Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumThe apartheid myth
Op-ed: Despite the slanderous propaganda against Israel, the Palestinians not only have a parliament, but also higher education institutions, a police force, security forces, a justice system and prisons. Is this apartheid? Thanks to Israeli rule, they're number 1 among university graduates in the Arab world. Is this oppression?
...The question is, what the hell is the source of this madness, which comes from the fringes and spreads like a cancer to the middle. To understand that, we need to look at the hooligans' reasoning. The familiar tune....More and more articles provide fuel to the incitement fire. It's not that there are no injustices, and it's not that these injustices shouldn't be brought to light. But none of this has anything to do with an apartheid regime. It's not that anyone is confused; someone is intentionally working to confuse and leave the wrong impression. This campaign has a clear declared goal: To turn Israel into South Africa, in order to encourage "pressure from outside." The link between this campaign and the BDS movement can no longer be hidden.
...The anti-Semitism survey released last week revealed the fact that 40 percent of Europeans have anti-Semitic views. Those who say that it's "because of Israel" are right. Of course. When Israel is presented as an apartheid state, a benighted state, and a state that commits non-stop crimes - anti-Semitism grows. So you need to be more accurate - it's not because of what Israel does, it's because of the lies against Israel. And no, it's not because of a specific policy or the current government, which should be criticized. After all, the anti-Israel campaign was in full swing even when Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni led the country.
The apartheid campaign achieves results. It doesn't promote peace or reconciliation, it creates the opposite results. It raises the rate of anti-Semitism, encourages the hooligans that support the BDS movement, bolsters Palestinian intransigence, and makes the chances of peace smaller and smaller still.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4759526,00.html
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DetlefK
(16,423 posts)- Are the Palestinians in the Westbank (with their own parliament, their own police, their own justice system...) their own sovereigns? Or are these institutions granted by the goodwill of an external factor?
- Not in theory, in practice: Do palestinian criminals and israeli criminals get the same legal treatment? When was the last time the house of an israeli settler in the Westbank was demolished as a punishment for attacks on palestinian property?
- Which policing institution is responsible for investigating attacks of israeli settlers on palestinian property in the Westbank? Does it have the authority to arrest settlers? How many cases have been investigated? How many settlers have been arrested? On average, what has been their punishments? What kind of compensation have the Palestinians been awarded by the courts?
- Do israeli and palestinian communities get equal access to irrigation water?
- Do israeli and palestinian communities have the same ratio of submitted building-permits vs granted building-permits?
- 14 pieces of land were outright stolen from Palestinians in the Westbank with forged documents.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=124420
Will this land be returned to the palestinian owners?
shira
(30,109 posts)Israeli Arabs living over the '67 lines have the same rights as any other Israeli. As opposed to non-Israelis who are not civilians.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)By Natasha Roth |Published January 31, 2016
In these days of entrapping human rights activists and blacklisting ‘traitors,’ the concept of equality has become as radical as it gets — and a threat to everything the governing regime stands for.
Last week Israeli lawmakers had the opportunity to take a first step towards enshrining equality in the law. They rejected this opportunity, voting down Joint List MK Jamal Zahalka’s proposed amendment to include a clause on equality in Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
The vote was taken on a preliminary reading of Zahalka’s bill, meaning that it was shot down before it even left the starting blocks. The majority of Likud, along with the centrist Yesh Atid and Kulanu, along with the ultra-Orthodox parties, voted against the bill. The Joint List, Meretz and Zionist Union voted in favor.
It may at first seem hard to fathom why Zahalka’s bill was rejected. It simply proposed adding a section to one of Israel’s Basic Laws (which collectively make up the closest thing Israel has to a constitution) that would legally declare the country a state of all its citizens, by stipulating that there can be no discrimination against Israeli citizens on grounds of race, nationality, gender, religion, religious denomination, opinions, personal or social status, political affiliation, or for any other reason. This should be a natural state of affairs for any democracy.
Yet the proposed clause strikes at the heart of a contradiction Israel has been grappling with for nearly 70 years. Israel’s Declaration of Independence contained the competing visions of a Jewish state and a state that treats all its citizens equally regardless of race, gender or religion. With the best will in the world, a country that places one ethnic or religious group above all else cannot offer full equality. It will always have second-class citizens, even if they have the appearance of holding full civic rights (which is currently not the case for non-Jews in Israel).
Even the opening paragraph of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty sets out its purpose of “establish[ing] in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” The addition of an equality clause would thus contradict the law’s stated aim.
By rejecting this amendment, the Israeli government has in effect ratified by omission the idea that certain groups can take priority over others. And indeed, any Israeli citizen who is Palestinian, queer, non-halakhically Jewish or simply not Jewish at all, is denied rights and freedoms that are automatically granted to others.
The absence of an equality clause also leaves the door open for the passing of discriminatory legislation, as has been proved in Israel: since 1948, over 50 laws have been passed that “directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens,” according to Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
This reality denies the ethical values set down in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first clause of that document states that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” This foundational principle — equality by birth — is the basis for all other human and civic rights, as Zahalka argued in his proposal when submitting the Basic Law amendment.
This understanding of liberty and dignity also provides recourse when there is no legal precedent in a situation relating to such rights, allowing for humane decisions to be made in the absence of specific guidance.
Don’t question policies, don’t challenge laws
The current version of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty was used to precisely this effect in 2011, when a Tel Aviv District Court judge wrote a stirring legal opinion ruling that Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk had the right to be registered by the state as “without religion.” As a rule, everyone who meets the rabbinate’s criteria is automatically classified as Jewish, whether they identify as such or not.
“We face a demand for freedom from religion in the civil registry,” the judge wrote. “Freedom from religion is derived from human dignity, which is protected in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. When the given law is laconic, the fundamental right shall decide, which tilts the scales in favor of the claimant and his self-definition in the registry.”
The judge’s legal opinion was true to the letter and spirit of that opening clause of the UDHR. He understood that Kaniuk’s right to personal dignity and liberty trumped the state’s self-appointed task of categorizing people how it sees fit, and handed down a legal opinion based on consciousness and compassion — both of which are essential to maintaining equality.
When George Orwell wrote that orthodoxy is unconsciousness, he was referring to the kind of dogmatism that rules out thinking for oneself. It’s the kind of unconsciousness that repressive governments require of their subjects in order for them to be good citizens: don’t question policies, don’t challenge laws — accept the top-down social order.
