{news} Fwd: USGP-INT voting on Gaza statement
Richard Duffee
richard.duffee at gmail.com
Mon Feb 23 23:56:06 EST 2009
Dear CtGP,
The most important recent issue before the International Committee involves
the following draft resolution on Israel and Palestine. The IC has voted for
it. The question is what status the vote of the IC alone gives it. The
leadership of the IC seems to believe that the IC's vote is sufficient to
make it a USGP policy statement. Others of us believe that the vote of the
national committee is necessary for it to have that status. I think you may
want to weigh in on the issue, so whatever response you have I will forward
to the International Committee.
Whatever else you want to say, I'd like to hear yes or no responses on two
questions:
1) Is this a statement of policy to which you can agree?
2) Do you believe that the International Committee is obligated to forward
it to the National Committee before promulgating it as the policy of the
USGP?
(I believe I can correctly tell you the positions on both questions of the
three Connecticut IC members:
member question 1
2
Justine McCabe yes
no
Amy Vas Nunes no
yes
Richard Duffee
yes yes
But I'd like to know what other Ct. Greens think.)
Richard Duffee
Here's the statement:
==================================================
January 18, 2009
*DRAFT Green Party Statement
**On Gaza Crisis and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict*
Although Green Parties represent different countries and regions of the
world, we share common principles relevant to understanding and resolving
this conflict. Among these principles are non-violence, including consistent
enforcement of international law; ecological wisdom and sustainability,
including reducing the negative impact of humankind on the natural
environment; and social justice, thereby rejecting discrimination based on
gender, class or ethnicity. These principles guide our response to the
crisis in Gaza that began on December 27, 2008.
*We:*
*Call for a full and continuing ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas
government in Gaza, a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces and opening
of border crossings there;*
*Condemn the killing of civilians, which is illegal under international law;
*
*Condemn the excessive and disproportionate force used by Israel, the
Occupying Power in Gaza,* which as of January 18, had resulted in the
killing of over 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, injury of more than
5,300, destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, destruction of hundreds of
homes, displacement of thousands of Palestinians, attacks on UN schools and
the UNRWA warehouse, the source of basic necessities, such as food, fuel and
medicines. According to a 1/15/09 UN press release: "One in every 250 people
in Gaza is either now dead or significantly injured . . . That was
comparable to 33,000 people in New York City or 1.2 million people in the
United States."*
http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/47d4e277b48d9d3685256ddc00612265/b974aca8e8fe201d85257540004ffedc!OpenDocument
*
During this time 13 Israelis were killed, of whom ten were soldiers; three
civilians were killed and dozens injured by Hamas rocket attacks.
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1232171510978&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout
*Furthermore,** *we are greatly distressed by the continuing decoupling of
these recent hostilities from their historic context, which encourages, *inter
alia*, the following obstacles to peace:
• Demonization of Palestinians as inherently anti-Semitic, hateful
terrorists;
• Delegitimization of lawful resistance by Palestinians to Israeli
violations of their human and legal rights;
• Propounding the myth of balance between the two peoples despite the
patently disproportionate military and political power between them: an
occupying power, Israel — nuclear-armed with the fourth largest military in
the world, backed by a superpower — and Palestinians, an effectively
disarmed, impoverished and occupied people;
• Jettisoning of international law in favor of bilateral negotiations
between two actors of such grossly unequal power, a course begun with the
Madrid / Oslo process;
• Distortions of genuine, human security needs of Israelis in favor of
Israeli state security and regional domination;
• Conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism, which
promotes regressive elements on both sides for political gain, trivializes
the historic prejudice against Jews, and inhibits the expression of sympathy
Palestinians do have for Jewish suffering, especially the Nazi holocaust.
**
*We call for a redirection of international attention to the root causes of
past and ongoing hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians: Palestinian
dispossession and ethnic cleansing by Israel since 1948, and an
apartheid-like system in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
(OPT) that discriminates against non-Jews.*
[See *Background below]
**
*THEREFORE:*
*Recalling** *the historic examples of apartheid South Africa and Nazi
Germany that a just, enduring peace, and reconciliation between Palestinians
and Israelis depend on acknowledgement of wrongdoing and restitution and;
*Recalling** *that Europeans, not Palestinians, were responsible for the
Nazi holocaust; and that individual European Green Parties, especially those
elected representatives to their governments, to the European Green Party,
and in their capacity to influence the European Union's relation to Israel,
have a special duty to ensure that Palestinians no longer pay for historic
European transgressions against Jews; and
*Recalling** *that the Green Party of the United States has a particular
obligation in relation to this conflict as the US government is Israel's
closest ally:
• That Israel receives more than $5 billion annually in military and
financial aid; that as current hostilities in Gaza illustrate, Israel's use
of this military aid often violates American laws. The
– Arms Export Control Act stipulates that US-supplied weapons be used
only for "legitimate self-defense"
– US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military assistance to any country
"which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of
internationally recognized human rights"
– Proxmire Amendment bans military assistance to any government that
refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow
inspection of its nuclear facilities, as Israel refuses to do;
• That the United States government, including both its major parties,
has not been an impartial peace broker in this conflict but continues to
provide political cover and protection to Israel internationally,
particularly at the United Nations, where it has vetoed scores of Security
Council Resolutions opposing Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights
and international law, thereby undermining the central purpose of the UN
Charter to maintain international peace and security;
• That US support for Israeli violations against the Palestinian people
is a main source of antipathy to the US and the West among the world's
formerly colonized peoples who identify with Palestinians; that this US
support not only decreases US/Western national security, but also
contributes to Middle East and international instability; and
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41982
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/world/14clash.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/65b122b6-e8c0-11dd-a4d0-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
*Recognizing* that despite 61 years of continuous diplomatic attempts by the
international community, it has failed to bring about Israel's compliance
with international law or respect for basic Palestinian human rights; and
*Recognizing** *that, despite abundant condemnation of Israel's policies by
the UN, International Court of Justice, and all relevant international
conventions, the international community of nations has* *failed to stop
violations by Israel of Palestinian human rights in Israel and the OPT,
while Israeli crimes continue with impunity, as the recent assault on Gaza
illustrates; and
*Recalling* that ending institutionalized racism (apartheid) in South Africa
demanded an unusual, cooperative action by the entire international
community in the form of a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign
against apartheid South Africa, and that BDS have become the most effective
nonviolent means for achieving justice and genuine peace between
Palestinians and Israelis, and in the region, through concerted
international pressure as applied to apartheid South Africa; and
*Recognizing** *that Palestinian resistance to ongoing dispossession has
mainly been nonviolent, including its most basic form — remaining in their
homes, on their land; and that while Palestinian armed resistance is
legitimate under international law when directed at non-civilian targets, we
believe that only nonviolent resistance will maintain the humanity of
Palestinian society, elicit the greatest solidarity from others, and
maximize the chance for future reconciliation between Israelis and
Palestinians; and
*Recognizing, *however, that our appeal to Palestinians to continue to
resist nonviolently in the face of ongoing existential threats from Israel
is hypocritical unless accompanied by substantial acts of international
support; and
*Recalling *that in 2005, Palestinian Civil Society appealed to the
international community to support a BDS campaign against Israel; and
*Recalling* that in response, at least two Green Parties have passed
resolutions supporting this BDS campaign:
Green Party of the United States in 2005
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml
Green Party of England and Wales in 2008
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1733 ;
**
*We, international Green parties:*
*Call* publicly for the implementation of boycott and divestment initiatives
against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid
era; and
*Agree* to pressure our respective governments to impose embargoes and
sanctions against Israel; and
*Support* maintaining these nonviolent punitive measures until Israel meets
its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to
self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law
by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands and
dismantling the Wall in the West Bank;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel
to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
resolution 194.
**
** Background*
• There is international consensus among scholars, including Israeli
Jews (David Hirst, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev) that in 1948, Israel
ethnically cleansed at least 80% of the native Palestinian Christians and
Muslims — the majority population — from their lands and homes because they
were not Jews, an act of genocide under international law. (See Professor
Francis A. Boyle, who successfully argued before the World Court that ethnic
cleansing is a form of genocide http://www.mediamonitors.net/francis1.html.)
