Prof. Avi Shlaim: Settlements turned Israel into apartheid state

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"British-Israeli Professor Avi Shlaim joined a handful of academics in London earlier this month to debate the future of Zionism, in a panel entitled "Israel at 60: What happened to the Zionist dream?"

Shlaim, a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict at Oxford University, made headlines last year when he decided to speak at an Oxford Union debate in favor of the motion, "This house believes that one state is the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict."

But Shlaim, an opponent of campaigns pursued by some of his British colleagues to boycott Israeli universities, has always been a fervent supporter of the two-state solution, a stance he repeated in this month's event, which was organized by the Institute of Ideas.

He continues, he said, to believe in Israel's legitimacy to exist within its pre-1967 borders, but "rejects uncompromisingly the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line."

In his talk, entitled "Obsession with Territory Post-1967," Shlaim blasts the settlements, which he says have turned Israel into an apartheid state, as the primary source of failure for peace efforts with the Palestinians."

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1. Kick. nt

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2. Top UN official: Israel's policies are like apartheid of bygone era

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"United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann on Monday likened Israel's policies toward the Palestinians to South Africa's treatment of blacks under apartheid.

Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were like "the apartheid of an earlier era," said Brockmann, of Nicaragua, speaking at the annual debate marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

He added: "We must not be afraid to call something what it is."

Brockmann stressed that it was important for the United Nations to use the heavily-charged term since it was the institution itself that had passed the International Convention against the crime of apartheid."

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