”Apartheid,” a word that means “apart” or “separate,” was first used in the Nationalist (Afrikaner) newspaper Die Burger in 1943. Apartheid came to stand for a policy of segregation and separate development. In the fullest sense it is discrimination that is institutionalized and legalized.

The Dutch established the first permanent post of white people in South Africa in 1652, after Jan van Riebeeck was instructed by the Dutch East Indian Company to set up a comfort station at Cape Town, a mid-point on the voyage from Europe to the East Indies. At the same time, two stone-age peoples, the San (called “Bushmen” by whites) and the Khoikhoi (whom the Dutch called “Hottentots”), inhabited the area. By 1659 Riebeeck was taking over the natives’ land and stealing their cattle. Riebeeck later asked for slaves to be imported as a supplement to labor provided by the Khoikhoi. A “colored” or mixed racial group resulted from brothel activity and some marriages of whites to slaves brought from India, Madagascar, Angola, Mozambique, Zanzibar, and the East Indies.

Gradually white settlers decided to move inland. There they discovered black clans that had inhabited southern Africa for centuries, even as early as the fifth century A.D. according to radiocarbon dating. The number of black peoples encountered included Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Swazi, Pedi and Venda.

Unable to protect their colonies following the French sweep over the Netherlands after the French Revolution, the Dutch allowed Britain to occupy the Cape and the Dutch East Indies. In 1809 the British introduced the first of the Pass Laws to help Afrikaner farmers (“Boers”). The law decreed that Khoikhoi must have a fixed place of abode, and movement was illegal without a pass from their master or local official. Khoikhoi found without their pass could be thrown into prison and then returned to compulsory work for the Afrikaners.

Troubles between British and Afrikaners developed, particularly as the British moved to ban slavery throughout the Empire. In 1837 the “Great Trek” began, as Afrikaners left Cape Colony and moved inward on a flight they likened to that of the children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. Virtually exterminating the San, in one day alone killing 3,000 Zulu, the “Trekboers” moved into Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State regions subsequently united with Cape Colony to form a Union of South Africa.

The discovery of diamonds and gold produced wars that brought all of southern Africa under British control. Brutal treatment of Afrikaner resistance, including the herding of them into concentration camps, characterized the Boer War and generated sympathy for Afrikaners among British liberals. In 1910 the Union of South Africa was created with two Boer generals, Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, as prime minister and deputy, respectively.

A blueprint for the Union’s state-enforced segregation was prepared under the direction o f J.B.M. Hertzog, another Boer War general. Passed as the Native Land Act of 1913, the law set aside 7.3 percent of the land area (increased to 13 percent in 1936) for blacks, who comprised 67 percent of the population. For the 1.3 million whites, 21 percent of the population, fully 92.7 percent of the land was reserved, including all of the major towns.

Hertzog also launched the National Party, dedicated to giving priority to Afrikaner interests. The 1924 elections swept his party into power, ousting Smuts who had been prime minister since Botha’s death in 1919. During his fifteen years as prime minister, Hertzog endeavored to strengthen in every way the white man’s rule, tightening the color bar and insisting that “civilized” labor replace “uncivilized.”

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, blacks created the African National Congress in 1912. Seeking assistance of the British against racist policies of the Afrikaner government, the ANC met with disappointment. The British, having abandoned all liberal principles, supported the Native Land Act and washed their hands of the entire matter.

As moderation of the ANC got them nowhere, blacks became more militant, striking and forming unions. European communists came to South Africa to help organize the blacks. Meanwhile, Hertzog pressed on with measures designed to curb voting rights. The 1927 Native Administration Act made the governor-general supreme over all blacks, creating a separate legal system and administration for them.

A fusion of rival parties in 1934 brought together the Afrikaner and British whites into a United Party with Hertzog and Smuts as prime minister and deputy prime minister respectively. Rejecting the coalition, a group of extremist Afrikaners relaunched the “Purified National Party” under leadership of Dr. Daniel Malan, dedicated to a religious ideology of Afrikaners as God’s chosen people.

With Smuts as prime minister, South Africa sided with the British in World War II. Afrikaner resistance produced internment for Nazi sympathizers like B.J. Vorster, later to become prime minister.

Then, in 1948, Dr. Malan and the National Party came to power on a platform that declared:

The choice before us is one of these two divergent courses: either that of integration, which would in the long run amount to national suicide on the part of the whites; or that of apartheid, which professes to safeguard the future of every race..the fundamental guiding principle of National Party Policy is preserving and safeguarding the white race.

Malan had Parliament strengthen laws to prohibit intercourse between Europeans and any non-European, as well as to ban marriage between whites and non-whites. Further, the Population Registration Act classified all persons by race, and the designation was stamped on their identity passes. The Group Areas Act marked off areas for residence and occupation by race and removed each race into its own area. In 1950 Malan appointed Hendrik Verwoerd to be Minister of Native Affairs to expedite apartheid. As ruler of ten million blacks, almost 70 percent of the total population, Verwoerd focused on reincorporating blacks into homelands or native reserve areas.

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 strengthened the local role of tribal chiefs, and the Bantu Education Act of 1955 created an apartheid syllabus so that blacks would learn only what was “practical” for them. ANC leaders Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli (later to win the Nobel Peace Prize) mounted a non-violent defiance campaign against these racist laws. Arrests led to a “Treason Trial” which extended from 1956 until 1961. Inability to prove charges against the blacks left only 30 of 156 defendants standing trial to its end. In March 1961 the remainder were acquitted because the state had failed to prove that the ANC and its allies had pursued a policy of violence.

The 1958 elections produced a huge National Party victory, with Verwoerd elected as prime minister. With the 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self Government Bill, Verwoerd created eight homelands out of the scattered reserves for blacks, henceforth called “Bantustans.” Black protests, for example, in March 1960 in Sharpeville produced 69 killed and 180 wounded. By 1961 Verwoerd had withdrawn South Africa from the Commonwealth. He then named to the post of Minister of Justice B.J. Vorster, a man imprisoned during World War II for being a Nazi.

The ANC became convinced that more militant tactics were needed. While seeking to avoid all-out war, so as not to provoke overwhelming white response, an ANC offshoot under Mandela’s direction carried out acts of sabotage. The effort reached its end in 1964 with the capture of ANC leaders, including Mandela, who is in custody to this day. The government moved ahead with the transfer of blacks to “independent” bantustans, where natives would have power over local matters only.

By 1963 more than 3.5 million blacks had been transferred to homelands. A general circular stated that “the Bantu are only temporarily resident in the European areas of the Republic for as long as they offer their labor there.” Although displaced blacks were being transferred to land that could not accommodate more cattle or sustain agriculture sufficient for the increased population, the government insisted that all blacks who moved to the bantustans did so voluntarily. “Autonomy” was conferred on sub-states with names like Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Gazankulu, Venda, Qwaqwa, and Kwazulu.

One unforeseen consequence of segregation was the growth in all black universities of Black Consciousness. One leader of the movement was a medical student named Steve Biko. At age 30, Biko died while in police custody, despite the fact that he never had been found guilty of any crime.

”Terrorism” had come to be defined as encouraging any feeling of hostility between blacks and whites, or any depiction of white rule as oppressive. By that definition, the Soweto schoolchildren who protested in June 1976 were “terrorists.” Lacking national leadership and organization, the schoolchildren throwing stones nevertheless launched a national confrontation with the government. The authorities responded with brutal measures to identify ringleaders and haul them away. Detention laws had been progressively extended to allow police to hold suspects without charging them or bringing them before a court for twelve days (1962), ninety days (1963), 180 days (1965), for an unlimited period if authorized by a judge (1966) and without such authorization (1976).

As the number of Third World members of the United Nations rose, the pressures on South Africa from that body increased. In 1977 and 1978 more whites left the country than entered. The government attempted reforms, largely for the economic reason that South Africa needed more skilled workers than were available among the white population. So, “Section 10 rights” permitted some blacks to remain in previously forbidden areas. Long leases on houses in black townships near white centers were once more made available. By 1975 blacks in the military enjoyed the same status as whites of equal rank.

P.W. Botha, Vorster’s successor as prime minister, sought to extend the reform movement, arguing that “we must adapt, otherwise we shall die.” Botha and his Minister of Defense, Magnus Malan, recognized that survival required more than military strength. But, gains made by the right-wing of the party in 1981 elections put brakes on the pace of reform.

In 1983 Botha proposed a three-chamber Parliament for Whites, Colored, and Indians in a ratio of 4:2:1 that insured white domination. Although this arrangement excluded blacks, they were allowed to elect local authorities in the townships. There was resistance to such collaboration with whites. Rev. Allan Boesak, a colored, who was President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, maintained that “what you call ‘compromise’ for the sake of politics is in fact selling out your principles, your ideals and the future of your children.” He and others launched the United Democratic Front in August 1983 and opposed local elections in black townships.

The non-racial and more liberal UDF came to be challenged in the townships by a group calling for total revolution. This Azanian People’s Organization, wanting no negotiations with whites, sought elimination of capitalism as well. By 1985 Botha was prepared to release Nelson Mandela from prison in return for a pledge to stay out of trouble. Mandela’s response is instructive concerning the terms for any future peace in South Africa.

I am no less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people, to be free..What freedom am I being offered whilst the organization of the people remains banned? What freedom am I being offered when I may be arrested on a pass offense? What freedom am I being offered when I must ask permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is not respected?

Only free men can negotiate..Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

When a member of Parliament visited Mandela in May 1986, she said afterwards, “It is crazy for the government not to take advantage of his position of authority among blacks, authority which I believe he would use to the benefit of all in South Africa..I believe Mr. Mandela’s talents should be used before it is too late and far more radical elements take control of the ANC.”

In 1988, at age seventy, Nelson Mandela contracted tuberculosis and was moved to a nursing home.

De Facto Apartheid In Israel

Israel is officially the “sovereign state of the Jewish people,” not of its citizens. More than 90 percent of the land is owned by the state which, by transferring resources to the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, segregate land and subsidies for the exclusive benefit of Jews. Its charter restricts the Jewish National Fund to actions that are “beneficial to persons of Jewish religion, race, or origin.”

Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, is among those Israeli Jews who admit the racist character of the state. Writing in the Jerusalem Post on January 7, 1987, Benvenisti described Israel as:

a bi-national entity with a rigid, hierarchical social structure based on ethnicity. Three and a half million Jewish Israelis hold a total monopoly over governmental resources, control the economy, form the upper social stratum, and determine the educational and national values and objectives of the republic. The two million Palestinians divide into Israeli Palestinians and the Palestinians in the territories. Though the former are citizens of the republic, their citizenship does not assure them equality in law ...

The ethnic groups maintain economic interaction defined in professional literature as “internal colonialism,” that is, the inferior economic group serves both as cheap labor and as a market for finished consumer products ...

”De facto” apartheid is used in the title of this section to distinguish discrimination in Israel from the comprehensive “de jure” or legal foundation of separateness imposed in the Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation since 1967. However, it should be recognized that some discrimination is also a matter of law in Israel. For example, the Law of Return passed in 1950 offers automatic Israeli citizenship upon entrance into the country to any Jew, from anywhere in this world and solely by virtue of Jewishness. Also, the Nationality Law of 1952 places special conditions on the naturalization of non-Jewish residents of Israel who had not acquired citizenship by that date.

Other legalized and institutionalized kinds of discrimination in Israel take more indirect forms. By tieing many benefits to military service, from which Palestinians are excluded, the government is able legally to discriminate in favor of Jews. For example, large families are entitled to receive allowances which are 40 percent higher if a member of the family has served in the Israel Defense Forces. Jewish students in seminaries, who are exempted from army service, are compensated from a special fund within the Ministry of Religion. Other economic benefits, contingent on military service, are also denied Palestinians. Mortgage money available for young couples is three times higher for veterans than for others, for example.

”Separate development” is an official philosophy guiding Israeli policy as it does South African policy. In Israel there are separate educational systems for Jews and Palestinians, separate curricula, separate sections for Palestinians within government ministries, and a separate section for Arab affairs within the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation.

The deprivations that Palestinians in Israel experience today are to be understood as the legacy of a 40-year history of discriminatory practices designed to ensure, in the words of Chaim Weizmann, that Zionists would “finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English.” The most significant source of deprivation was the confiscation of Palestinian land. The recommendation of the United Nations General Assembly, into whose lap the British had dropped the problem, was that Jews should be given 57 percent of the land. Palestinians, who were still two-thirds of the population, were to be allowed to keep only 4,300 of the 10,000 square miles of Palestine.

It is ironic that Zionists point to the General Assembly recommendation of November 29, 1947 as legitimation for its statehood, since David Ben-Gurion thereafter declared that Israel “considers the United Nations resolution of 29 November, 1947 as null and void.” Moreover, Israel has in subsequent years found reason to reject virtually all other United Nations decisions regarding Israel. It was never the intention of the Zionists to be content with just part of Palestine, since the official policy was to create a Jewish state in all of Palestine. As Ben-Gurion said, “To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion.”

By early 1949, the Zionists occupied another 20 percent of the land beyond the 57 percent proposed by the Partition Plan, with the remaining 23 percent of Palestine to be seized in 1967. Chaim Weizmann declared it “a miraculous simplification of Israel’s task.” The standard Israeli explanation has long been that Palestinians voluntarily left the land in response to appeals from Arab regimes intent on invading Palestine to push back the Zionists. That explanation has never been supported by any evidence. Painstaking research by scholars examining archives of Arab governments, Arabic newspapers of the time, and radio monitoring reports of the BBC discovered just the opposite, that Arab and Palestinian authorities had urged the people not to evacuate.

The Zionist myth about the Palestinian exodus, now thought to have been invented by Yosef Weitz, a director of the Jewish National Fund in 1948, is today being exploded by several Israeli historians, among them Tom Segev (1949: The First Israelis), Simha Flapan (The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities), and Benny Morris (The Palestinian Refugee Problem). Morris discusses the predicament Israel Defense Forces faced when Palestinians in the towns of Ramle and Lydda did not flee as expected because of the fighting. Operation Commander Yigal Allon and his deputy, Yitzhak Rabin, were with Ben-Gurion. Allon asked, “What shall we do with the Arabs?” who numbered between 50-70,000. “Ben-Gurion made a dismissive gesture with his hand and said ‘expel them.’”

Once the fighting stopped, Israel set about confiscating not only the land of the 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled but also, over a longer period of time, much of the land of Palestinians who remained. Enabling legislation in 1948 authorized seizure of “uncultivated” land; a 1949 law permitted expropriation of land for “security” reasons; a 1950 law transferred property from “absentees” to the state, with “absentee” so cleverly defined that it was applicable to half the Palestinians remaining in Israel; a 1953 law legitimized all previous confiscations of land, whether or not occurring by due process; a 1958 law demanded proof of land possession for a longer period than Ottoman Law had required; finally, a law for the Acquisition of Land in the Public Interest was used to confiscate some of the best farm land remaining in Palestinian hands to create Jewish townships in Nazareth, Carmiel, and elsewhere.

Confiscated land was transferred to the Jewish National Fund as the “irrevocable patrimony of the Jewish people,” eliminating the possibility of sales to Palestinians, and mandating its use exclusively for Jews. Between 1948 and 1970 land transferred to the Jewish National Fund from the government of Israel included: about 40 percent of the land owned by Palestinians who remained legal residents of Israel but were declared “present absentees”; hundreds of thousands of dunums (a dunum=1/4 acre) cultivated by Bedouin in the Negev; and the assets of the Moslem Waqf, a religious endowment to which Palestinians over time had donated land and money for the benefit of the Moslem community.

Unabashedly discriminatory land expropriation took place in still another way. First, an area of Palestinian-owned agricultural land was declared a “closed area” according to Article 125 of the Emergency Regulations, meaning that the owners could not enter it for any reason whatsoever. After three years the land was classified as uncultivated and therefore subject to confiscation. Having now passed into the Jewish land reserve, the “closed area” classification was lifted and permission was given to Jewish farmers to resume its cultivation. In 1962 Shimon Peres, then director general of the Ministry of Defense, said that, “by making use of Article 125, on which the Military Government is to a great extent based, we can directly continue the struggle for Jewish settlement and Jewish immigration.” The Military Government to which Peres referred was a key element in the apartheid policy of Israel toward its Palestinian population. For eighteen years, from 1948 to 1966, a “Military Administration,” whose governor was appointed by the defense minister, exercised virtually dictatorial powers over Palestinians in Israel. The same Emergency Regulations used by Israel to control the Palestinians were described, when applied against the Jews by British Mandate authorities, as “officially licensed terrorism.” One future Israeli Minister of Justice, Yaacov Shapira, had complained that they were “unparalleled in any civilized country; there were no such laws even in Nazi Germany.”

An “emergency situation” was declared in Israel immediately after the state was created and, although the apartheid Military Administration over Palestinians was removed in 1966, the “emergency” declaration remains in force to this day, allowing the government to act when it sees fit against Palestinians.

Segregation of Palestinians from each other and from Jewish society was a primary function of the Military government during the eighteen years of its operation. Restriction of travel was one means utilized to fragment the Palestinian community. Military permits were required for travel beyond one’s own village, and these permits specified the date, the destination, the route to be traveled, and the time of return. Palestinians found without proper permits were, like blacks in South Africa, subject to imprisonment and fines.

One purpose served by restrictions on travel was to prohibit gatherings of politically minded Palestinians and to prevent the formation of any Arab party or movement. Palestinian attempts to assemble or organize were suppressed by direct action of the Military Administration: confiscating permits, issuing expulsion orders, closing roads, making arrests, and declaring “closed areas.” In 1965 a small group of Palestinian intellectuals, called the “al-Ard Group,” dared to present a list of candidates for election to the Knesset. The Military Administration moved swiftly, refusing permission for the Arab list to appear on the ballot, banishing el-Ard’s leaders to remote Jewish towns, putting the party’s members in prison, and finally declaring the political party illegal.