Equality requires the very opposite of unconsciousness. It demands that we pay attention to our environment and to one another. It asks of us to recognize specific groups to ensure their rights are not violated, while not losing sight of our common humanity. It also requires us to be alert to conflicting sensibilities, for example when one group’s right to observe its traditions impacts another group’s right to freedom of choice.
In a state that categorizes as relentlessly as Israel does — a by-product of its cobbled-together society, the interference of religion in state and legal affairs and the effects of colonization and occupation all rolled into one — it can be difficult to find the common humanity underneath it all. This is especially true in a country that has become so accustomed to ethnic and religious separation.
A status quo of inequality
Compassion, that other pillar of equality, grows out of consciousness. As Israeli academic Eva Illouz has noted, “[c]ompassion reserved only for members of my group is not compassion, but self-preservation.” Compassion is critical in order to be able to relate to others as fellow human beings rather than members of this group or that, and to transcend the divisions that others place between us.
Lastly, and most importantly, are the occupation and the siege on Gaza, by far the biggest obstacles to equality in this land. The discrimination engendered by Israel’s policies in the West Bank and vis-à-vis Gaza is an essay on its own, but it must be remembered that the same government which rejected the equality clause for its own citizens also maintains an entire parallel legal system inside which the inequality of Palestinians under occupation is tightly sealed.
None of this is to say that introducing an equality clause into Israeli law would be an automatic harbinger of better times ahead. It wouldn’t erase the institutionalized racism caused by decades of occupation and separation, nor would it overturn the post-colonial “between the lines” discrimination against Mizrahim, which though not set down in law is no less deeply rooted.
But formalizing equality in the law would at the very least present an obstacle to the Right’s seeming ability to operate unhindered in Israeli government and society, no matter how ruinous to others (and, in the long run, themselves) their policies may be. In these days of entrapping human rights activists and blacklisting “traitors,” and amid the increasing demands for adherence to a narrow ideal of state and ethnic loyalty, the concept of equality has become as radical as it gets — and a threat to everything the governing regime stands for.
Source: http://972mag.com/when-equality-is-the-biggest-existential-threat-of-all/116427/
shira
(30,109 posts)Two sides of the same coin.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)Israeli
(4,151 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)Still not buying.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)....next elections ...(.if you could ....
......) ....is out then ????????
shira
(30,109 posts)If I could, I'd probably vote for Yair Lapid.
Israeli
(4,151 posts).....I dont post them for you BTW 
That is one hell of a jump ........from Meretz to Yesh Atid.
You missed a jump .
What about Herzog and Zionist Union ?
Why Yair Lapid ? ......pretty face but seriously lacking in the intellectual skills department .
Could it be that your favorite columnist Ben-Dror Yemini calls him " Yair Lapid, the Israeli Left's new enemy " ....ref :
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4742865,00.html
I'm just thankful that you cant vote in our elections shira ....and lets leave it at that .
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Pretend all you want: The Palestinians in the Westbank, everything they have and everything they have built and everything they could achieve, are at the mercy of the IDF.
Stop denying Israel's political responsibility for the Westbank by denying Israel's military dominance over the Westbank.
shira
(30,109 posts)...that give them those rights (their own state, no occupation, no more settlements, half of Jerusalem)?
No other occupied people on Earth would reject that.
Seems you prefer Palestinians go on without their rights, keep rejecting those offers until....
Why?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)This is about the question whether it's fair to call Israel an Apartheid-state.
For that, one has to weigh evidence.
And for that one cannot focus on the Palestinians who are legally ruled over by the israeli government and ignore the Palestinians who are de facto ruled over by the israeli military.
shira
(30,109 posts)...at supposed "Rights" advocates who demand those rights on the one hand (which is fine) yet find excuses for rejecting those rights and keeping the status quo (rejecting Israel's past offers in 2000, 2001, 2008 that would grant those rights to Palestinians).
In essence, these folks shouting "Apartheid" tend to be its biggest advocates.
How am I wrong?
And why should I waste time debating them?
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)because Attila the Hun used elephants and, since Sadaam Hussein never used elephants, his aggression in the '90s doesn't count as an invasion.
Both sides in that awful conflict share responsibility. This OP,however, misuses the word "myth". It is a debate, for which both sides have reasons for applying or criticizing the term "apartheid".
The ID system, Israeli settlements, separate roads for Israeli and Palestinian citizens around many of these settlements, military checkpoints, marriage law, the West Bank barrier, use of Palestinians as cheaper labor, Palestinian West Bank exclaves, inequities in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the Israeli-occupied territories are all examples of the Israelis systematically controlling another race over their own.
According to the UN, acts of apartheid are those "committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them." - International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1973 and ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions)
shira
(30,109 posts)...and it's why HRW and Amnesty haven't either.
I've mentioned it below but there are Israeli Arabs living over the '67 line and they're treated the same as any other Israeli, Jewish or not.
No apartheid.
And those same Israeli Arabs over the '67 lines are the same race/ethnicity as Palestinians living there. Which goes to show this is about nationality. Turns out over 95% of all Palestinians in the W.Bank live under PA rule, can elect their PA officials, etc...
No apartheid.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)The same, apparently, is true with apartheid.
Just because you might have a few Palestinians living in token comfort does not mean the rest are living a life of equality.
shira
(30,109 posts)Android3.14
(5,402 posts)Sad.
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)Source: B'Tselem, May 2002
(Snip)
Conclusions
Under this regime, Israel has stolen hundreds of thousands of dunam of land from the Palestinians. Israel has used this land to establish dozens of settlements in the West Bank and to populate them with hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. Israel prohibits the Palestinians as a group from entering and using these lands, and uses the settlements to justify numerous violations of the Palestinians' human rights, such as the right to housing, to earn a livelihood, and the right to freedom of movement. The drastic change that Israel has made in the map of the West Bank prevents any real possibility for the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state as part of the Palestinians' right to self-determination.
The settlers, on the contrary, benefit from all the rights available to Israeli citizens living within the Green Line, and in some cases are even granted additional rights. The great effort that Israel has invested in the settlement enterprise - in financial, legal and bureaucratic terms - has turned the settlements into civilian enclaves in an area under military rule, with the settlers being given priority status. To perpetuate this situation, which is a priori illegal, Israel has continuously breached the rights of the Palestinians.
