in the same restaurants, and Jews and Arabs travel in the same buses, trains and taxis without being segregated.^[81]

• According to StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organisation, Arab Israelis are often eligible for special perks. The organisation has pointed out that 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.^[83]

• StandWithUs has also stated that "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.

Demographics

• The concept that Jews and Palestinians are distinct races is highly controversial.{{cn))
• Unlike South Africa, where Apartheid prevented Black majority rule, in Israel there is currently a Jewish majority.^[84][85]

Differences between Israel and South Africa

• Dr. Moshe Machover, professor of philosophy in London and co-founder of Matzpen, argues against the use of the term on the basis that the situation in Israel is worse than apartheid. Machover points out some significant differences between the policy of the Israeli government and the apartheid model. According to Machover, drawing a close analogy between Israel and South Africa is both a theoretical and political mistake.^[86]

• Israel never formally annexed the West Bank or Gaza, and the Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and they don't want to be. Palestinians have their own government, the Palestinian Authority.^[87]

• The director the "Program on Conflict Management" at Bar-Ilan University, and editor of NGO Monitor, argued in a Jerusalem Post Op-Ed piece:

• The analogy "demean(s) Black victims of the real apartheid regime in South Africa."^[82]
• Zionism is not a manifestation of European colonialism.^[82]

Differences between the PLO and ANC

"Ultimately the African National Congress (ANC)" the main political voice of the indigenous peoples "emerged victorious not because it had militarily or strategically defeated its adversary, but because it had captured the moral high ground... ."^[88] The effort to dismantle apartheid in South Africa forced a reckoning of what methods were legitimate and moral. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission reviewed what methods had been justifiable human rights violations. The moral lessons of the anti-apartheid struggle are often ignored by some proponents of the analogy. Ted Honderich, for example "blantantly appropriates the South African case and misinterprets its relationship to the Israel-Palestinian conflict by morally justifying suicide bombing and glorifying martydom."^[88] The ANC "never endorsed terrorism" and no suicide bombing ever occured during the ANC's thirty year struggle.^[88]

The debate on the two-state solution

See also: Israel's unilateral disengagement plan#Pro-withdrawal criticism

The Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, and the resultant living conditions for the the area's Palestinians, are a key component of many comparisons to apartheid. According to Leila Farsakh, the "Oslo process made the Palestinian situation legally similar to South Africa’s bantustans."^[73] It institutionalised the separation between the two groups as well as Israel's territorial integration, resulting in "the bantustanisation of the [Palestinian Territories]" and turning them "into fragmented population reserves, neither sustainable economically nor sovereign politically."^[73]

However, some have also predicted that aspects of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan would also lead to apartheid-like conditions. These predictions are raised both by those who advocate a two-state solution and by those who advocate a one-state binational solution. These opponents of the plan generally agree with the principle of making territorial concessions, but object to the limited scope of the plan, which would leave much of the currently-occupied territory under some level of Israeli control.

• Desmond Tutu has advocated a two-state solution, saying, "Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders."^[89]

• 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." ^[90] 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." ^[91]}}

• 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."^[92]

• An academic paper by Professor Oren Yiftachel of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev predicted that Israel unilateral disengagement plan will result in "creeping apartheid" in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel itself. ^[93]. 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^[94]

• The Economist, in an article on the debate over withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, 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."^[95]

See also

• Apartheid (disambiguation) for other uses of the term
• Arab anti-Zionism
• Hafrada, a Hebrew term for "separation"
• Intifada
• Jewish exodus from Arab lands
• New Historians
• Zionism and racism

Further reading

Notes