Abstract
Global shifts in perceptions of the Palestine conflict coupled with a renewed interest in the historic struggle to end apartheid in South Africa has led to a rise in discourse relating the situation facing contemporary Palestine with that of apartheid in South Africa. The present essay reconciles scholarly and activist perspectives concerning comparisons between contemporary Palestine and apartheid-era South Africa by examining definitions of apartheid under international law, the discourse of race in each context, the foundational myths of South African and Israeli nationalism, the role of black and Palestinian labour in South Africa and Palestine respectively, racialised spatial segregation, and activist responses to the Israeli and South African regimes.
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Notes
- 1.
The works of Uri Davis [cf Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (London: Zed Books, 2003); Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, 1989)] have been very influential in setting the tone for the scholarly debate surrounding the apartheid designation.
- 2.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006) is perhaps the most well-known popular use of the apartheid designation; however, Ben White’s Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Pluto Press, 2009) provides a more in-depth approach to bridging the gap between academic discourse and popular perception surrounding the nature of the Zionist project.
- 3.
Edward C. Corrigan, “Israel and Apartheid: A Framework for Legal Analysis,” in Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences, ed. Ghada Ageel (Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2016), 231.
- 4.
Cited in Shourideh Molavi, Stateless Citizenship: The Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 101.
- 5.
Adopted as UN General Assembly Resolution 2068 on 30 November, 1973.
- 6.
“International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.” https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201015/volume-1015-I-14861-English.pdf
- 7.
Virginia Tilley, ed. Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism, and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New York: Pluto Press, 2012), 129–221.
- 8.
Tilley offers a very helpful, in-depth discussion of these objections and their difficulties. See: Tilley, 107–108.
- 9.
Ibid, 108.
- 10.
“65th Independence Day – More than 8 Million Residents in the State of Israel,” Press Release, Central Bureau of Statistics, State of Israel, http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/hodaot2013n/11_13_097e.pdf
- 11.
This distinction can be seen further in Israel’s self-classification as a “Jewish state”.
- 12.
Others have also argued that the convention itself was designed specifically to address South Africa, and thus cannot be applied to Israel. Challenging this, however, is the fact that most international law develops as a result of experience (consider, for example, the development of the concept of genocide in response to the Holocaust) and the convention’s own claim to have broader applicability.
- 13.
“International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx
- 14.
“Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions,” 8 June, 1977. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=73D05A98B6CEB566C12563CD0051E1A0. Additionally, the Protocol reaffirms Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prevents “…the transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies…” Israel’s policy of building settlements in the Occupied West Bank is in clear violation of Article 49, and represents a component of the Jewish state’s practice of “spatial” apartheid (see below).
- 15.
The relevant portion of the treaty can be found at http://www.un.org/law/icc/index.html
- 16.
“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” 9 December, 1948. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf
- 17.
Williams, Elizabeth M. The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa: Black British Solidarity and the anti-Apartheid Struggle (London, I.B. Tauris, 2015).
- 18.
This is especially true in the case of Jewish identity in Israel, where Ashkenazim (Jews of European origins, generally thought of as more “white”) occupy a position of greater privilege in Israeli society than Sephardim (Jews of North African or Iberian origin) and especially Mizrachim (Jews of Middle Eastern origins, thought to be less “white”). In addition, members of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish) community in Israel occupy a marginalised position in Israeli society based on their African origins. See: Ruth Amir, Who Is Afraid of Historical Redress? The Israeli Victim-Perpetrator Dichotomy (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 127–128, 208–231.
- 19.
Yitzhak Reiter, National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs Versus Jews in Israel (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009).
- 20.
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Palestine in Israeli Textbooks: Ideology and Propaganda in Education (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).
- 21.
There are exceptions to this, as described in Rhoda Ann Khanaaneh’s Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), however Khanaaneh finds that these exceptions prove the racialised nature of military service in Israel.
- 22.
“65th Independence Day.”
- 23.
Mona M. Younis. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
- 24.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon, 2010), 8.
- 25.
Ronnie Kasrils, “Birds of a Feather: Israel and Apartheid South Africa—Colonialism of a Special Type,” in Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid, ed. Ilan Pappé (London: Zed Books, 2015), 28.
- 26.
Kasrils, 29.
- 27.