Particularly evident is Israel's manipulative use of legal tools in order to give the settlement enterprise an impression of legality. When Jordanian legislation served Israel's goals, Israel adhered to this legislation, arguing that international law obliges it to respect the legislation in effect prior to the occupation; in practice, this legislation was used in a cynical and biased manner. On the other hand, when this legislation interfered with Israel's plans, it was changed in a cavalier manner through military legislation and Israel established new rules to serve its interests. In so doing, Israel trampled on numerous restrictions and prohibitions established in the international conventions to which it is party, and which were intended to limit infringement of human rights and to protect populations under occupation.
The settlements are unlawful, and their presence leads to the violation of human rights. Accordingly, B'Tselem demands that the Israeli government act to vacate all the settlements. This process must take place while respecting the human rights of the settlers, including payment of compensation.
Vacating all the settlements is obviously a complex and protracted task. However, a number of interim steps can be taken to minimize the violation of human rights and international law. Among other steps, the Israeli government should:
Cease all new construction in the settlements, either to build new settlements or to expand existing settlements;
Freeze the planning and construction of new by-pass roads, and cease expropriation and seizure of land for this purpose;
Return to the Palestinian communities all the non-built-up areas within the municipal boundaries of the settlements and the local councils;
Abolish the special planning committees in the settlements, and hence the powers of the local authorities to prepare outline plans and issue building permits;
Cease the policy of providing incentives that encourage Israeli citizens to move to the settlements, and direct the resources to encourage settlers to relocate to areas within the borders of the State of Israel
(end snip)
Read more: http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200205_land_grab
Note: my bolding.
I know the article is from 2002, but it's very useful in detailing the Apartheid analogy and how Israel uses all means possible to discriminate against the Palestinians and remove their civil rights. There are maps and an explanation how the planning system is used to completely stop Palestinian natural growth while encouraging Jewish settlements to spread. It's well worth a read, and I use it personally as a source document for my own argumentation.
BTW, I'm personally not a fan of Ben-Dror Yemeni. He's distorting the truth.
shira
(30,109 posts)Last edited Wed Feb 3, 2016, 06:24 PM - Edit history (1)
It's because the charge is bullshit. The Palestinians aren't even a race, and if they are, then they're the same race as Israeli Arabs who do not face the same Apartheid conditions. In fact, there are Israeli Arabs living over the '67 lines and they have equal rights with Jewish Israelis. So no apartheid, game over and you lose.
==============
The US, UK, EU, and Palestinians agreed to Oslo in the 1990's. They signed off on the situation in the territories.
You think the Palestinians & rest of the civilized world behind Oslo helped create an Apartheid situation?
This is where you don't answer. I predict *crickets*.
==============
And B'tselem? Again?
That Regressive Left organization supports the PA executing Palestinians for selling land to Jews.
Do better than that morally bankrupt organization, okay?
==============
Finally, let's assume there is Apartheid in the territories and all the lies & slander about evil, Nazi Apartheid Israel are 100% true. Assume the Palestinians are denied their rights in the W.Bank. Okay, so why did they turn down the 2000 and 2008 offers that would have ended the occupation, settements, and given the Palestinians half of Jerusalem? How do people claim their rights are denied when they turn down those rights offered to them time & again?
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)Source: Amnesty International
(snip page 197)
State of Israel
Head of state: Reuven Rivlin (replaced Shimon Peres in July)
Head of government: Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli forces committed war crimes and human rights violations during a 50-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed over 1,500 civilians, including 539 children, wounded thousands more civilians, and caused massive civilian displacement and destruction of property and vital services. Israel maintained its air, sea and land blockade of Gaza, imposing collective punishment on its approximately 1.8 million inhabitants and stoking the humanitarian crisis. In the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out unlawful killings of Palestinian protesters, including children, and maintained an array of oppressive restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement while continuing to promote illegal settlements and allow Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians and destroy their property with near total impunity. Israeli forces detained thousands of Palestinians, some of whom reported being tortured, and held around 500 administrative detainees without trial. Within Israel, the authorities continued to demolish homes of Palestinian Bedouin in “unrecognized villages” in the Negev/Naqab region and commit forcible evictions. They also detained and summarily expelled thousands of foreign migrants, including asylum-seekers, and imprisoned Israeli conscientious objectors.
(end snip)
(snip page 199-201)
GAZA BLOCKADE AND WEST BANK RESTRICTIONS
Israeli forces maintained their land, sea and air blockade of Gaza throughout the year, effectively imposing collective punishment on the territory’s approximately 1.8 million, predominantly civilian, inhabitants, with all imports and exports, and any movements of people into or out of Gaza, subject to Israeli approval; Egypt’s continued closure of its Rafah border crossing kept Gaza effectively sealed. The already severe humanitarian consequences of the blockade, in force continuously since June 2007, were evidenced by the sizeable proportion of Gaza’s population that depended on international humanitarian aid for their survival, and were greatly exacerbated by the devastation and population displacement caused during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.
Israeli forces policed the blockade using live fire against Palestinians who entered or approached a 500m-wide buffer zone that they imposed inside Gaza’s land border with Israel, and against fishermen who entered or approached the “exclusion zone” that Israel maintains along the full length of Gaza’s coast. Israeli forces shot dead seven Palestinian civilians in or near the buffer zone before Operation Protective Edge, and another after the ceasefire, when the buffer zone was to be reduced and the permitted fishing zone extended. Shooting incidents remained frequent; some fishermen were also shot and wounded by Israeli navy forces. In the West Bank, Israel continued its construction of the wall/fence with attached guard towers, mostly on Palestinian land, routing it to afford protection to illegal settlements while cutting off Palestinian villagers from their lands. Palestinian farmers were required to obtain special permits to access their lands between the wall and the Green Line demarcating the West Bank’s border with Israel. Throughout the West Bank, Israeli forces maintained other restrictions on the free movement of Palestinians by using military checkpoints and restricting access to certain areas by preventing Palestinians using bypass roads constructed for the use of Israeli settlers. These restrictions hindered Palestinians’ access to hospitals, schools and workplaces. Furthermore, Israel forcibly transferred Palestinians out of occupied East Jerusalem to other areas in the West Bank.
