{news} Fw: PROPOSAL: Draft Statement on Gaza; DISCUSSION period begins

Sat Mar 21 07:03:43 EDT 2009

Dear CT Greens, 

This proposal is being discussed on the International Committee.
We'd appreciate any comments from you.

Justine McCabe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Justine McCabe 
To: USGP International Committee 
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 8:59 AM
Subject: PROPOSAL: Draft Statement on Gaza; DISCUSSION period begins

Dear IC, 

Last month, in response to the Gaza massacre, the IC considered a draft statement on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

The wording of that statement culminated in a call to our sister Green Parties to join GPUS in endorsing the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.  We took a straw poll that resulted in majority support: 21 yes votes, 8 no, 1 abstention, with 70% of IC members participating. 

Since then, former IC co-chair Julia Willebrand and I were away, and we had an election for co-chairs that consumed much time and effort.

So, it's time to return to that statement.     

As the straw poll ended, there was a difference of opinion as to whether a formal proposal seeking consensus--and vote if necessary--were in order.  Given that this statement would be used to lobby international Greens to support BDS in compliance with the directive to the IC contained in GPUS Prop 190 of 2005, newly-elected co-chair Steve Herrick and I thought that formally proposing this would be best.

And, assuming that consensus is reached on such a proposal, we would then notify the SC of this IC action, and begin to use it to lobby Green parties worldwide.

The proposal is below. According to our bylaws, we have a discussion period first in order to refine the language, etc.  

Since we have already discussed this at length, we propose that one-week should be sufficient..  At the end of that time, we'll test for consensus.    

PLEASE NOTE: 

1) We will be considering the statement WITHOUT the Background information, though it still appears below the statement itself as the "references" part of the proposal format. Unless there is strong support to the contrary, it seems that this Background section is too long to include for a statement that will be circulated.  Instead, Justine plans to rewrite this as a "White Paper" to submit to the IC later as we did with the Right of Return paper on our website.        

2) There are 2 differences in this draft from the one voted on last month: 

a) "A Call for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Against Israel" appears in the title of the statement unlike in the original

b) Given that ecological wisdom/sustainability is a central Green Party pillar, there was an omission in the original statement about the impact of the conflict on the environment.  In the revised statement, the following is included:

"Recognizing that this conflict continues to have a devastating ecological impact on Israel/Palestine, especially water sources, thereby decreasing security for the whole region;"      

We look forward to comments from everyone.

Peace, 

Justine McCabe and Steve Herrick

Co-chairs, International Committee, GPUS

-----------------------------------------------------
PROPOSAL: Draft Statement on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict for endorsement by International Green Parties

PRESENTER: International Committee, GPUS

CONTACT: Justine McCabe justinemccabe at earthink.net

SUBJECT:  DRAFT Green Party Statement on Gaza Crisis and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Call for Boycott, Divestment Sanctions Against Israel

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Implementation of the GPUS International Committee's mission as directed by GPUS Prop 190 of November 21, 2005, "The GPUS National Committee directs the International Committee to work with our sister Green parties around the world in implementing an international boycott." http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml 

In keeping with Prop 190, and in response to the three-week Israeli assault on Gaza beginning in December 2008, the International Committee considered a draft statement to be circulated among international Green Parties urging them to join our party in endorsing the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.  That statement was discussed at length among IC members and a straw poll revealed majority support for it.  This proposal is an opportunity for the IC to formally endorse the statement with the intention of then circulating it among international Green Parties for endorsement of the BDS campaign as directed by GPUS Prop 190.      

FULL PROPOSAL: Draft statement is below 

TIME LINE: Five-day discussion period, beginning Friday, March 20, 2009 ending Friday, March 27 at 10 pm PDT   

RESOURCES: Lobbying efforts by members of GPUS International Committee 

REFERENCES: "Background" section that appears below the statement

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DRAFT Green Party Statement On Gaza Crisis and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict:

 A Call for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Against Israel

 Although Green Parties represent different countries and regions of the world, we share common principles essential 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 recent crisis in Gaza that began on December 27, 2008 in which we condemn the killing of civilians, condemn the excessive and disproportionate force used by Israel, the Occupying Power in Gaza, call for a full and continuing ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza, and a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces with the opening of all border crossings in Gaza

As of January 18, the Gaza crisis resulted in displacement of thousands of Palestine, the injury of more than 5,300, and the killing of over 1,300, mostly civilians. It has also caused the destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, including demolition of hundreds of homes and attacks on UN schools and on the UNRWA warehouse, which is 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 . . . This number is 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

Contrast this with the Hamas rocket attacks, which during the same period killed 3 Israelis civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers. 

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 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.

 As a consequence we call for a redirection of international attention to the root causes of past and ongoing hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, i.e., Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing by Israel since 1948, and the establishment of an apartheid-like system in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) that discriminates against non-Jews.*

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; we believe that individual European Green Parties, especially those with elected representatives in their governments, and in the EU parliament in their capacity to influence the European Union's relation to Israel, have a special duty to ensure that Palestinians no longer bear the blame 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 in that the Arms Export Control Act stipulates that US-supplied weapons be used only for "legitimate self-defense" and that the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military assistance to any country "which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" and that the 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 this conflict continues to have a devastating ecological impact on Israel/Palestine, especially water sources, thereby decreasing security for the whole region; and  

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 can 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.

