Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

ISRAEL: Is An "Apartheid Wall" And A "Seperation Wall" The Same Thing?

Uri Avnery, Israeli Journalist | 25.01.2004 17:32 | Analysis | World

It is easy to find similarities between the Bantustans and the enclaves, in which Ariel Sharon intends to imprison the Palestinians in the course of his "unilateral steps". The path of the "separation barrier" that is going up in the West Bank creates some dozen large and small Palestinian Bantustans. Therefore, it may well be called the "apartheid wall", especially as "separation" and "apartheid" mean almost the same thing. The reality in the occupied Palestinian territories is in many respects similar to reality under the apartheid regime. There are (good) highways reserved for settlers and soldiers, and other (poor) highways for the Palestinians. The checkpoints and roadblocks, where Palestinians are held up while Israelis pass freely, fit into this picture





An Eskimo in Bantustan


An Eskimo comes to town and sees a piece of glass for the first time in his life. The glass looks to him like ice. Ice is transparent, and so is glass. Ice can be chewed. So the Eskimo puts the glass in his mouth and starts to chew.

This is quite logical behavior. It is a warning against the over-simple use of analogies. Analogies are a useful device in many instances, but one must always check how far the similarity goes. They should not be applied blindly, because they may lead to a fallacious conclusion.

A case in point is our application of the term "apartheid" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the hope that world public opinion will put pressure on the Israeli government as it did on the racist regime in South Africa.

In Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch settlers in South Africa, "apartheid" means apart-ness, keeping apart. The apartheid policy was, in theory, designed to keep the races separated, but in practice it served to deprive the blacks of all their rights.

In the pursuit of this policy, the white racist regime kept much of the black population in reservations, where they were given a make-believe autonomy. Such an enclave was officially entitled "Bantu homeland", after the black Bantu people in South Africa. Thus the odious term "Bantustan" was born.

It is easy to find similarities between the Bantustans and the enclaves, in which Ariel Sharon intends to imprison the Palestinians in the course of his "unilateral steps". The path of the "separation barrier" that is going up in the West Bank creates some dozen large and small Palestinian Bantustans. Therefore, it may well be called the "apartheid wall", especially as "separation" and "apartheid" mean almost the same thing.

The reality in the occupied Palestinian territories is in many respects similar to reality under the apartheid regime. There are (good) highways reserved for settlers and soldiers, and other (poor) highways for the Palestinians. The checkpoints and roadblocks, where Palestinians are held up while Israelis pass freely, fit into this picture.

But one should not extend this comparison ad absurdum and reach false conclusions, because the differences between the two conflicts are no less important than the similarities.

- First of all, the relations of forces. In South Africa, the Whites were barely 10% of the population, while the Blacks were 77%, and the rest was made up of people of mixed race, "coloreds", Indians and others. (Mahatma Ghandi, it should be remembered, started his career as a young Indian lawyer in South Africa, where he fought his first battles for the rights of Indians and Blacks.)

In the area of Israel-Palestine, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan, the Israeli Jews constitute a majority of about 60%. In Israel proper, the Jews are more than 80%. Even if this proportion changes in future, owing to the high Arab birthrate, it will not reach South African proportions.

- Even at the height of racist supremacy, the South African economy was based on black labor and could not have existed without it. True, after 1967, the Israeli economy also used cheap Arab labor, but when this became problematic in the intifada, foreign labor, which was even cheaper, was imported.

- Yet more important is the difference of perceptions. Neither Whites nor Blacks ever questioned the territorial unity of South Africa. The struggle was about power in the state, not about its integrity. There were some suggestions that the Whites should concentrate in the southern part of the country and set up a separate white state, but this was rejected by the Whites out of hand. They had land and enterprises all over the country and had no inclination to give them up.

(Such suggestions were sometimes made by Israelis, who proposed that the Israeli experience be applied to South Africa. In much the same way, David Ben-Gurion suggested to Charles de Gaulle a policy of concentrating the French colons in a part of Algeria and setting up a separate French-Algerian state. De Gaulle, too, politely declined.)

Both the Whites and the Blacks defined themselves as South Africans. Even at the height of the bitter struggle, the declared aim of the Black freedom fighters was to establish a multi-racial regime in the country. And, indeed, this solution was accepted by the majority on both sides and, so far, it does seem to function.

The Israeli-Palestinian reality is quite different. No reasonable person would deny that here there are two separate nations, with different and contradictory national perceptions. An artificial effort to transplant the South African experience here will be as unsuccessful as it would have been to try and transplant the Israeli-Palestinian experience to South Africa.

- Another major difference lies in the attitude of the world towards the two conflicts. The South African racist regime never enjoyed international sympathy. The chiefs of the "Afrikaner National Party" who coined the slogan "apartheid" in 1948 cooperated with the Nazis in World War II and paid for this with time in prison.

Israel, by contrast, presented itself from the beginning as the "State of the Holocaust Victims" and attracted the admiration of the entire world. Successive Israeli governments have succeeded in squandering much of this capital, but even now many good people around the world shrink from criticizing our actions, partly for fear of being considered anti-Semites. And, of course, there were no six million American citizens of Afrikaner descent.

The attitude towards Israel is slowly becoming more negative. Not much is left of the image of "the brave little state surrounded by enemies" and "the only democracy in the Middle East". We are seen more and more as a brutal occupier, a state that violates international law and moral standards. The Separation Wall, the checkpoints and all the other elements of the occupation are destroying our good name, and the summons to the International Court will do us no good at all.

But all this is still a far cry from the world’s attitude towards racist South Africa. People who believe that world public opinion will bring down the Israeli regime as it did that of South Africa are deceiving themselves.

Outside forces can and must play an important role in putting an end to the occupation and establishing peace on the basis of "Two States for Two Peoples". In the long run Israel cannot afford to continue to disregard international opinion. As Thomas Jefferson said, no nation can conduct its affairs without a decent respect for the opinion of the world. But the main struggle is within the Israeli public, and the main burden must be shouldered by peace-lovers and justice-seekers within Israeli society itself.

Uri Avnery, Israeli Journalist
- Homepage: http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech