Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
by Karine Mac Allister
© 1998-2008 badil.org
Introduction:
Apartheid is an Afrikaans term for "apartness," which means to "separate," to "put apart," to "segregate." It can be summed up as the institutionalization of a regime of systematic racial discrimination or more precisely, "a political system where racism is regulated in law through acts of parliament."1
Discussions on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid are not new; numerous articles were published in the 1980s and 1990s concluding that the situation in Israel and to some extent the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is one of apartheid.2 These discussions were, however, sidelined by the Madrid-Oslo process in the mid-1990s, which was widely expected to bring about at least partial self-determination of the Palestinian people in the OPT. Discussions on the applicability of the apartheid label to Israel have recently re-emerged, mainly as a result of the entrenchment of Israel's regime of occupation and colonization in the OPT and its continued discriminatory policies towards Palestinian refugees and citizens of Israel.3
While several political and historical comparisons between Israel and South Africa have been published, there has been no systematic legal analysis of Israeli apartheid as it affects all sectors of Palestinian society: Palestinians in the occupied territory, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinian refugees. This article is a work in progress which aims to provide a legal framework within which the applicability of the crime of apartheid to Israel can be discussed. It argues that the policies and practices of the Israeli government amount to apartheid against Palestinian nationals - wherever they are and whatever their legal status. Hence, Palestinian citizens of Israel, refugees, and those in the OPT are victims, albeit in different ways, of Israel's regime of apartheid.
While this article is limited to the applicability of the crime of apartheid, it does not negate nor contradict the fact that Israel's regime against the Palestinian people is also one of belligerent occupation and colonialism. Indeed, Israel's obligations as an occupying power in the OPT, in particular to end its belligerent occupation and withdraw from the occupied territory, are not affected by the applicability of the crime of apartheid; to the contrary, they are heightened, as are the obligations of the international community. Hence, victims of the crime of apartheid, Palestinians are not only protected civilians in the OPT, but also a people - i.e., Palestinian nationals - victims of gross violations of international human rights law (i.e., apartheid and colonialism) and entitled to reparations, including return, restitution, compensation, and satisfaction.
Colonialism, the "subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation"4 is thus core to any analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is colonial because it is rooted in political Zionism which aims to Judaize Palestine by creating a Jewish majority over Mandate Palestine - or more expansively, Eretz Israel.5 At the heart of Zionism is thus an exclusivist project: the creation of a Jewish state for the Jewish people. Such a project involves or necessitates the denial of the other; of their presence, rights and existence on the land and reconstruction of the past, namely that the land was empty before the advent of Zionist settlement, hence the movement's slogan describing "a land without people for a people without land."6 In its practical implementation, Zionism translates into a sophisticated legal, social, economic and political regime of racial discrimination that has led to colonialism and apartheid as well as the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people. In this sense, apartheid - the separation of the indigenous people from their lands on the one hand, and from Jewish Israelis on the other - permits the colonial enterprise that is inherent to political Zionism.
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
The Crime of Apartheid under International Law
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
Apartheid across the Green Line and Boundaries
Conclusion
Notes