[Statement ends here]  

-------------------------------------------------

* 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 under populated.
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 on West Bank / East Jerusalem 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; and since the beginning of 2009, 73,300 new Jewish-only settlements have been planned for the West Bank/ East Jerusalem, along with the        planned destruction of homes to 1500 Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan    

-      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

http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1883.shtml

http://apjp.org/israel-planning-73300-new-home/

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

"Ethnic cleansing by Stealth," by Seth Freedman, Guardian News, September 4, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/israelandthepalestinians.humanrights

Regarding 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) "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&currentPage=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 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 (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 Gaza crisis, several violations of human rights and democracy occurred against Palestinian Israelis: the Israeli Elections Committee banned the participation of two Palestinian-Israeli parties (50% of Arab parties, representing 160,000 people) in the February 2009 elections (as had occurred in 2003) because they opposed the assault on Gaza and called for Israel to become a state of all its citizens rather than a Jewish state.  These positions were seen as violations of Israel's Basic Law 7A forbidding candidates from calling for the destruction of the state of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state; incitement of racism; or support of a terrorist organization or an enemy state during a conflict, including visiting an enemy country in the seven years prior to their candidacy. [In response to a petition from a Palestinian human rights organization (Adalah), the Israeli Supreme Court did reinstate some of the candidates.  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054867.html; http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/12/israel-bans-arab-parties-from-election/ ]

Similarly, during the Gaza assault, Palestinian-Israelis were banned from non-violently protesting the Israel's actions. According to legal scholars Sharon Weill and Valentina Azarov ("Israel's Authoritarian Transformation," February 26, 2008 http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/02/26/israel-s-authoritarian-transformation):

[D]uring 230 such demonstrations, 801 protestors were arrested, 277 of them children and juveniles; arrests were made for "disturbing the peace," waving Palestinian flags, and "hurting the nation's morale." As of 7 February 2009, 255 people were still under arrest, including 89 children and juveniles; 114 indictments were submitted to the courts. Others were called in for interrogation by the security services, and were warned not to take part in any demonstration; some were put under house arrest and were prohibited from entering certain cities.

In sum, 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 20th 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.

Similarly, Jewish-American Professor Joel Kovel (former NY Green Party nominee for Senate) attributes Israel's fatal flaw to its structurally racist nature as a Jewish state (Overcoming Zionism, p.165):

 [I]f you sign on to the idea of a Jewish state, you are taking the particularism that is the potential bane of any state, mixing it with the exceptionalism that is the actual bane of Judaism, and giving racism an objective, enduring, institutionalized, and obdurate character.  You accept, in that one moment, a state that systematically denies basic human rights to a fraction of its people and systematically grants another set of people superior right over them.  Thus racism is set into motion, and remains so, grounded in an exclusion based not on what the Other does but entirely on what the Other is, or to be more exact, is not, namely Jewish.  By this one gesture, no matter how one rationalized a Jewish state as owed the Jews by virtue of their sufferings, or ethical superiority, or promises made to ancestors, or generations of landlessness, or a Covenant with God, or cultural genius, or just because it feels good to have a state for one's own kind-one violates the whole law by which humanity has risen above the much of narrow self-interest and cyclical vengeance.  And you cannot overcome that violation unless you undo the compact that locks it into place.      

Thus, Israel's institutionalized racist policies toward non-Jews, meet the criteria of the "crime of apartheid," which are described in 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;

See also 
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

"Israel's 'Ethnocracy' and the Demographic Threat: Dr. As'ad Ghanem on Israel's Palestinian Citizens, October 21, 2009. http://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 (Summer, 1998)

"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, 2001 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 laws listed below, 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.  Jewish-Israeli Uri Davis describes the process by which these quasi-governmental agencies maintain Israel's racist land policies (Apartheid Israel, p. 48):

In other words, in the critical areas of immigration, settlement and land development the Israeli sovereign, the       Knesset, which is formally accountable to all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, has formulated and passed legislation ceding state sovereignty (including taxation) and entered into Covenants vesting its responsibilities with organization such as the WZO [World Zionist Organization], the JA [Jewish Agency], and the JNF [Jewish National Fund] which are constitutionally committed to serving and promoting the interests of Jews and Jews alone.  It is through this procedure of legal duplicity, the ceding of state sovereignty and vesting its responsibilities . . . with Zionist organizations constitutionally committed to the exclusive principle of 'only for Jews', that legal apartheid is regulated in Israel.  It is through this mechanism of legal duplicity that the State of Israel has successfully veiled the reality of Zionist apartheid in the guise of legal democracy since the establishment of the State of Israel to date.

Such 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 2005 http://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

For an update on rising Israeli support for "transferring" out their fellow Palestinian citizens, see "Ethnic cleansing and Israel," by Conn Hallinan, Counterpunch, March 3, 2009 http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan03032009.html

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