Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace | Page 36

Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace

Critics of Israeli policy in the occupied and annexed territories and in Gaza often draw
comparisons with apartheid in South Africa. A closer look reveals some similarities and
also some significant differences.
Many South Africans, including those who took part in the World Council of
Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Program for Palestine and Israel, see striking
parallels between the oppression that they experienced under apartheid and the realities
faced by Palestinians today. Some, such as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, have
even argued that the situation for Palestinians is worse than it was for black South
Africans. Others are reluctant to classify the policies of contemporary Israel as apartheid,
because they see that term as uniquely bound up with South African history. xciv
The pockets of limited Palestinian control (Area A and Gaza) and even more
limited control (Area B) remind one of the patchwork of South Africa’s Bantustans in the
1970s and 1980s. South Africa tried to persuade the world (and itself) that hundreds of
scattered, non-contiguous parcels of land—territory selected precisely because it was
perceived to be of little strategic or economic value—could actually comprise one or
more viable states. Israel, the Palestinian Authority and other participants in the Oslo
Accords have similarly tried to sustain the narrative that a two-state solution could evolve
out of the configuration of the pockets of increasingly constrained Palestinian autonomy.
Other similarities between present-day Israel-Palestine and South Africa under
minority rule include forced removals and demolition of housing, huge inequalities in
access to resources, the pervasive presence of security forces, and the palpable tension in
daily life that perpetually threatens to boil over into violence. Both Israel and apartheidera South Africa portrayed themselves as pro-Western bulwarks of democracy,
strategically located in resource rich but politically volatile regions.
There are also key differences. While Israelis of Arab ancestry suffer
discrimination in many respects—some enforced by law—Israel’s legislation and
jurisprudence is not as completely reliant upon and shaped by a system of racial
classification. There is not, for example, an Israeli equivalent of South Africa’s Separate
Amenities Act, which, from 1953 to 1990, sanctioned the exclusion of people from public
premises and services on the basis of race. The virtual segregation of Israeli buses shows,
however, that administrative action can achieve a similar effect, even in the absence of
legislation.
Another important difference is that Israel’s economy does not depend on
Palestinian labor to the same extent that the economy of white areas of apartheid South
Africa relied upon the labor of other racial groups, particularly Africans. Labor history is
a central strand of South Africa’s liberation narrative for good reason: it was the black
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