For an excellent conceptualisation of the Palestine conflict from a settler-colonial approach, see Lorenzo Veracini, “The Other Shift: Settler Colonialism, Israel, and the Occupation,” Journal of Palestine Studies 42 (Winter 2013).
- 28.
Younis, 36.
- 29.
Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, wrote in his diary that “[w]e shall try to spirit the penniless population away across the border…”, describing the need to transfer Palestine’s Arab population out of the country to make way for Zionist colonisation as a primary goal of the Zionist movement. Cited in Benny Morris Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 21–22.
- 30.
Chaim Weizmann, director of the World Jewish organisation, proffered that “There is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country?” Cited in Nur Masalha, A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians: 1949–1996 (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1997), 61–61.
- 31.
Moshe Dayan, a central figure in the founding of the Jewish state, wrote that the destruction of houses as part of the conflict that led to the creation of Israel was “…not in battle, but as punishment…and in order to chase away the inhabitants…” Cited in Morris, 328.
- 32.
Davis, Apartheid Israel, 85.
- 33.
Cited in Davis, Apartheid Israel, 86.
- 34.
An important point needs to be raised here. While the formal political arrangement of apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the ongoing effects of apartheid and continued racism in South Africa have resulted in continued racial segregation in the country.
- 35.
Tilley, 112.
- 36.
Ibid, 112–113.
- 37.
“Expansion of Settlements and Restriction on Palestinian Construction,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41 (Winter 2012): 192.
- 38.
Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay, Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation, and Movement Restriction (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 2.
- 39.
Leila Farsakh, Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land, and Occupation (London: Routledge, 2005), 155.
- 40.
Sheila Hannah Katz, “Adam and Adama, ‘Ird and Ard: En-gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms,” in Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 87.
- 41.
Farsakh, Palestinian Labor Migration, 7.
- 42.
Farsakh, Palestinian Labor Migration, 6, 35.
- 43.
Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Tilley, 211.
- 44.
Farsakh, Palestinian Labor Migration, 117.
- 45.
Azoulay and Ophir, 244–245.
- 46.
Farsakh, Palestinian Labor Migration, 120.
- 47.
Farsakh, Palestinian Labor Migration, 140.
- 48.
Tilley, 210–211.
- 49.
Younis, 129.
- 50.
Another example is Salim Vally’s essay “Palestinian Solidarity in South Africa and the Academic Boycott of Israel: The Case of the University of Johannesburg and Ben Gurion University,” in Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities, eds. Ashley Dawson and Bill V. Mullen (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015).
- 51.
Ilan Pappé, “The Many Faces of Apartheid,” in Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid, ed. Ilan Pappé (London: Zed Books, 2015), 19.
- 52.
The role of formal political movements against apartheid and Israeli occupation, namely the African National Congress (ANC) and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is debatable. Younis provides a helpful discussion of the role played by each organisation in South Africa and Palestine respectively; however, she tends to privilege each group as the sole representative of their constituencies. The movements for BDS in South Africa and Palestine both enjoyed support across a broader swath of society than did their political counterparts, hence the decision to focus on them in this section.
- 53.
Leila Farsakh, “Apartheid, Israel, and Palestinian Statehood,” in Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid, ed. Ilan Pappé (London: Zed Books, 2015), 169.
- 54.
Omar Barghouti, BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, and the Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011), 227.
- 55.
Farsakh, “Apartheid Israel,” 169.
References
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Azoulay, Ariella, and Adi Ophir. 2013. The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Carter, Jimmy. 2006. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 9 December 1948. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf
Corrigan, Edward C. 2016. Israel and Apartheid: A Framework for Legal Analysis. In Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences, ed. Ghada Ageel, 213–135. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Davis, Uri. 1989. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Books.
———. 2003. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. London: Zed Books.
Expansion of Settlements and Restriction on Palestinian Construction. Journal of Palestine Studies 41 (Winter 2012): 192–193.
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———. 2015. Apartheid, Israel, and Palestinian Statehood. In Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid, ed. Ilan Pappé. London: Zed Books.
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Younis, Mona N. 2000. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Barnes, J.J. (2019). A Different Apartheid: Structural, Legal, and Discursive Foundations for Comparing South Africa and Israel. In: Essed, P., Farquharson, K., Pillay, K., White, E.J. (eds) Relating Worlds of Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78990-3_10
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