In 1948, Palestinian Christians and Muslims owned 93% of the land.
• Since 1948, Israel has prevented Palestinian refugees from returning
to their homes in Israel, while allowing non-native Jews to immigrate there.
This constitutes a violation of several bodies of international law (law of
nationality, customary human rights law / refugee law, humanitarian law) and
international conventions, such as The Universal Declaration of Human rights
(Article 13(2), 1948), The Fourth Geneva convention, and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1951), all embodied in UN General
Assembly Resolution 194 (reaffirmed annually since 1948), and Security
Council Resolution 237.
Moreover, for those refugees who wish to return, feasible plans have been
proposed that would have meant minimal displacement of the current
population, given that about 80% of Israeli Jews live in only 15% of the
country, and that the vast majority of refugees could return to areas from
which they came, as they are vacant or underpopulated.
http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2005/05/200849162924283293.html
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/prrn/papers/abusitta.html
• In the 1967 war, Israel seized control and has maintained a military
occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, Palestinian West Bank, including
East Jerusalem, and Gaza (OPT), in violation of international law, which
emphasizes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war no
matter how the conflict began or how long it endures. During the war,
another 300,000 Palestinians became refugees, some for the second time.
• As the Occupying Power, Israel continues to violate its
responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War, by the following practices:
– ongoing settlement of Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank / East
Jerusalem on land, of which 40% is privately owned by Palestinians,
that contain between 480,000 and 550,0000 Israelis — more than half
settling during the Oslo Peace Process
– denial of freedom of movement by over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks
– collective punishment, including curfews and closures, prevention
of medical treatment, demolition of over 10,000 homes, of which,
according to UN figures, only 6% involved any security suspects
– targeted assassinations
– detention without charge
– torture in detention
– denial of the right to peaceful assembly
– the uprooting, since 2000 alone, of nearly 2 million trees, and razing
thousands of acres of agricultural land.
In sum, Israel has taken control of more than 50% of West Bank land (the
whole West Bank represents only 22% of historic Palestine) to establish the
settlements and reserve land for their expansion; Israel controls 100% of
West Bank water, diverting 80% for Israeli use, leaving only 20% for
Palestinians — insufficient for Palestinian life and agriculture.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/200205_Land_Grab.asp
http://www.btselem.org/english/water/2008070_acute_water_shortage_in_the_west_bank.asp
http://www.imemc.org/article/48308
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/water/2007/0523arabisrael.htm
According to Israel's human rights group B'Tselem, since September 2008,
Israel has escalated its policy of separating the West Bank from Gaza and
forcibly transferring — ethnic cleansing — West Bank Palestinians to Gaza, a
policy supported by Israel's supreme court.
http://www.btselem.org/english/press_releases/20080910.asp
For US support of Israeli "benign" ethnic cleansing, see "Ethic Cleansing:
Constructive, Benign, and Nefarious." *ZMagazine*, August 09, 2006 By Edward
S. Herman and Grace Kwinjeh http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/3419
• In 2002, Israel began building a 790 km-long (494 mile) "separation
barrier" or "apartheid wall" in the occupied West Bank, confiscating huge
swaths of Palestinian agricultural land and water sources along a route that
deviates from the 1967 "Green Line." In 2004, the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) ruled the barrier to be illegal under international law,
including the Fourth Geneva Convention, that it must be dismantled and
reparations paid to Palestinians for losses incurred, and that "all States
are under obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting form
the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory . . .
They are also under obligation not to render aid or assistance in
maintaining the situation created by such construction."
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1677.pdf
Similarly, a detailed investigation by B'Tselem confirmed that, "under the
guise of security," Israel's routing of the separation barrier was primarily
to enable the expansion of illegal settlements and protect the economic
interests of Israeli real estate developers, all in violation of Palestinian
human rights, especially self-determination.
http://www.btselem.org/Download/200512_Under_the_Guise_of_Security_Eng.doc
Thus far, Israel has refused to comply with the ICJ ruling, and continues to
build the wall.
• Israel maintains an apartheid-like system in the West Bank, where a
"concrete" barrier, two different legal systems and a "matrix of control"
separate Israeli-Jewish settlers and Palestinians, and relegate the latter
to a no man's land of statelessness. For example, former US President Jimmy
Carter *(Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid) *and B'Tselem describe the
institutionalized system of discrimination in the OPT as "apartheid."
Similarly, citing the planned system of Jewish-only roads and settlements,
and two different legal systems, B'Tselem reported in 2002:
Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based
on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and
basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the
only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes
from the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/20040616.asp
Again, in their 2004 report, "Discrimination-based separation — An Apartheid
Practice":
The roads regime, which is based on separation through discrimination, bears
clear similarities to the racist apartheid regime that existed in South
Africa until 1994. An individual's national origin determines their right to
use various roads. This policy is based on a racist premise: that all
Palestinians are security risks, and it is therefore justifiable to restrict
their movement. Thus the policy indiscriminately harms the entire
Palestinian population, in violation of their human rights and of
international law.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/200408_Forbidden_Roads.asp
On November 25, 2008, UN General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto
Brockmann also likened Israel's policies toward the Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza to South Africa's treatment of blacks under apartheid.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1226404827209
• Even before the current hostilities, Gaza was an immense open-air
prison for 1.5 million people — two-thirds of whom are refugees from 1948
and 1967 — squeezed into 140 square miles and hemmed in on all sides by
25-foot-high walls separated by a vast expanse of bulldozed earth. (See "The
Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion," March 2008,
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/images/03/06/gaza.implosion.pdf.) In late 2005,
Israel unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and 8,000 settlers but continued
to control Gaza from the air and sea, and monitor all exits and entries of
persons and supplies. A blockade began after January 2006 when Hamas won
parliamentary elections in the OPT, a result not accepted by Israel, the US
and the EU, which withdrew aid from Gaza despite the facts that the election
was regarded as fair and democratic, with a huge voter turnout (
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1181813074587),
and that Hamas had rescinded its call for Israel's destruction and offered
of a long-term truce in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from all the OPT.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/12/israel. The US then covertly
armed Hamas' political rival, Fatah, to provoke a Palestinian civil war and
overthrow Hamas. After intense fighting, Hamas gained full control of Gaza
in June 2007.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804?printable=true¤tPage=all
Since then, Israel has defined Gaza as an "enemy entity" and maintained a
siege that intensified on November 5, 2008.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/sieg01_.html. By December 2008, according to UN
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for the OPT, Richard Falk, Gaza had a
malnutrition rate of 75%, and healthcare and economic systems on the verge
of collapse with 95% of factories closed and the highest unemployment rate
in the world.
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N08/489/88/PDF/N0848988.pdf?OpenElement
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html
In November 2008 Israel denied entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza as UN food
aid was running out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7726943.stm. On
12/30/08 Israel rammed and severely damaged the SS *Dignity* in
international waters. It was carrying medical supplies to Gaza with a
delegation of physicians and human rights activists, including former US
congresswoman and US Green Party's 2008 presidential candidate, Cynthia
McKinney.
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=162
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/?iref=hpmostpop#cnnSTCText
In sum, these are violations of international law under which Israel remains
the Occupying Power charged with the protection of Palestinians in OPT,
including Gaza. ("Israel prepares for war crimes over Gaza"
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout&cid=1232171555977&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
)
According to UN Special Rapporteur Falk's 8/25/08 report to the UN General
Assembly:
The whole approach taken toward Gaza by Israel and by the United States of
America, and the European Union, since the Hamas electoral victory in
January 2006, involves a massive and unlawful systematic violation of
article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which unconditionally prohibits
collective punishment.
• Israel also maintains an apartheid-like system in Israel (within the
1967 "Green Line") that systematically discriminates against its non-Jewish
citizens, especially the 20% of its population who are Palestinian-Israelis.
Unlike South African institutionalized racism (apartheid), the non-Jewish
citizens of Israel can vote in elections for members of the parliament
(Knesset) where they can have representation, though they have never been
part of a governing coalition. Yet, the presence of these rights obscures
Israel's unacknowledged history of ethnic cleansing of the non-Jewish
majority inhabitants of historic Palestine (1947–49; 1967) and their
continuing dispossession, and masks the fundamental structures of the
Israeli state that preclude equality and discriminate against non-Jewish
citizens on an ethnic basis.
Indeed, not all rights are citizenship rights. In Israel, other rights,
defined as "nationality" rights, are reserved for Jews only: exclusive use
of land, privileged access to private and public employment, special
educational loans, home mortgages, preferences for admission to
universities, among others. From its official beginning, the Declaration of
Independence, Israel established itself as a Jewish state, with a Jewish
character, principles on which its Basic Laws are anchored.
While Israel has no constitution, this Declaration and its Basic Laws are
viewed as the equivalents of constitutional law. For example, the 1985
amendment to Section 7a of the Basic Law (ironically, the "Anti-Racist Law")
bars any political party from participating in elections that explicitly or
implicitly denies the Jewish and democratic character of the State of
Israel; and the 1992 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which reiterates
the Jewish and democratic characters of the state (in Section 1a): "The
purpose of the basic law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order
to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish
and democratic state."
Indeed, in the midst of the current Gaza crisis, the Israeli Elections
Committee banned the participation of two Palestinian-Israeli parties (50%
of Arab parties) in the upcoming elections because they opposed the assault
on Gaza and call for Israel to change from being a Jewish state to a state
of all its citizens.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054867.html
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/12/israel-bans-arab-parties-from-election ]
Thus, Israel's self-definition defies logic: Israel cannot simultaneously be
a Jewish state and democratic — which would require defining itself as the
state of all its citizens. Instead, by law and unlike any other country in
the world, Israel defines itself as the state of all the Jews in the world,
to whom privilege over (even native) non-Jewish citizens is given. This
exclusivity contrasts sharply with the alternative of designating the
country as the "homeland" for the Jewish people, an inclusive designation
that could be applied to the other people for whom the country is also
homeland, the Palestinians.
In analyzing Israel's Basic Laws, Palestinian-Israeli Nadim Rouhana (Henry
Hart Rice Professor of Conflict Resolution, George Mason University and
Director of the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa)
underscores the inherent contradiction between Israel's self-identity as
Jewish and democratic (*Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State*,
1997), p. 46:
According to Kretzmer (1990), simply by introducing the 1985 amendment to
Section 7a of the Basic Law . . . the Israeli Knesset demonstrated that the
'recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people has indeed become
an incontrovertible constitutional fact.' But again, how can this definition
of the state of Israel align with the essence of democracy: having the state
as an equally accessible tool of all of its citizens? It simply precludes
all non-Jewish citizens from claiming the state as equally theirs. If the
state is the apparatus that concentrates power, determines the distribution
of resources, rights and duties, benefits and national priorities,
determines the criteria for significant national goals, and promulgates laws
and regulations to achieve these goals, then by defining itself as the state
of only one group of its citizens (and some who are not its citizens), the
state cannot avoid violating the principles of democracy.
As the international community shunned apartheid South Africa in the late 20
th century, the growing international opposition to Israel's attempt to
legitimize Jewish ethnic dominance reflects 21st century world consciousness
and consensus that such institutionalized dominance is archaic and
undemocratic. Professor Virginia Tilley concludes (*The One-State Solution,*
pp. 181–182):
[S]elf-styled as the 'only democracy in the Middle East,' Israel remains the
only ethnic democracy claiming membership in the Euro-American international
community. That claim is becoming an intolerable embarrassment, as the model
is long obsolete elsewhere. For instance, the "White Australia" project
sustained a racial democracy in the early twentieth century, banning Asian
immigration and excluding Aborigines on the belief that only racial
homogeneity could permit whites to freely enjoy a democratic practice
brought from Europe. Southern states in the United States used a host of
methods, official and unofficial, to exclude black voting and secure white
dominion well into the 1960's. But the civil movements that challenged and
defeated these systems carried with them more than local or national change;
they campaigned for and consolidated an international normative discourse
that rejected ethnoracial supremacy as an inherent source of injustice,
dehumanization, and human suffering. The shift rose to catch South Africa
and quickly discredited apartheid; Milosevic's Serbian ambitions also came
too late and hit the cresting wave. The lessons from World War II had at
last come to fruition: ethnic nationalism generates unacceptable discourses
of ethnic supremacy and inferiority, grant moral authority to ethnic
cleansing, and precludes equal rights before the law, which is the
foundational principle of Western democracies. If a state is to be truly
democratic — with all its citizens held equal before the law — it cannot be
based on ethnic dominion. Whatever Israel claims based on the past sins of
Europe or on its own mythologized past of peaceful resistance to ferocious
Arabs, if the Jewish state claims membership in the Western club, it cannot
expect to be held exempt from these principles.
