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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"><font
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href="https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2021/1/20/Why-calling-Israel-an-apartheid-state-is-not-enough">https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2021/1/20/Why-calling-Israel-an-apartheid-state-is-not-enough</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Why calling Israel an apartheid state
is not enough</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Lana Tatour - January 20,
2021<br>
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<article id="ltrFullPageDiv"> B’Tselem, a leading human
rights group in Israel, recently released a report
concluding that Israel is an apartheid state, with a
regime of Jewish supremacy stretching from the Jordan
River to the Mediterranean Sea.
<p>
The report found that Israel meets the definition of
apartheid under international law, which defines
apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of
establishing and maintaining domination by one racial
group of persons over any other racial group of persons
and systematically oppressing them”.</p>
<p>
The report received widespread international media
attention and was described as a “watershed” moment. But
it was only a watershed moment for B’Tselem, which was
using the term “apartheid” for the first time in its
three-decade history, and for an international community
that is so infatuated with Israeli voices. For
Palestinians, none of this is new.</p>
<p>
<strong>Dominating Palestinians<br>
</strong>B’Tselem is not the first human rights group to
call Israel an apartheid regime. In 2009, Palestinian
and South African scholars published a comprehensive
report that determined Israel was committing the crime
of apartheid. Two Palestinian human rights
organizations, Adalah and Al-Haq, were part of this
initiative. </p>
<p>
Two former UN special rapporteurs on human rights in
Palestine reached a similar conclusion. In 2007, John
Dugard determined that “elements of the occupation
constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid”. And,
a few years ago, Richard Falk co-authored a report
finding that Israel has established “an apartheid regime
that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a
whole”. The UN secretary-general was quick to distance
himself from the report, ordering its removal from the
UN website. </p>
<p>
Typical of western racism, Israelis are deemed more
reliable and esteemed, and their contributions more
valid than those of Palestinians who experience
apartheid, colonization and occupation every day. Still,
the B’Tselem report is a welcome development. As
academic Rafeef Ziadah points out, it comes “in the face
of an orchestrated silencing campaign, which attempts to
foreclose debate before it even begins. In this sense,
it is relevant that an Israeli human rights organization
has stated what Palestinians have been arguing for
years”.</p>
<p>
While the use of the apartheid framework in relation to
Israel is not new, it is gaining momentum amid the
one-state reality. While the occupation paradigm is
built on the false assumption of temporariness and
sustains a distinction between 1948 and 1967
territories, the apartheid framework recognizes that
Israel is the effective governing power between the
river and the sea, where it enacts a racialized regime.</p>
<p>
<strong>Crime against humanity<br>
</strong>Under international law, apartheid is a crime
against humanity - and the evidence clearly shows that
Israel is an apartheid state. Throughout the territory
between the river and the sea, its political and legal
systems are all geared towards ensuring Jewish racial
supremacy and domination. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic,
Israel refused to vaccinate the millions of Palestinians
who live under its control, while vaccinating Israelis,
including Jewish settlers, in the occupied West Bank. </p>
<p>
But Palestine cannot be understood merely in terms of
apartheid, as this offers only a limited and partial
understanding of the situation. Israel is a
settler-colonial state that is practicing both apartheid
and permanent occupation.</p>
<p>
The conversation emerging in liberal circuits around
apartheid and Palestine fails to recognize
settler-colonialism as the overarching structure of the
Israeli state. We have seen such dynamics in Peter
Beinart’s recent call for one binational state, in which
apartheid is acknowledged, but not Zionist/Israeli
settler-colonialism. Racial domination is treated as a
standalone feature of the Israeli state, disconnected
from the settler-colonial enterprise in Palestine. Even
when apartheid is acknowledged, there is no reckoning
with Zionism as a racial ideology and movement. </p>
<p>
B’Tselem’s report is a perfect example for this new
approach, which is coming to the forefront of liberal
progressive critiques of Israel. The report does not
mention colonization or settler-colonialism even once.
Paradoxically, one of B’Tselem’s board members
commented: “Change of any kind begins with a proper
reading of the reality that one seeks to alter; to look
at that reality with open eyes, and to call it by its
name.”</p>
<p>
Apparently, to B’Tselem, settler-colonialism is not part
of this reality. </p>
<p>
<strong>Limited understanding<br>
</strong>The use of apartheid as a sole framework is in
line with increasing attempts to limit the understanding
of the question of Palestine to rigid legal categories.
International law is important, and it should be
leveraged to our advantage. But it would be dangerous to
let international law alone guide our understanding of
the reality in Palestine or the nature of our political
claims. The question of Palestine is a political issue,
not merely a legal issue.</p>
<p>
True, settler-colonialism is not illegal under
international law - but this is not a reason to stake
our understanding of Palestine on international law
alone. By confining ourselves to international law, we
risk talking only about racial domination and ignoring
colonial domination. We need to talk about both, and we
need to recognize that racial domination and Israeli
apartheid are part of, and inseparable from,
settler-colonial domination. </p>
<p>
This is not to say that we should abandon the apartheid
framework, but rather that we should be cautious of
liberal readings of Israeli apartheid. Palestinians were
using the apartheid analogy long before it became a
crime against humanity. Comparing Palestine with
apartheid South Africa has a long, radical history that
predates the “recent” discovery of apartheid by some
Israelis. Palestinians saw South Africa, like Palestine,
as a racial, settler-colonial state, and themselves as
part of a larger anti-colonial, anti-imperial and
antiracist global movement.</p>
<p>
Palestinians have been offering political and
intellectual analyses on the question of Palestine for
decades. But even when Palestinians use apartheid as a
framework for analysis, it does not come at the expense
of the settler-colonial framework; it supplements it.</p>
<p>
<strong>Dismantling settler-colonialism<br>
</strong>Israeli organizations, scholars and activists
are not - and should not be - the arbiters of what
Israel is and is not, or what the solution should be.
The erasure of settler-colonialism in the conversation
on Israeli apartheid risks displacing decolonization in
favor of liberal projects of equality. It configures
Palestine as a liberal question, rather than a colonial
one. </p>
<p>
Decolonization is not a metaphor or a buzzword thrown
around easily. While it may not be easily defined,
decolonization is certainly not a synonym for liberal
projects of equality, even as it is increasingly being
co-opted as such. Unlike liberal equality,
decolonization demands the dismantling of
settler-colonialism, its institutions and its logics.
Our freedom depends on it. </p>
<p>
<em>- Lana Tatour is the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral
Fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia
University. Her article appeared in the Middle East
Eye.</em></p>
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