Israel practices apartheid

Oct 19, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Guyana broke off all relations with South Africa over that country’s practice of apartheid. Burnham even went further and imposed sanctions on sportsmen and sportswomen who went to South Africa.

In 2006, former US President Jimmy Carter released a book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” in which he expressed concerns about the existence of “apartheid” conditions within Israel. He pointed out that millions of Palestinians were facing unequal treatment compared to their Israeli counterparts and that the continued growth of Israeli settlements was exacerbating the displacement of Palestinians.

Israel promotes segregation and separation when it comes to the Palestinians. In the West Bank, Israel has constructed a separation barrier and roads that are exclusive to Israelis, creating a physical divide between Israelis and Palestinians that are tantamount to apartheid-styled racial segregation. Critics point to Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinians. For example, the 2018 “Nation-State Law” declared Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, marginalizing the rights of non-Jewish citizens, primarily Palestinian Arabs.

Palestinians in the occupied territories are subject to Israeli military law, while Israeli settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. This results in a stark contrast in legal protections and rights for the two populations. The continuous expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has led to the displacement of Palestinian communities, reflecting the dispossession reminiscent of apartheid policies. Palestinians in the occupied territories face economic hardships, including restricted access to water, land, and resources, while Israeli settlements receive preferential treatment and access to these resources. Last year, a United Nations Special Rapporteur said that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians meets the legal definition of apartheid. In his report the special rapporteur noted:  “There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

He went on to add that: “Living in the same geographic space, but separated by walls, checkpoints, roads and an entrenched military presence, are more than three million Palestinians, who are without rights, living under an oppressive rule of institutional discrimination and without a path to a genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised is their right.” He went on to observe that an additional two million Palestinians inhabit Gaza, often referred to as an ‘open-air prison,’ facing severe challenges in accessing power, clean water, and healthcare. The region’s economy is in decline, and residents have limited freedom to travel to other parts of Palestine or abroad.

The Special Rapporteur emphasized that a political system that unmistakably and deliberately prioritizes the core political, legal, and social rights of one group over another within the same geographical area, solely based on their racial, national, or ethnic identity, aligns with the international legal description of apartheid.

Two month earlier Amnesty International had arrived at the same conclusion. Amnesty International’s assessment involved a detailed examination of Israel’s aims to establish and sustain a structure of subjugation and control over the Palestinian population, with a focus on territorial division, segregation, regulatory authority, confiscation of land and assets, as well as the deprivation of economic and social entitlements. The organization’s findings unequivocally assert that this constituted a state of apartheid.

These findings and Israel’s continued atrocities lend credence to the call made by former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar for CARICOM to break diplomatic relations with Israel. But the former President of Guyana should have been equally forceful in demanding that the PPPC government immediately sever ties with the apartheid regime in Israel. Instead of echoing Ramotar’s call, the ruling People’s Progressive Party has come out with a weak-kneed statement on the present conflict in the Middle East. The PPP’s statement appears to be an exercise in fence-sitting, seeking to strike a politically correct tone by condemning violence on both sides while touting the impracticality of the two-state solution. The PPPC’s statement, while seemingly even-handed by condemning violence on both sides, misses the mark by emphasizing the two-state solution as the path forward. To understand the impracticality of the two-state solution, one must look at the harsh realities of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands, its oppressive apartheid system, and its control over what happens in both Gaza and the West Bank. Israel’s refusal to recognize an independent Palestinian state and its relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank cast serious doubts on the viability of the two-state solution. Israel is an occupying power that practices apartheid. Guyana should not entertain even the remotest thought of having diplomatic relations with such a state.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Jimmy Carter, Palestine, Peeping Tom, South Africa, US President

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