Israel and apartheid
Israel's policies and actions in its ongoing occupation and administration of the Palestinian territories have drawn accusations that it is committing the crime of apartheid. Leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have said that the totality and severity of the human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and by some in Israel proper, amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israel and some of its Western allies have rejected the accusation, with Israel and others often labeling the charge antisemitic.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
For Israel's relations with apartheid-era South Africa, see Israel–South Africa relations.
Comparisons between Israel–Palestine and South African apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.[8][9] Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law.[10] In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination[11] announced commencing a review of the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid.[12] Soon afterward, two Israeli human rights NGOs, Yesh Din (July 2020), and B'Tselem (January 2021) issued separate reports that concluded, in the latter's words, that "the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met."[13][14][15] In April 2021, Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights body to say Israel had crossed the threshold.[15][16] It accused Israel of apartheid, and called for prosecution of Israeli officials under international law, calling for an International Criminal Court investigation. Amnesty International issued a report with similar findings on 1 February 2022.
The accusation that Israel is committing apartheid has been supported by United Nations investigators,[17] the African National Congress (ANC),[18] several human rights groups,[19][20] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.[21][22] Those who support the accusations hold that certain laws explicitly or implicitly discriminate on the basis of creed or race, in effect privileging Jewish citizens and disadvantaging non-Jewish, and particularly Arab, citizens.[23] These include the Law of Return, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, and many laws regarding security, freedom of movement, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset (legislature), education, and culture. The Nation-State Law, enacted in 2018, was widely condemned in both Israel and internationally as discriminatory,[24] and has also been called an "apartheid law" by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), opposition MPs, and other Arab and Jewish Israelis.[25][26] Israel and a number of Western governments and scholars, on the other hand, have rejected the charges or objected to the use of the word apartheid.[27][28] Some argue that the situation is not comparable to apartheid in South Africa, that Israel's policies are primarily driven by security considerations,[29][30] and that the accusation is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel.[31][29][32][33]
Historical comparisons
In 1961, the South African prime minister and architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, Hendrik Verwoerd, dismissed an Israeli vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations, saying, "Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude ... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."[34] His successor John Vorster held the same view.[35] Since then, a number of sources have used the apartheid analogy. In the early 1970s, Arabic language magazines of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) compared the Israeli proposals for Palestinian autonomy to the Bantustan strategy of South Africa.[34] In 1970, an anti-apartheid activist in the UK's Liberal Party, Louis Eaks, referred to the situation in Israel as "apartheid" and was threatened with expulsion as a result.[36]
In 1979, the Palestinian sociologist Elia Zureik argued in his book The Palestinians in Israel A Study in Internal Colonialism that while not de jure an apartheid state, Israeli society was characterized by a latent form of apartheid.[37] The concept emerged with some frequency in both academic and activist writings in the 1980s–90s,[38] when Uri Davis, Meron Benvenisti, Richard Locke, and Anthony Stewart used the term apartheid to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
In the 1990s, the term "Israeli apartheid" gained prominence after Israel, as a result of the Oslo Accords, granted the Palestinians limited self-government in the form of the Palestinian Authority and established a system of permits and checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories. The apartheid analogy gained additional traction after Israel constructed the West Bank Barrier.[34]
In 2001, an NGO Forum ran separately from the World Conference against Racism in the nearby Kingsmead Stadium in Durban, from 28 August to 1 September. It consisted of 3,000 NGOs and was attended by 8,000 representatives. The declaration the NGO Forum adopted was not an official document of the conference.[39][40] The final NGO document called "for the reinstitution of the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism" and "the complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state".[41]
Former US President Jimmy Carter wrote the 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. His use of the term "apartheid" was calibrated to avoid specific accusations of racism against the government of Israel, and carefully limited to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. In a letter to the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix, Carter made clear that he was not discussing the circumstances within Israel but exclusively within Gaza and the West Bank.[42] In a 2007 interview, he said: "Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank, and it's based on the desire or avarice of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land. It's not based on racism...This is a word that's a very accurate description of the forced separation within the West Bank of Israelis from Palestinians and the total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military."[43]
By 2013, the analogy between the West Bank and Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa was widely drawn in international circles.[44] In the US, where the notion had previously been taboo, Israel's rule over the occupied territories was increasingly compared to apartheid.[45][46]