Restrictions were tightened further during Operation Brother’s Keeper, the Israeli authorities’ crackdown following the abduction of three Israeli teenage hitchhikers in the West Bank in June. Operation Brother’s Keeper saw a heightened Israeli military presence in Palestinian towns and villages, the killing of at least five Palestinians, mass arrests and detentions, the imposition of arbitrary travel restrictions and raids on Palestinian homes.
EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE
Israeli soldiers and border guards unlawfully killed at least 50 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and continued to use excessive force, including live fire, during protests against Israel’s continued military occupation, 200 Amnesty International Report 2014/15 when arresting political activists and during Israel’s 50-day military offensive against Gaza. Some killings may have amounted to extrajudicial executions. In September, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that the number of Palestinians wounded by Israeli forces in the West Bank – more than 4,200 since the start of 2014 – already exceeded the 2013 total, and that many of those wounded, including children, had been hit by rubber-coated metal bullets fired by Israeli forces. As in previous years, soldiers and border guards used live fire against protesters, including those who threw stones and other projectiles, who posed no serious threat to their lives.
IMPUNITY
The authorities failed to conduct independent investigations into alleged war crimes and human rights violations committed by Israeli forces during Operation Protective Edge and refused to co-operate with an international investigation appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. However, they apparently co-operated with the UN Secretary-General’s Board of Inquiry, established to look into incidents relating to UN buildings in Gaza.
In August, the military’s Chief of General Staff ordered an inquiry into more than 90 “exceptional incidents” during Operation Protective Edge where there was “reasonable ground for suspicion of a violation of the law”. In September, it was announced that the Military Advocate General had closed investigations into nine cases and ordered criminal investigations into 10 others. Authorities also failed to carry out adequate investigations into shootings of Palestinians during protests in the West Bank despite compelling evidence that Israeli forces repeatedly used excessive force and resorted to live fire in circumstances where such lethal means were unwarranted.
DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL
Hundreds of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories were held without charge or trial under administrative detention orders issued against them on the basis of secret information to which they and their lawyers had no access, and were unable to effectively challenge. The number of administrative detainees more than doubled following the security forces’ round-up of Palestinians after the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in June, rising from nearly 200 in May to 468 in September.
TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT
Palestinian detainees continued to be tortured and otherwise ill-treated by Israeli security officials, particularly Internal Security Agency officials, who frequently held detainees incommunicado during interrogation for days and sometimes weeks. Methods used included physical assault such as slapping and throttling, prolonged shackling and stress positions, sleep deprivation, and threats against the detainee and their family. Reports of torture increased amid the wave of arrests that followed the abduction of Israeli teenagers in June. The authorities failed to take adequate steps either to prevent torture or to conduct independent investigations when detainees alleged torture, fuelling a climate of impunity.
HOUSING RIGHTS – FORCED EVICTIONS AND DEMOLITIONS
In the West Bank, Israeli forces continued to demolish Palestinian homes and other structures, forcibly evicting hundreds from their homes often without warning or prior consultation. Families of Palestinians who had carried out attacks on Israelis also faced demolition of their homes as a punitive measure. Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel living in “unrecognized” and newly recognized villages also faced destruction of homes and structures because the authorities said that they had been built without permission. Israeli authorities prohibited all construction without official permits, which were denied to Arab inhabitants of the villages, while also denying them access to basic services such as electricity and piped water supplies. Under the 2011 Prawer Plan, the authorities proposed to demolish 35 “unrecognized” villages and forcibly displace up to 70,000 Bedouin inhabitants from their current landsand homes, and relocate them to officially designated sites. Implementation of the plan, which was adopted without consultation with the affected Bedouin communities, remained stalled following the resignation in December 2013 of the government minister overseeing it. Official statements announced its cancellation, but the army continued to demolish homes and other structures.
(end snip)
Read more: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/POL1000012015ENGLISH.PDF
I'm sorry for the size of the post, but it's good for me to have everything in one place so I don't have to search for this information again. Do you still wonder how I can maintain the notion that there's Apartheid in the West Bank?
shira
(30,109 posts)As to Amnesty, nearly everything they write about Israel is manufactured or exaggerated. Here are some damning reports on Amnesty that destroys their credibility as a human rights organization:
Amnesty director’s links to global network of Islamists
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4529234.ece
A reputation at risk
The weightiest human-rights outfit has waded into a moral quagmire
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21645806-weightiest-human-rights-outfit-has-waded-moral-quagmire-reputation-risk?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/a_reputation_at_risk
Amnesty International rejects call to fight anti-Semitism
http://www.timesofisrael.com/amnesty-international-rejects-call-to-fight-anti-semitism/
Amnesty: "Unfortunately we can't campaign on everything". But they did a 123 page report on Islamophobia.
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)Occupied Palestinian Territories
Source: Human Rights Watch, DECEMBER 19, 2010
This report consists of a series of case studies that compare Israel’s different treatment of Jewish settlements to nearby Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians. The report highlights Israeli practices the only discernable purposes of which appear to be promoting life in the settlements while in many instances stifling growth in Palestinian communities and even forcibly displacing Palestinian residents. Such different treatment, on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin and not narrowly tailored to meet security or other justifiable goals, violates the fundamental prohibition against discrimination under human rights law.
It is widely acknowledged that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, violate international humanitarian law, which prohibits the occupying power from transferring its civilian population into the territories it occupies; Israel appears to be the only country to contest that its settlements are illegal. Human Rights Watch continues to agree with the nearly universal position that Israel should cease its violation of international humanitarian law by removing its citizens from the West Bank. This report focuses on the less-discussed discriminatory aspect of Israeli settlement policies, and analyzes serious and ongoing violations of other rights in that context.
The case studies in this report show that discriminatory Israeli policies control many aspects of the day-to-day life of Palestinians who live in areas under exclusive Israeli control and that those policies often have no conceivable security justification. For example, Jubbet al-Dhib is a 160-person Palestinian village to the southeast of Bethlehem that is often accessible only by foot because its only connection to a paved road is a rough, 1.5 kilometer-long dirt track. Children from Jubbet al-Dhib must walk to schools in other villages several kilometers away because their own village has no school. Jubbet al-Dhib lacks electricity despite numerous requests to be connected to the Israeli electric grid, which Israeli authorities have rejected; Israeli authorities also rejected an internationally donor-funded project that would have provided the village with solar-powered streetlights. Any meat or milk in the village must be eaten the same day due to lack of refrigeration; residents often resort to eating preserved foods instead. Villagers depend for light on candles, kerosene lanterns, and, when they can afford to fill it with gasoline, a small generator.