With regard to apartheid, according to Article II, International Convention
on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid* *(1973):*
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/11.htm*
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term 'the crime of
apartheid', which shall include similar policies and practices of racial
segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply
to the following 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:
(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a
racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic
and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions
preventing the full development of such a group or groups . . .
(d) Any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the
population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and
ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of
mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of
landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
For a side-by-side comparison of the convention's definition of "apartheid"
with examples of Israel's human rights record within Israel as well as in
the Occupied Territories, see report by Israeli Uri Strauss, "Defining
Apartheid: Israel's Record"
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article689.shtml
*See also *
"Israel's 'Ethnocracy' and the Demographic Threat: Dr. As'ad Ghanem on
Israel's Palestinian Citizens, October 21, 2009.
ttp://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/ContentDetails/i/2359/pid/223
"Neither two states nor one: Disengagement and 'creeping apartheid' in
Israel/Palestine" by Prof. Oren Yiftachel, *The Arab World Geographer*,
Vol.8, No. 3, 2005,
http://www.geog.bgu.ac.il/members/yiftachel/new_papers_eng/Yiftachel%20in%20Arab%20World%20Geographer.pdf
;
"Democracy or Ethnocracy: Territory and Settler Politics in
Israel/Palestine"* *by* *Oren Yiftachel,
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer207/yift.htm
"Apartheid In the Holy Land" Paper Prepared Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed for the
United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance, 31st August–7th September, South Africa,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq11.html
*Some of the Israel laws discriminating against Israel's non-Jewish citizens
*
*Exclusive citizenship/immigration laws*:
• Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952)
• Population Registry Law (1965)
• Citizenship and Entry into Israel law (July 2003)
*Exclusive use of state land by Jews*
As a consequence of the following laws, non-Jews — "non-nationals" — who had
succeeded in remaining in their native land, were dispossessed of their
property at Israel's founding in 1948, internally displaced and excluded by
law from leasing, purchasing, building, or farming 93% of the land of Israel
within the Green Line — land that is regarded by Israel as the inalienable
patrimony of the Jewish people wherever they live, and is owned by the
Jewish National Fund and the state and regulated by the Israel Land
Authority. These land control mechanisms perpetuate a legally enforced
system of territorial separation, by which Palestinian-Israelis (20+% of the
population) now own only 3% of the land. This situation is actually worse
than apartheid South Africa's policy of "influx control" restricting the
residence and land available to black South Africans citizens — 13% — while
the remaining 87% was reserved for "white South Africa."
*1949:* Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste Lands) Ordinance
*1950:* Absentee Property Law
*1952:* World Zionist Organization –Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel
(Status) Law
*1953:* Land Acquisition Law; Law for Confiscating Land for Public
Interests; Jewish National Fund Law
*1954:* Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Zionist
Executive / Executive for the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel
*1960:* Basic Law; Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law; Israeli Lands
Administration Law
*1961:* Covenant between the State of Israel and the Jewish National Fund
*1980:* Land Acquisition Law (Peace Treaty with Egypt): seizes thousands
of dunams of Palestinian land to expand Jewish communities in the Negev
*Discrimination and ethnic cleansing continues for Palestinian–Israelis*:**
Unrecognized Arab villages in Israel: At least eighty thousand Palestinian
Bedouin–Israelis live in about 45 "unrecognized" villages in the Negev
desert in the south of Israel. Following the adoption of the Planning and
Construction Law of 1965, the villages did not appear on any Israeli map and
were not recognized by any official government and ignored by all government
planning projects. These Bedouin are citizens of Israel and have the right
to vote in national elections and are expected to pay taxes. Yet their
villages are deprived of basic services, like housing, water, electricity,
education and health care. According to a report by anti-apartheid peace
activists Bangani Ngeleza and Adri Nieuwhof:
There are disturbing similarities in living conditions between unrecognised
villages and informal settlements under apartheid. These include lack of
access to adequate potable water, lack of proper sanitation facilities,
absence of proper road infrastructure, the lack of educational facilities,
houses built of corrugated iron sheets (in some cases of black plastics and
cardboard) etc. The similarities are striking between racially based
policies that lay behind the creation of white settlements under the
apartheid regime in South Africa then and the establishment of Jewish
settlements by the Israeli government.
