"Israeli" Democracy is simple Apartheid

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly, 21/27-12-2006
By Jamil Dakwar
Just as the US and Europe once opposed apartheid in South Africa, "Israel's" discrimination against Palestinians must be similarly exposed and dismantled, writes Jamil Dakwar*
President Jimmy Carter is drawing criticism because his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, uses the label apartheid to describe "Israeli" practices in the occupied
Palestinian territories. As second-class in their own land, the term "apartheid" often rings truer for Palestinian natives in "Israel" than democracy.
"Israel's" Jewish majority enjoys a thriving democracy. But "Israel's" non-Jewish inhabitants-- nearly 20 per cent of the population -- live a different reality. Palestinian
natives in "Israel" send their children to separate but unequal schools that receive less funding than Jewish schools, they cannot buy land or lease apartments in most
Jewish towns, and they must often stand in a separate line at the airport from Jewish people.
While it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the apartheid analogy holds best, in many ways Palestinian natives in "Israel" live under an apartheid-like legal regime. More
than 20 "Israeli" laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews, including the law of return that grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, inviting them to settle on land that is not theirs, while denying that same right to Palestinians. "Israeli" housing and land policies are racially driven. Hundreds of thousands of acres of privately owned land have been expropriated from Palestinians for the establishment of Jewish settlements.
The nationality and entry into "Israel" law prevents Palestinians from the occupied territories who are married to Palestinian natives in "Israel" from gaining residency
or citizenship status. The law forces thousands of Palestinian natives in "Israel" to either leave "Israel" or live apart from their families.
"Israel's" recently appointed deputy prime minister and minister for strategic threats, Avigdor Lieberman, considers Palestinian natives in "Israel" to be a "demographic threat". Over the years, he has advocated ridding "Israel" of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants to maintain a Jewish majority. His appointment did not elicit the same outrage as the 1999 victory of Jorg Haider`s Freedom Party in Austria. Back then, "Israel" re-called its ambassador, Europe threatened Austria with economic sanctions and the US threatened to react swiftly to any expression of racism or anti-Semitism.
In the West Bank, though Palestinians have lived under "Israeli" rule for 40 years, they have no voice in "Israeli" politics and very limited recourse to "Israel's" legal system. Hundreds of checkpoints impede movement, disrupting, or blocking access to schools, jobs and medical care. As under South Africa`s "pass system",
Palestinians often require permission to travel from one village to the next inside the West Bank. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said during a visit to Palestine
that the situation was "much like what happened to us black people in South Africa." At the same time, "Israel" has constructed a vast road system for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers living illegally in the West Bank. This network of settlements and segregated roads bisects the West Bank, furthering the Palestinians` isolation and loss
of land and property.
"Israel's" separation wall/barrier inside the West Bank confiscates Palestinian land and separates Palestinian communities. Dwarfing the Berlin Wall, it serves not solely security, but reaches deep into the West Bank to encompass major illegal Jewish settlements. Palestinians in the West Bank are increasingly penned into ghettoes that resemble the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.
Meanwhile, "Israel" "withdrew" from Gaza more than a year ago, but it continues to control Gaza`s borders, airspace and coastline and continues military strikes and
operations inside Gaza at will. Determining everything that gets in or out, it has turned Gaza into the world`s largest open-air prison.
Though it took decades, the world (with the exception of "Israel") united against the South African apartheid regime and demanded equal rights for all of that country`s
inhabitants. This same standard should be applied to "Israel" immediately. The discrimination against Palestinian natives in "Israel" and the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as disinherited Palestinian refugees, demands a comprehensive solution based on international law and equal rights regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.
The United States and the EU have a pivotal role to play.
The US State Department and the EU have repeatedly documented "Israel's" discriminatory practices. Yet while the Bush administration and the EU demanded that Palestinians under occupation develop democratic systems, no pressure has been applied to "Israel" to reform its exclusivist democracy for Jews to include all people under the "Israeli" regime, including the 20 per cent its inhabitants who are Palestinians. It is time the US and the EU hold "Israel" to account by making its massive economic and military aid contingent upon "Israel" abandoning its discriminatory policies. Americans and Europeans shunned apartheid once. It is time to do it again.
* The writer is a formerly senior lawyer with Adalah, the legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in "Israel".