Approximately 350 meters away is the Jewish community of Sde Bar. It has a paved access road for its population of around 50 people and is connected to Jerusalem by a new, multi-million dollar highway—the “Lieberman Road”—which bypasses Palestinian cities, towns, and villages like Jubbet al-Dhib. Sde Bar operates a high school, but Jubbet al-Dhib students are ineligible to attend; for Palestinians, settlements are closed military areas that may be entered only with special military permits. Residents of Sde Bar have the amenities common to any Israeli town, such as refrigerators and electric lights, which Jubbet al-Dhib villagers can see from their homes at night.
Both Jubbet al-Dhib and Sde Bar fall within “Area C” – land that was designated under the 1995 Oslo interim peace agreement to fall under Israeli civil and military control. But while Israel grants Sde Bar residents access to roads, electricity, and funds for housing development, it deprives residents of Jubbet al-Dhib of similar amenities. Since Sde Bar’s founding in 1997, Israel has invested millions of dollars in nearby Jewish settlements like Tekoa and Nokdim to build homes, schools, community centers, health clinics, and swimming pools. The same is not true for Jubbet al-Dhib, which dates to 1929. Development and infrastructure there are at a standstill, strictly prohibited by Israeli authorities who prevent villagers from building new houses or expanding those they already have.
Israel has human rights obligations towards all persons under its control, including those in territory it occupies, as has been stated by the International Court of Justice and other international bodies. Israel denies that its human rights obligations apply to Palestinians in the West Bank, except for East Jerusalem, which it considers part of Israel. It argues against the applicability of human rights law based on an interpretation that restricts its applicability to the territory of a state and not to occupied territories, and on the argument that the law of occupation applies to the West Bank to the exclusion of human rights law. The International Court of Justice as well as several UN human rights committees have rejected this interpretation, on the basis of the text of the relevant human rights treaties, which define their applicability based on the degree of a government’s control over a person rather than on a state’s borders, and on the principle that human rights law and the law of occupation, as written and interpreted, are not mutually exclusive but complementary obligations that may both apply to populations under a government’s effective control. International law does not require Israel to treat Palestinian residents of the West Bank as though they were Israeli citizens; for example, non-citizens do not have the right to vote. However, the rights of Israeli citizens—including settlers—do not include the right to benefit from discriminatory treatment that violates the rights of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.
Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem). In addition, the implications of Israel’s discriminatory policies are far broader, affecting many of the roughly 2.4 million Palestinians living in the cities and towns in the occupied West Bank (known as Areas A and B) where Israel has ceded most civil responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority. That is because Area C contains substantial amounts of water resources, grazing and agricultural land, and the land reserves required for developing cities, towns, and infrastructure. It is also the only contiguous area in the West Bank, effectively isolating the cities and towns (which fall outside Area C) into disconnected enclaves.[2] As a result, Israel effectively controls movement and access between Palestinian population centers.[3] Palestinians must cross checkpoints to travel through Area C and need permits to build infrastructure that would connect to cities, towns, and villages (including roads, water and sewage pipes, and electricity towers). It is often impossible for Palestinian cities, towns, and villages that have outgrown municipal lands to expand into Area C, where Israel strictly controls Palestinian construction.
Read more: https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/12/19/separate-and-unequal/israels-discriminatory-treatment-palestinians-occupied
Note: This report is around 150 pages in PDF format and very detailed with several case studies. My bolding.
I have provided info from B'Tselem, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that prove my point that there's indeed Apartheid in the West Bank. You have provided high strung rhetoric and Ben-Dror Yemeni. You have not convinced me, nor do I feel that I need to pile up more evidence to prove my point. I'm sorry once again for the lengthy post, but it's a complicated subject that requires some immersion.
shira
(30,109 posts)Last edited Thu Feb 4, 2016, 08:09 AM - Edit history (1)
Doesn't that make you wonder why? Why aren't they going as far as you?
It's because it isn't Apartheid. Even when they fabricate and exaggerate the situation, they can't go that far.
And HRW is arguably worse than Amnesty. Need any articles demonstrating HRW's moral depravity? I suggest you stop reading idiocy from Regressive Left groups. They're fanatics - not like the far Right dumbasses we deal with - but like the Totalitarian Fascist Right. Yeah, those fanatics. You can't learn anything worthwhile from sources like that.
TubbersUK
(1,439 posts)It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Israel is, at the very least, staring into the apartheid abyss.
It's saddening.
FarrenH
(768 posts)Despite the slanderous propaganda against Apartheid South Africa, various indigenous ethnicities not only had their own parliaments, but also higher education institutions, police forces, security forces, justice systems and prisons.
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bophuthatswana
They were called "Homelands", otherwise known as "Bantustans".
Of course, this doesn't mean Apartheid was a myth. Bantustans were part and parcel of Apartheid. So lets look at why the world didn't consider them an acceptable solution to white nationalist desires for single-ethnicity political and economic dominance of a region, in the face of objections from said indigenous ethnicities:
1. Most of them were fragmented in such a way that they could not function as viable autonomous states.
2. All of them existed for the primary purpose of allowing a settler ethnicity who had displaced their nominal citizens to maintain control of a greater area and its resources
3. All of them existed at the indulgence of the encompassing state which was configured around the interests of a single ethnicity, and in reality could not ensure their territorial integrity should that state change its mind.
3. Their shape and location was not determined by territorial claims based on prior occupation of land, or even what constituted workable borders for an autonomous state, but by what was most politically and economically convenient for the single ethnicity served by the encompassing state.
4. Their nominal citizens were all displaced from the wider region, further emphasising their status as, effectively, ethnic "ghetto states"
So how does, say, the West Bank, differ from Bophuthatswana? By all appearances, it differs by being a worse arrangement. Bophutatswana had its own military defense force. The West Bank has none, and is not permitted to have one, just one of many things that makes claims about it being an autonomous state in the sense that say France or Thailand is absurd on their face. It doesn't even match one of South Africa's former bantustans in terms of autonomous features. It is demonstrably subordinate to Israel. And the decisions of a government its people have no representation in directly and materially affect the daily lives of most of its nomiinal citizens.
