What's in the Apartheid Analogy? Palestine/Israel Refracted

Al Shabaka, 2015

Insight Turkey, 2020

The term 'apartheid' was coined to describe the system of segregation, practiced for many years in South Africa. However, the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court omitted all references to South Africa in its definition of 'the crime of apartheid' and the term is now defined globally as a crime against humanity. This article explores the similarities and differences between the now abandoned practice of apartheid in South Africa and the current apartheid policies of Israel, highlighting the need to differentiate between Israel proper (within its pre-1967 boundaries), Greater Israel (within the post-1967 boundaries), and Greater Palestine. Whereas Israel claims to offer democratic rights for all its citizens, all seven pillars of apartheid can be shown to exist in the occupied territories, where the Israeli regime is the sole authority, leaving the Palestinian Authority powerless. The article details how the influx of different immigrant communities to Israel has dispossessed the Palestinians from their land. It provides a new definition for the policies practiced, and the many ways in which Israel dictates the lives of the Palestinians, as 'apartheid of a special type. ' It concludes with a proposal to support the policy of bi-nationalism, as stated in in the Haifa Declaration of 2007.

Political Science Undergraduate Review

This paper will examine whether the mainstream accusation of Israel being an apartheid state has some validity to it and if so, to what extent. In doing so, it will help build upon the already present political literature surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while presenting a different perspective in the context of apartheid. Specifically, this paper analyzes the historical creation of Israel and how that directly set the tone for the inequalities present in the state today. In this regard, I rely on two case studies, which help determine whether Israel really qualifies as apartheid, so to speak, in terms of international law. Moreover, I present a rebuttal to my thesis and attempt to foil it.

I combine in this study the two classical comparative research strategies identified by J.S. Mill. I use them in a loose manner as a general guide, rather than as strict experimental designs. The method of agreement poses the following question: given the substantial historical differences in timing, background factors and nature of the conflicting parties, what makes the similarity between Palestine/Israel and South Africa so obvious to numerous political organizations, governments, scholars and media? The answer to this question would focus on the similarity in the basic setting of territorial and political struggles between indigenous people and settlers in both situations. The method of difference takes these resemblances as a starting point, and proceeds to pose another question: given the similarity of the conflicts, how can we account for the different solutions that are being currently implemented? The answer would focus on the different materials out of which the formative processes of class, identity and state were fashioned in the two cases, and use these as an explanation for the differences between exclusionary (Palestine/Israel) and incorporationist (South Africa) historical dynamics.

Frontiers in Political Science

The paper analyzes the regime in Israel/Palestine using a political geographical perspective. It demonstrates how a combination of colonial, national, capitalist and liberal forces have put in train a process of “deepening apartheid” in the entire territory controlled by Israel—between River and Sea. This undeclared regime has been established to guard the 'achievements' of settler colonial Judaization of the land and the domination of the Jewish minority. As described by the Rome Statute, it has become an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one group over others, with the intention of maintaining that regime. Hence the political geographical analysis shows clearly that the wide description in academic and international circles of Israel as “Jewish and democratic,” is based on a denial of the clear racialized hierarchy of civil statuses. This setting enhances Jewish supremacy (using different methods) it in all regions, while Palestinians are ...

Israel and the Apartheid: A View from Within Edited by Honaida Ghanim, , 2018

What do sociological studies mean by " the Israeli regime? What is the geopolitical space in which this system operates, and are there similarities between the Israeli regime as an administrative system and the political and geographic borders of Israel? And, in turn, what are Palestine's borders? What is meant by Palestine and to what does it refer? Who are the intended Palestinians and how are they represented in this comparison? Who determines the contours of that definition and what are the epistemological politics associated with it? Does apartheid form a sufficient theoretical or analytical model to comprehend the Israeli regime? Or is it projected upon it for political reasons despite reality being more complicated? What are the similarities and differences between what happens in Palestine and what happens in South Africa? These questions are a mere tip of the problematic iceberg which tries to frame or conceptualise the Israeli political regime. Such controversy continues to be inherently linked to intertwining theoretical frameworks attempts with the political, and intertwining theoretical models with the presumed solutions of the continued conflict, even when this conflation is unnecessary. This paper debates the permissibility or even the necessity to distinguish between the possible settlement of the Palestinian question and the theoretical analysis of the formation, operation, and the functioning of the Israeli regime.

Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2023

Arguments that the State of Israel practices apartheid are contested by many. In recent years debates on the secular State of Israel's oppression of Palestinians gained prominence also in ecumenical circles. Several stark ecclesial differences prompted this review of Israel as an apartheid regime, and the implications for reformed theology. Christian Zionist beliefs fall short of living up to religious moral high ground because of uncritical support for a country with a scurrilous record for flagrant disregard of human rights. An understanding of ethnic cleansing, occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid as defined in international law, are crucial in examining the nature of Israel's regime. The task of reformed Christians-in churches, church bodies, theological schools and in public life-in response to ideologies and theologies of empire and exclusivity is to be united in acknowledging complicity in injustice and in fostering an ethos of honesty, inclusive dignity, equality, and compassion.

Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 2015

ABSTRACT With increasing frequency comparisons are being drawn between the situation of the Palestinian people both in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel with the system of Apartheid imposed on the indigenous peoples of South Africa by the Nationalist Government in 1948. The object of this essay is to explore the analogy and test its merits and shortcomings. The essay explores the legal structure of the Apartheid system and compares it to that of the state of Israel and the legal framework under which Palestinians live in the occupied territories. It concludes that whilst the term Apartheid might seem attractive and adequate for descriptive purposes rendering the plight of the Palestinians more familiar ultimately there is a gap between the appearance and reality of the two experiences.