The Crimes Of Israeli Apartheid
Pro-Palestinian Activists Protest NY Senators' Support Of Israel
By Vijay Prashad, www.blackagendareport.com
March 23rd, 2017
Above Photo: By Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A new UN report "argues that Israel is a 'racial regime' because its
institutions are premised on maintaining a Jewish nation by techniques of
suppression and expulsion." That's apartheid by definition, a crime against
humanity. What exists is one state, "with Israel having exercised its
dominion in the entire land west of the Jordan River, but a one-state with
an apartheid system, with Israeli Jews in a dominant position over the
Palestinians."
If it is acknowledged that Israel is an apartheid state, then this is
tantamount to war crime and to a crime against humanity."
Apartheid is a powerful word, with evocations of the South African
experience and with implications of crimes against humanity. The United
Nations does not use this word loosely. It rarely enters UN reports, and is
not heard from the lips of UN officials. But now, in a report released on
March 15 in Beirut, Lebanon, the UN has proclaimed that Israel 'is guilty of
the crime of apartheid'. This is a very significant judgment, one with
important ramifications for the UN, for the International Court of Justice
and for the international community.
In 2015, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
(ESCWA) was charged by its member-states - the eighteen Arab states in West
Asia and North Africa - to study whether Israel has established an apartheid
regime. ESCWA asked two American academics - Richard Falk and Virginia
Tilley - to undertake the study. Falk had been the UN Special Rapporteur on
the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008
through 2014. Tilley had served as a Chief Research Specialist in South
Africa's Human Sciences Research Council, which had produced a study in 2009
showing apartheid-like conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied
Territory. The report that they have now produced makes the "grave charge"
that Israel is guilty of apartheid not only in the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem - the Occupied Territory - but also within its own boundaries and
against the Palestinian refugees. This is a very sharp report, which will be
hard for Israel to ignore.
End of two state consensus?
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington DC recently to
meet U.S. President Donald Trump. At that meeting, Mr. Trump seemed to
disregard the international consensus towards the creation of two states. In
fact, as this report and others show, the two-state solution has been long
vitiated. The Israeli government's illegal Jewish settlement project in the
West Bank and its virtual annexation of East Jerusalem makes it impossible
to imagine the establishment of Palestine in that region. What exists is a
one-state, with Israel having exercised its dominion in the entire land west
of the Jordan River, but a one-state with an apartheid system, with Israeli
Jews in a dominant position over the Palestinians. The new UN report speaks
to this disturbing apartheid situation not only in the Occupied Territory of
the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but in all of Israel.
"As this report and others show, the two-state solution has been long
vitiated."
One reason why the Israeli government is unwilling to consider a one-state
solution with equal rights for all Israelis and Palestinians is what they
call a "demographic threat." If the 12 million Palestinians - exiles and
refugees included - would be citizens of this one-state, then they would
dwarf the six million Jews in the country. The UN report argues that Israel
is a "racial regime" because its institutions are premised on maintaining a
Jewish nation by techniques of suppression and expulsion.
Gross discrimination
Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship (ezrahut) do not have the right
to nationality (le'um), which means that they can only access inferior
social services, face restrictive zoning laws, and find themselves unable
freely to buy land. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are reduced to the status
of permanent residents, who have to constantly prove that they live in the
city and that they do not have any political ambitions. Palestinians in the
West Bank live "in ways consistent with apartheid," write the authors of the
UN report. And those who are exiled to the refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria
and Jordan have absolutely no rights to their homeland. All Palestinians -
whether those who live in Haifa (Israel) or in Ain al-Hilweh (Lebanon)
suffer the consequences of Israeli apartheid. This indignity is punctuated
with laws that humiliate the Palestinians. The latest law - the Muezzin Bill
- imposes limits on the Muslim call to prayer in Israel and East Jerusalem.
Matters would be less grave if the Israeli political system allowed
Palestinians rights to make their case against apartheid-like conditions.
Article 7(a) of the Basic Law prohibits any political party from considering
a challenge to the State's Jewish character. Since this description of the
Israeli state renders Palestinians as second-class citizens, their voting
rights are reduced to merely an affirmation of their subordination. As the
UN report suggests, "An analogy would be a system in which slaves have the
right to vote but not against slavery." Palestinians inside Israel and in
the Occupied Territories, as well as in enforced exile, are forbidden to
fight to change the terms of politics in Israel. This roadblock is the
reason why the UN report appeals to the international community to live up
to its commitments.
"The Israeli state renders Palestinians as second-class citizens, their
voting rights reduced to merely an affirmation of their subordination."
Since most of the world's states have signed the Convention Against
Apartheid, they are now obliged to act to punish instances of apartheid. Two
recommendations from the report stand out. First, the authors ask that the
International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate the situation in Israel. The
ICC's Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened an investigation on Israel's 2014
bombing of Gaza and on the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Ms.
Bensouda has indicated that she is not averse to a full assessment of
Israel's actions. Whether she will now widen the scope of her investigation
to the apartheid nature of the state is a separate matter. Second, the
report asks that member states allow "criminal prosecutions of Israeli
officials demonstrably connected with the practices of apartheid against the
Palestinian people." Earlier this year, former Israeli Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni cancelled a trip to Brussels when she was alerted that the
prosecutors there might arrest her using the principle of universal
jurisdiction. Such actions raise the cost to Israel for its apartheid
policies.
When the UN Security Council declared late last year that Israel's
settlements in the Occupied Territories were illegal, then there was worry
in Israel that Ms. Bensouda would accelerate her work. Others in Israel said
that there was nothing new in the resolution, which neither used the word
"grave" to describe the situation nor considered Israeli actions to be a war
crime. But the new report does both. If it is acknowledged that Israel is an
apartheid state, then this is tantamount to war crime (in the 1977 Protocol
Additional to the Geneva Conventions) and to a crime against humanity (in
the 1973 Apartheid Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the ICC).
India's reaction
To prepare the ground for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip to Israel
later this year, his Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar will soon go to Israel.
Word comes from the Ministry of External Affairs that it is likely that Mr.
Modi will not visit the Occupied Territories, which will be a snub to
Palestine. India's overall reaction to this report will define Mr. Modi's
attitude towards Israel. The appearance of this report - and its strong
conclusions - should give Mr. Modi pause before he shreds decades of
consensus for Palestine from India. Will India take leadership in upholding
international law as it did in the fight against South African apartheid? Or
will India back away from high principle and settle for arms deals and empty
rhetoric?
