“Apartheid”, has become an epithet to attack Israel / Zionism / Jews. “Apartheid – segregation; (lit. ‘Separateness’) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation in South Africa between 1948 and the early 1990s”.
The non-European (non-white) population of South Africa did not have the vote and had no representation in government and parliament. They had to carry ID cards and were not allowed to live in “white” neighbourhoods.
Schooling was limited and inferior. Barred from attending university they were unable to aspire to being doctors, lawyers, engineers etc. Medical attention was second-rate and they were not treated at superior “white” hospitals. They had separate public transport, separate entrances to banks and post-offices, separate park benches, separate beaches and were not admitted to any hotels.
I know all this personally as I was born and grew up in South Africa.
When calling Israel an “apartheid state” the implication is that the Arab minority in Israel is similarly treated by the Jewish majority.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Every citizen of Israel has the right to vote in Israeli elections and there are Druze and Arab members of Knesset.
A similar curriculum is taught in Hebrew in Jewish schools and in Arabic in the Arab sector. The percentage of Arab students in Israeli universities and colleges mirrors that in the general population. Jewish and Arab patients attend hospitals and clinics which are staffed by Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses. Arabs and Jews mingle freely at shopping malls, holiday resorts, recreation centers and beaches. They travel overseas on Israeli passports.
I know all this personally because I live in Israel.
But perhaps those accusing Israel of being an apartheid state don’t refer to the status of Israeli Arabs but that of the Arab population on the West Bank.
The West Bank is not, and has never been, part of the State of Israel. Since the Israeli conquest in 1967, when Jordan rejected Israel’s entreaty to stay out of the Six Day War and opened fire on Tel Aviv, Netanya and west Jerusalem Israel has refrained from a formal and legal annexation.
Unlike the Wet Bank, the Golan Heights were legally annexed by a law passed in Knesset in 1981, which gave those Druze living on the Golan Heights the right to vote in Israeli elections and enjoy all that the State of Israel offers its citizens.
Only by annexing the West Bank and passing a similar law can the West Bank Arabs become citizens of Israel with the same rights as their brethren in Israel.
The Israeli prayer and hope has always been to reach a peaceful relationship between Israel and the people on the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has categorically and constantly rejected the efforts of both US Presidents and Israeli PMs to achieve this.
The Palestinians have broken every agreement they reached with Israel. In 1993 Arafat signed the Oslo agreement and the Declaration of Principles (DOP) whereby he undertook to amend the PLO Charter and to recognize the right of Israel to exist. The PLO Charter has never been amended to include this recognition.
In 1994 the Gaza-Jericho was signed in Cairo; in 1995 the self- rule agreement was signed; in 1998 the Wye River Memorandum was signed.
Despite the successful Camp David Summit in 2000 Arafat deliberately started the second intifada, as confirmed by PLO leaders. In 2003 there was the Road Map and in 2005 the pledge, signed by Mahmoud Abbas in the presence of Egyptian President Mubarak and King Hussein, to stop all acts of violence against Israel.
The Palestinians do have the right to vote every four years both for president and for their legislative council which they last did in 2005 for president (Mahmud Abbas) and in 2006 for the council. Liberal supporters of democracy and equal rights are strangely silent on this thirteen year lacuna.
The much maligned wall/fence and checkpoints, set up in 2003, are a necessary measure to protect Israeli lives. Our memories are short but well I remember that prior to the intifada of 2000, deliberately started by Arafat and the PA leadership, there were no walls, fences or checkpoints. Israelis visited the West Bank (and gambled in the casinos of Jericho) and Palestinians freely visited and worked in Israel.
I know this personally because, as a guide, I took my groups to Bethlehem unhindered by security checks. When we visited the Temple Mount ministers, priests and rabbis were able read unrestricted from their Holy Scriptures and everyone, Moslem, Christian and Jew, could visit the mosques.
The Palestinians have the right to build and operate hospitals thereby avoiding the hassle of check points in order to receive treatment in Israel (and overburdening of the Israeli health system). They have the right to improve their infrastructure, to invest in enterprises which will create work opportunities for their people, rather than have Palestinians work in Israeli enterprises such as Soda Stream, which is then boycotted resulting in more unemployed Palestinians.
All this and more they could have done with the billions, yes, wasted billions, they have received from European governments, from pro-Palestinian NGO’s and from Arab countries.
The incitement against Israel in school books, the praise of and payments to convicted terrorist/ murderers has convinced many to doubt that the Palestinians are genuinely seeking a peaceful solution.
One can only ponder – are those accusing Israel of being an apartheid state ignorant of the facts or are they deliberately falsifying them as a cover for their own inherent antisemitism?