"Unrecognised villages in the Negev expose Israel's apartheid policies"
Bangani Ngeleza and Adri Nieuwhof, *The Electronic Intifada,* 21 December
2005http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4358.shtml;
"Bedouin ask UN to help fight systemic discrimination in Israel"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=734096
*Continuing efforts to "Judaize" Arab–Israeli areas like the Galilee, Negev
and East Jerusalem*
Israel continues policies to constrain Palestinian–Israeli life while
privileging that of Jewish–Israelis.**
See "A Campaign to Challenge Israeli Apartheid" March 31, 2005 by Kole
Kilibarda *http://www.caiaweb.org/files/kilibarda.jamjoum-JNFcampaign.pdf*
Isabelle Humphries, a British researcher on Palestinian internal refugees,
attests to institutionalized Israeli discrimination towards
Palestinian–Israelis displaced from their homes in the Galilee in 1948 but
not expelled:
While Israel continues to claim that it is a democracy, it finds ways to
discriminate and implement an apartheid system — and no more so than in the
allocation of land and town planning. While the state and high court system
maintain the pretense of keeping opportunities open to all, independent
private organizations have no obligation to do so. Thus the state delegates
and coordinates its work with Zionist establishments technically able to act
as quasi-state institutions, despite the fact that their mandates openly
state their aim of serving one ethnic group alone. The latest development
plan for the Galilee and Negev is in full cooperation with the World Zionist
Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Jewish National Fund
(JNF) — non-state actors with an open Zionist and racist agenda.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Sept_Oct_2005/0509012.html
See also "Policy of Settlement and 'spacial' Judaization in the Naqab" by
Hana Hamdan, *Adalah's Newsletter*, Vol 11, October, 2005
http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/mar05/ar2.pdf
"Bedouin ask UN to help fight systemic discrimination in Israel."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=734096
*Segregated education systems until university*
According to a 2006 Human Rights Watch report,
The Israeli government operates two separate school systems for its 1.8
million school children: a Jewish system and an Arab system. The students in
the latter are Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, nearly one quarter of
all Israeli school children. Under international law, states may offer
children separate educational systems for linguistic or religious reasons,
but they may not discriminate in doing so . . . despite small advances in
recent years, the discriminatory practices against Palestinian Arab school
children that are institutionalized in its education system place Israel in
violation of its international legal obligations.*
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/01/02/discrimination-against-palestinian-arab-children-israeli-education-system
*
Also see* "Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in the Israeli
Education System" *by Zama Coursen-Neff in the New York University *Journal
of International Law and Politics*, January 2, 2006.**
While Israeli education is integrated at the university level,
discrimination persists. Beyond the fact that the system advantages
Jewish–Israelis in competing for university places, in 2003 Israel
universities stopped an experimental admission procedure when it became
clear that the main beneficiaries were Palestinian–Israelis rather than
those intended — Jewish–Israeli students from low-income development towns.
According to *Ha'aretz*'s* *Relly Sa'ar ("Universities return to aptitude
exams to keep Arabs out"):
There's no politically correct spin to put on it, and the facts speak for
themselves: As soon as Israel's top university administrators noticed that
the big winners from admissions policy changes were not Jewish youngsters
from low-income towns, but rather Arabs, they reverted back to the old
admissions system.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=365572
.
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