In her Nov. 21 op-ed, Ariela Krevat purports to present the true story of the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Yet Krevat’s coloring of the facts makes her argument more emotional than objective. Instead of firing off ad hominem attacks on Shawn Redden’s character, maybe we should be focusing on actual facts and solutions.
First of all, the entire world, with the exception of Israel, recognizes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as occupied territory. UN resolutions 242, 338, and others demand that Israel withdraw from these lands, which it seized during the 1967 war. There is no gray area here.
Furthermore, getting bogged down by talk of the exact nature of the barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank misses the point. Whether you call it a wall or a fence, whether it is composed of brick, wire, or Popsicle sticks is irrelevant. The important thing to understand is that it transforms the West Bank into a veritable prison, it annexes huge amounts of Palestinian land, and it exacerbates an apartheid-like segregation of Jews and Arabs.
Krevat objects to the term Apartheid being used, yet there is reason to its use. Apartheid was an official policy of racial segregation and discrimination. While the facts on the ground in Palestine are obviously not the same as in South Africa, there are enough similarities to invite comparison. The most flagrant example of the Israeli policy of segregation is the illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. Contrary to international law, and despite peace agreements stipulating otherwise, Israel has continued to confiscate Palestinian land to build gated all-Jewish settlements. Today there are over 400,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Based solely on their religion, these settlers receive legal and financial advantages that are inaccessible to their Palestinian neighbors.
For example, though they live illegally in the Occupied Territories, Jewish settlers are Israeli citizens and can vote in Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinians are citizens of no country and have no national rights. In the Gaza Strip, settlers comprise 0.5 percent of the population and control 40 percent of the land. In all of the Occupied Territories, 88 percent of the water resources are being directed to Israel and to its Jewish settlers (creating a water shortage for Palestinians, a crippling problem for a predominantly agrarian population). While the freedom of movement of the Palestinian population is severely restricted, including long periods of curfew (a euphemism for house arrest and a collective punishment, which is illegal under international law), settlers can move about at their convenience. Bypass roads on which only Jews may travel have been built on confiscated Palestinian land, often cutting through Palestinian fields.
Additionally, through the process of dividing the Occupied Territories into several sections and blocking movement within and between sections by hundreds of checkpoints, Israel implements the “divide and conquer” strategy which was commonly utilized by imperial powers to colonize populations. This situation is also very reminiscent of the state of affairs in South African Bantustans.
Thus the segregation imposed by Israel on the non-Jewish population of the Occupied Territories is as inequitable and all encompassing as the system of Apartheid in South Africa. In fact, many prominent South African activists and officials have noted how similar the two situations are. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in “Apartheid in the Holy Land,” wrote, “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”
Krevat is correct in pointing to the “horrible reality faced by millions of people every day” in this conflict. The violence that is killing children, Palestinian and Israeli, must stop. What we need to recognize is that occupation is violence; its end is the only just solution that will create peace and security. The recent Israeli-Palestinian joint initiative, the Geneva Accords, provides such a solution, imperfect as it may be, but only with strong support from the international community will this effort be implemented and succeed.