Bophutatswana controlled its own population registry. The West Bank does not. Bophutatswana controlled its own airspace. The West Bank does not. The de facto borders of Bophutatswana remained fixed for the duration of its existence, whereas those of the West Bank have varied continuously since 1967, according to whatever was convenient to Israel and invariably to the detriment of Palestinians living there.
A signature quality of defenses of Israeli Apartheid is that they trot out the same debunked talking points over and over again, in defiance of extant, comprehensive rebuttals. Because honest discourse that appeals to some common egalitarian and humanitarian values is rarely the intention. Rather most such defenses come from people inured to some conclusion that simply can't be false, so rationalizing to the desired conclusion, rather than reaching conclusions from common ethics, historical fact and the application of logic, is inevitable.
shira
(30,109 posts)Do you believe the Americans, Brits, EU, and Palestinians agreed & signed onto an Apartheid situation for the Palestinians?
Seems that way.
How dumb do you think the signees to Oslo were?
There's a reason HRW and Amnesty don't call Israel Apartheid. They're not mentally challenged idiots - that's why.
Nelson Mandela never called Israel an Apartheid state either.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)Palestinian State, the naivete of the time was touching
shira
(30,109 posts)Including the vaunted UN.
How dumb do you think the world was - falling for this "Zionist" conspiracy (lulz) to carry out Apartheid, even if only for a temporary 5 year period?
Sheesh.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)azurnoir
(45,850 posts)but keep that imagination alive - promise?
FarrenH
(768 posts)described an interim arrangement intended to be a precursor to a final settlement. The Oslo accords did not create a Palestinian state or describe its final borders. It was a plan to facilitate the process of arriving at a viable, non-fragmented, autonomous state for Palestinians, with its own military defense, control of its own population registry et al through further negotiation, one that created temporary institutions like the PA to prepare for complete self-determination at some future time and give the Israelis formal institutions to negotiate that future state with on behalf of the Palestinian people.
Since Oslo, Israel has all but abandoned any pretense of negotiating a fair and final dispensation for the Palestinian people, settled nearly 400,000 settlers (IIRC) in areas understood at the time to be part of the planned Palestinian state, further divided and fragmented control of the land and resources intended at the time of Oslo to belong to a future Palestinian state and destroyed tens of thousands of homes, along with business and agricultural infrastructure. It has turned even the area under what were intended to be temporary and limited Palestinian self-governing structures into an archipelago of fragments that cannot constitute a viable, autonomous state, making the subsequent and quite different final settlement anticipated by the Oslo accords impossible to achieve.
The signees to Oslo weren't dumb, but they were wildly optimistic. They negotiated what was meant to be a transient condition and a preamble to a full and fair settlement and autonomy. In the intervening years since it was negotiated Israel has killed any chance of the final settlement envisioned under Oslo ever coming to fruit. The West Bank has become a de facto Bantustan. And the configuration of Israel and the occupied territories has become de facto Apartheid.
Mentally challenged idiots think that a temporary, wildly inadequate arrangement intended only to facilitate negotiation of a permanent, just, equitable and lasting arrangement indicates that the temporary arrangement was the final, desired outcome, or that anyone involved in negotiating that intended the de facto state of Apartheid that currently exists to be permanent, when it is easily demonstrated that they intended the exact opposite.
shira
(30,109 posts)See - once you step into crazy, it's hard getting out.
===================
Look - since Oslo, Israel made several offers for a viable, non-fragmented Palestinian state.
That you reject those offers - which include Rights for Palestinians you demand - just goes to show this isn't about granting Palestinians Rights. Israel has offered, you reject those Rights. No other occupied people on earth would reject such offers, but you know that.
Laughable. Oslo was never setup to provide the Palestinians their own terror military. That's crazy talk, and only goes to show where you're really coming from. Why would anyone serious want that?
FarrenH
(768 posts)A is involved in motor accident and the other guy's insurance company claims an excessive amount, call it X, from him. Since the amount is massively more than the actual damage cost the insurance company is effectively trying to defraud him
A doesn't accept that he caused damage equal to X. As a interim measure, A agrees to pay a fraction of X, on the assurance that the insurance company will provide him proof of the damages to merit the final amount, within reasonable time so that they can reach final agreement on some other, fairer amount.
Insurance company doesn't supply proof within the envisioned time-frame and proceeds to demand even more (call it Y). A is understandably incensed.
Shira: But A agreed to pay the unfair amount. Are you saying A agreed to be defrauded? No? QED, it isn't fraud.
No, he didn't. He agreed to an interim arrangement pending a finally negotiated and fair settlement. And its not logic you're deploying. It's stupidity.
Apartheid was not characterized by temporary arrangements to facilitate further negotiation of a new dispensation. It was characterized by a long term dispensation for the benefit of one ethnicity and to the detriment of another, where a majority of the second ethnicity is disenfranchised by said dispensation in terms of political self-determination, legal recourse, ancestral occupancy rights to land and resources et al. All of which are features of the ongoing occupation, fragmentation and permanent blockade of Gaza and the West Bank.
The current situation has no end in sight, was certainly not envisioned in the Oslo accords and is de facto Apartheid. That does not mean the participants in Oslo agreed to Apartheid. It doesn't even imply it.
shira
(30,109 posts)But you reject that, preferring more "Apartheid" until Israel offers this or that piece of land, arms Hamas to the teeth, etc...
Meaning you'll find any excuse for "Apartheid" to continue. It's what you prefer.
Fozzledick
(3,860 posts)It's a deliberate blood libel used as part of a coordinated campaign of stochastic terrorism intended to provoke hatred and violence.
shira
(30,109 posts)grossproffit
(5,591 posts)
aranthus
(3,385 posts)FarrenH
(768 posts)Every time they criticize a state actor, based on common humanitarian and egalitarian values, for oppressing a people who they are denying self-determination to, is not only lying, but aiding and abetting anti-semites.
When you repeatedly call human-rights activists and commentators antisemites for advocating the advancement of fundamental human rights, you encourage people to take such accusations less seriously or dismiss them entirely, like the boy who cried wolf. You're advancing real antisemitism by encouraging people to ignore it when it happens.
I don't have an antisemitic bone in my body. I know that for a fact. Quite the reverse. In my mental list of historical figures I admire the most, Jews are overrepresented in proportion to their numbers. I grew up a judeophile, if anything.
I grew up under South African Apartheid and know how you can disavow racism but still have subconscious racism persist in your thinking, because you were inured to it growing up. I consciously disavowed Apartheid and racism at the tender age of 13, but still spent decades working subtle and subconscious racism against black people out of my system, because its often hard to recognize in yourself until some situation makes it come to the surface.
I mention this because I know that when confronted with people who disavow antisemitism but criticize Israel, a common reaction I've seen (even from Jewish friends of mine who know me well but are unconditionally supportive of Israel) is to assume and insinuate that even if its not conscious, antisemitism somehow underlies those views.
But I have spent a lifetime purging myself of unconscious bigotry. I would know if there was some fundamental distrust, fear or hatred of Jews that informed my thinking. And I know for a fact that there isn't. There is none. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not even a trace. I was raised Catholic, but by liberal Catholics that admired Jews. I never heard a single anti-semitic trope growing up. Rather my family had a habit of talking about all the virtues of Jewish culture and talking about Jews admiringly. When my aunt married into Judaism and converted that was seen as a great catch by her siblings and my grandmother. I simply wasn't exposed to any form of antisemitism at all growing up and entered adulthood with nothing but admiration for Jewish culture generally. Which only increased when I made close Jewish friends, worked for and with Jews and dated Jewish women in young adulthood.
In short, I know, 100% for a fact, that my views on Israel being an Apartheid state are in no way shaped by a general animosity to, fear of, or distrust of Jews qua Jews. They are entirely shaped by my experience of and antipathy towards Apartheid and recognition of de facto Apartheid when I see it elsewhere.
So when people like you accuse people like me of having an secret antisemitic agenda intended to provoke hatred and violence against Jews because they're Jews, I naturally think "Fuck you, you lying sack of shit. That is a LIE".
Maybe it's a lie you believe. Maybe you've been so inured to a catch-all narrative of victimhood that ascribes even sincere humanitarian and egalitarian concerns to bigotry as a way of rationalizing a situation in which the perpetrators happen to be Jewish and the victims not, but even then its self-deception. Its a lie.
And like the boy who cried wolf, the constant deployment of that lie is ultimately self-defeating. I've seen how similarly motivated left-wing friends sometimes end up dismissing legitimate complaints of anti-semitism out of hand because of suspicion that they're being deployed in a dishonest fashion to rationalize Israel's failings, mainly because they've become accustomed to seeing a barrage of such accusations every time they tender criticism of Israel. That's what you're doing. You're aiding and abetting antisemites
Fozzledick
(3,860 posts)First off I have to say how impressed I am that some of your best friends are Jewish. Making that sort of claim pretty much speaks for itself. Making it so obsessively speaks of desperation.
And of course "Fuck you, you lying sack of shit." adds so much gravitas to any otherwise weak rebuttal. I believe the appropriate reply is "I know you are but what am I?".
But seriously, my overall impression is "the Lady doth protest too much". You seem to be desperate to convince yourself of what you want to believe despite the facts and not having much success since that damn spot of reality just won't wash out no matter how hard you try.
Meanwhile back in the real world, the false apartheid accusation against Israel is what it is: a deliberate use of the "Big Lie" technique to incite hatred and violence as part of an organized propaganda campaign to de-legitimize and harass the Jewish state in coordination with persistent low level terrorism.
FarrenH
(768 posts)Is the one that twitches when people make completely false allegations about your character and beliefs. And you do neither yourself nor your apparent cause any favours when you keep deploying that slander over and over.
That I take the time to enlighten you about how wrong you are about many of the people you carelessly fling these falsehoods at is not a signal of any denial at all, but a perhaps misguided attempt to get you to realise that you are in fact wrong. Utterly wrong. I know that. I'm not looking for your validation. I'm illuminating reality for you.
That antisemitism exists and that it sometimes manifests itself under cover of anti-Israeli sentiment (and I'm not denying that anti-semites sometimes hitch a ride on that train) does not mean that the majority of flack Israel catches from the left is premised on antisemitism. But that is the self-serving fiction that people like you are inured to. And its false. It's just false.
The gap between the reality that gives rise to most left criticism and the fantasy that somehow a political quarter that is defined by its egalitarian, anti-bigotry sentiments is riddled with antisemites is so wide that its actually inevitable that left criticism, along with political and economic action against Israel, is only going to grow.
Many on the left have bitten their tongues on this issue for a long time precisely because they don't want to deal with accusations of antisemitism, but the tide is turning, at least in the left circles I move in, and for an increasing number of left critics the deployment of these lies only strengthens our resolve, for reasons that should be obvious. Just making you aware that such criticism is pushing people in the opposite direction to the one you intend.
Year on year, the chorus only grows louder, despite the efforts of people like you. And economic and political action against the occupation by the same people you're pushing away is having an impact on Israel's economy and will continue to have even greater impact in future. While an eternal victim narrative that paints even egalitarian critics as monsters and hatemongers may serve the short term goals of ethnic nationalists, the disconnect with reality means that its ultimately self-defeating.
Because defenders of Israeli Apartheid are fighting opponents that don't exist, tilting at windmills, instead of recognizing that a large part of the opposition they're dealing with is sincerely premised on ideas about everyone enjoying the same human rights.
shira
(30,109 posts)....and I'm talking WITHIN the '67 lines.
And...this is the big part....I want you to acknowledge the REASON they continue making this lie. And we know damned well what that reason is.
I doubt you'll address either point.
Which kinda proves Fozzie correct about this being a deliberate blood libel intended to provoke hatred and violence....
Israeli
(4,151 posts)...from the Israeli Left ....ignore them .
Us they call self hating Jews ..at best, ....or traitors or Arab lovers .
Its all they have .
Like water of a ducks back it becomes .
shira
(30,109 posts)Why the lies?
If not to incite hatred...?
Israeli
(4,151 posts)I get you ...as for " inciting hatred " ...I get that to .
You and yours are experts at it .
King_David
(14,851 posts)Except some post Zionists who claim such .... Why on earth would you do that? Do you feel excluded? the one and only righteous among us all?
Ha ha ha ha
King_David
(14,851 posts)King_David
(14,851 posts)Israeli
(4,151 posts)by Yacov Ben Efrat
For some time now Prime Minister Netanyahu has been conducting an ongoing dialogue with his military on the future of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The background is clear: first, the latest outbreak of the “Stabbing Intifada” shows that PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is losing his grip on the Palestinian street; second, the total diplomatic stagnation reflects Netanyahu's position that a Palestinian state will not be established on his watch. These two factors make the collapse of the PA a real possibility. But Netanyahu does not want the PA to disappear, and the PA, for its part, is committed to full security coordination with Israel. Abbas himself acknowledged that this coordination is a “sacred” Palestinian national necessity. In light of the political stalemate, the PLO Central Committee and key Palestinian spokespersons are threatening to "return the keys" to Israel. In his last speech, however, Abu Mazen reiterated that the PA is here to stay as long as he heads it.
We have lived with this perplexing political reality named the PA for two decades. It was created by none other than former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and resulted in his murder. The irony is that Netanyahu, who opposed the process at the time, is doing everything today to keep the current reality alive. Many on the Left use the term "apartheid" to describe the prevailing regime in the occupied territories. This designation has contributed to the delegitimizing of the Occupation, putting international pressure on Israel to end it. Common to both Israel and South Africa's apartheid regime is the year 1948: It was then that Israel declared its independence and was recognized by the UN, and it was then that the South African government declared a policy of racial segregation between whites, blacks, and the colored.
Within the 1949 armistice lines, Israel has maintained its Jewish majority through ethnic cleansing and by destroying Palestinian villages, but it has avoided legislating racist laws, making do with institutionalized discrimination against its Arab citizens. And what about the West Bank? The essential difference between the apartheid regime of South Africa and the existing regime in the West Bank is its political character. While South Africa's regime acted without the consent of the legitimate black leadership, the present form of the occupying regime in the West Bank, now 22 years old, is part of an agreement between the PLO and Israel within the framework of the Oslo Accords. At the time when the South African apartheid regime was dismantled by international pressure, and Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Yasser Arafat signed a peace treaty with Israel, leaving ultimate sovereignty over the territories in Israel's hands. Although there is no sign of an Israeli withdrawal that would end the Occupation, countries led by the United States, as well as most of the Israeli Left, continue to support the Oslo agreement as long as the PA is committed to it. This enables a failed Palestinian leadership to preserve an arrangement that gnaws away at the future of all Palestinians and damages the prestige of the Israeli Left.
For Palestinians the term “apartheid” does not exist. They call it “Occupation,” since the Oslo Accords did not fundamentally change their situation and they continue to live under Israel's military boot. In fact, until Oslo, a regime of direct military rule existed in the West Bank and Gaza, when the territories were under military control in the guise of a "Civil Administration." The Oslo Accords created a unique entity: a government with a legal system but without sovereignty over its own territory, without its own currency, and with a police force subject to “security coordination” with the occupier. The Oslo Accords failed to deal with three main issues: the future of the settlements, the future of Jerusalem, and the refugees. There is also no reference to a Palestinian state. Israel recognized the Palestinian Authority, but not an independent state. At the time, however, the agreement received overwhelming Palestinian support, and it is still backed today by both the Right and the Left in Israel.
Therefore the Palestinians do not equate Israel with apartheid and have not participated in calls for an economic boycott. The PA's security coordination with Israel and its almost total economic dependence on it make demands for a boycott absurd. Moreover, the European countries that are being called on to make the boycott are the main financial backers of the PA, which could not survive a single day without their money - nor without the security cooperation.
The Occupation, then, is not just the result of exclusive Israeli military control. It also continues because the PA took upon itself the administrative and police duties in the territories – all made possible with generous economic backing from Europe and the US. The regime that many call "apartheid," which enables settlers to expand their hold on the West Bank, is grounded in an agreement that is acceptable to both sides.
The paradox is that since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Israeli Right has strengthened. Palestinians, because of their loss of confidence in the peace process and the ongoing expansion of the settlements, have been radicalized, especially since the Israeli Left lost power. Since the Netanyahu regime is not likely to end the Occupation any time soon, many Israeli leftists have declared that we live in one country composed of two regimes: full apartheid in the West Bank and apartheid “light” in parts of Israel (not to mention Gaza, where Israel controls the air, the sea, and all that goes out and comes in). The comparison with South Africa fails, however, because the Israeli Right refrains from annexing the West Bank (by imposing Israeli law there) and because Abbas assures the world that the PA is here to stay.
It follows that the accusation "Apartheid!" will just have to wait. We are dealing with a complex political reality in which both political entities whitewash the Occupation due to overlapping interests. Both sides understand that no end to it is on the horizon. However, revelations from Netanyahu's cabinet meetings show that the Oslo Accords, which benefit both the PA and the Israeli Right, are eroding with the passage of time. The Stabbing Intifada, the divisive struggle between Fatah and Hamas, the split between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and Abbas's advancing age presage the end of an era. The IDF, which is responsible for security, is looking to the political echelon for answers.
Despite the grim situation, no Palestinian has picked up the political gauntlet to compete for the leadership of the PA or Hamas. The Arab Spring has gone over the heads of the younger Palestinian generation. It chose not to challenge the PA, which perpetuates the Occupation, hence not to follow in the footsteps of its counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen. The Occupation profits from the indifference and inaction of this younger generation, which accepts the PA and Hamas as if they were decreed from heaven. It fears oppression from both these regimes, which extend a net of terror in the West Bank and Gaza. The younger generation makes do with blaming all its troubles on the Occupation, shunning Israel and Israelis, and thus fulfilling its "national" duty.
Given the lack of alternative leadership, a PA collapse would bring chaos. This is the scenario that keeps Netanyahu and the Israeli Right awake at night. The alternative to the PA is not an apartheid regime but a power vacuum. Netanyahu tries to combine the Occupation and the PA, building up the settlements while buying off the Palestinians with “economic peace." The PA will not survive his experiments, and when it falls, the two societies will be confronted with impossible political hurdles.
Instead of despairing at the situation and turning to Europe for help, it is necessary for all opponents of the Occupation (who are many) to prepare for the impending challenge. If the PA collapses, it will not fall alone. It will fall together with Israel's fundamentalist right-wing, which is fed by the illusion that it is possible to maintain the Occupation without having to govern the Palestinians. The collapse of the PA will also bring the collapse of what many call apartheid, and then Israeli society will face a tough choice: either settlements or peace, either the return of direct military rule with all that this implies or a negotiated settlement with the Palestinian people in recognition of its national rights.
Translated from the Hebrew by Bob Goldman
Source: http://www.challenge-mag.com/en/article__403/apartheid_by_consent
