[News] South African study: Israel practicing apartheid and colonialism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

South African study: Israel practicing apartheid and colonialism
Report, Human Sciences Research Council, 9 June 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10578.shtml

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has 
released a report confirming that Israel is practicing both 
colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and 
practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the 
United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct this study. The 
resulting 300-page report, titled "Occupation, Colonialism, 
Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied 
Palestinian territories under international law," represents 15 
months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel's 
practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and 
apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested 
originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist 
John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United 
Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israeli 
practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel's policy and 
practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the 
international community developed in the 1960s in response to the 
great decolonization struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is 
demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it 
permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel 
has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian 
economy with Israel's economy, and imposed a system of domination 
over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. 
Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population 
the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to 
assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. 
Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of 
colonialism.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel's laws and policies 
in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International 
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of 
Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and 
disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of 
their respective identities, which function in this case as 
racialized identities in the sense provided by international law. 
Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six "inhuman acts" 
listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially 
indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic "reserves" in the 
West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which 
Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very 
similar to the policy of "Grand Apartheid" in Apartheid South Africa, 
in which black South Africans were confined to black Homelands 
delineated by the South African government, while white South 
Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the 
rest of the country.

Quoting from the Executive Summary of the report, project leader Dr. 
Virginia Tilley explained that the three pillars of apartheid in 
South Africa are all practiced by Israel in the OPT. In South Africa, 
the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into 
racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services 
to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the 
population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by 
law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of 
any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third 
pillar was "a matrix of draconian 'security' laws and policies that 
were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to 
reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for 
administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination."

The Report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same 
three "pillars" of apartheid:

The first pillar "derives from Israeli laws and policies that 
establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a 
preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews."

The second pillar is reflected in "Israel's 'grand' policy to 
fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to 
the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited 
from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout 
the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by 
Israel's extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues 
to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the 
hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the 
OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the 
West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to 
carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of 
connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of 
besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians."

The third pillar is "Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate 
sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, 
assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent 
to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain 
control over Palestinians as a group."

The research team included scholars and international lawyers based 
at the HSRC, the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), 
the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, the 
University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban), the Adalah/Legal Centre for 
Arab Minority Rights in Israel and al-Haq/West Bank Affiliate of the 
International Commission of Jurists. Consultation on the study's 
theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, 
Israel and Europe.

The HSRC serves as the national social science council for South 
Africa. The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent 
two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant 
to South African foreign policy, funded by the Department of Foreign 
Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this 
report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the 
Government of South Africa and does not represent an official 
position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource 
for the South African government and civil society and the concerned 
international community.

<http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090608-hsrc.pdf>Download 
the full report [PDF - 3 MB]


Related Links
    * <http://www.hsrc.ac.za/>Human Sciences Research Council




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