Internal fragmentation of the Palestinian population and isolation from the Jewish majority was pursued by the military with enduring consequences and openly discriminatory means. “Judaization of the Galilee” (compare a program to make parts of South Africa “white") was pursued by expropriation of Palestinian land, economic subsidies to Jewish settlements, and expulsion of native populations. In the “Little Triangle” area, 80 percent of the land of Um el Fahm was confiscated from its inhabitants. In Nazareth the Israelis were so concerned about the existence of a Palestinian urban center that they decided to create an “upper” Nazareth for Jews. By 1973 the apartheid scheme had produced a Jewish Upper Nazareth population of 18,000. Even though the population of Palestinian Nazareth was double that, the land allocated for expansion of Jewish Nazareth was three times the allocation for “lower” Nazareth.

The tireless public relations projection abroad of Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” results in disbelief when westerners and especially Americans catch some stray glimpse of the apartheid society in Israel. Little is known in the United States, for example, of the fact that: civil marriage is not recognized in Israel; that intermarriage between Jews and Druse, Christian, and Moslem Arabs is prohibited; that Bedouin in the Negev have been forcibly herded into reservations; that curricula for Palestinian schools must avoid themes reflecting Palestinian culture and nationalist history and, in fact, must devote more time to study of Jewish history than Arab history; that the government consistently allocates substantially less money for Palestinian education, housing, and municipal services. For example, 1983 municipal budget allocations by the Israeli Government showed $1,688 per capita assigned to Jewish Nazareth and $629 per capita to Palestinian Nazareth.

From its creation in 1920, the Israeli labor union and welfare organization, known as “Histadrut,” was a major instrument of apartheid policy. Similar to the Afrikaner policy protecting white jobs at the expense of blacks, the Histadrut demanded that Jewish firms hire only Jewish workers. Not until 1959 were Palestinians admitted as members. Even so, Palestinians have been excluded from positions of authority and, despite the fact that Histadrut owns thousands of factories and firms, there has been a deliberate effort not to locate them in Palestinian villages.

With 92 percent of Israel’s land area confiscated as “inalienable property of the Jewish people,” and the Jewish National Fund not allowed under any circumstance to transfer ownership of land once acquired, the Palestinian population has been largely reduced to wage labor status. As in South Africa, Palestinian workers must travel to menial jobs controlled by Jewish employers in urban areas, with their own villages functioning largely as bedroom communities.

In the dual economy, Israel institutions have maintained under-development of the Palestinian sector to sustain dependence on the Jewish sector. The continuous flow of money and expertise from contributions of world Jewry, German reparation payments, U.S. foreign aid, and Israeli Government allocations channeled through the Jewish Agency and the JNF goes to the Jewish sector. Apartheid regulations that only Jews be employed on JNF land, that bonus payments go to wholesalers who buy Jewish crops, that Palestinian companies be denied loans on the same terms available to Jewish competitors, that Jewish settlements receive free of charge several municipal services that Palestinian villages must collect taxes to finance—are illustrative of the “internal colonialism” that the Jewish state has imposed upon its Palestinian minority.

Apartheid structures have ensured that there are no centers of Palestinian power, either economic or political. Yigal Allon, an architect of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, wrote a book in 1959 with the significant title, A Curtain of Sand. In it he said, “It is necessary to declare it openly. Israel is a single-nationality Jewish state.”

De Jure Apartheid in the Occupied Territories

Since the Six Day War of 1967, 850,000 Palestinians on the West Bank and nearly 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza have found their lives totally subject to the control of an Israeli military governor.

Immediately after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel imposed upon Palestinians the Defense Emergency Regulations of 1945 that Britain had revoked (although Israelis deny it) in May 1948. Ironically, Jews vehemently denounced the Regulations when they themselves were subject to the British during the Mandate. Meeting in Tel Aviv on February 7, 1946, the Jewish Lawyers Association resolved that “these regulations undermine law and justice, and constitute a grave danger to the life and liberty of the individual, establishing a rule of violence without any juridical control.” Conferees charged, “Even In Nazi Germany there were no such laws..It is mere euphemism to call the military courts ‘courts.’ To use the Nazi title, they are no better than ‘Military Judicial Committees advising the Generals.’”

Jews have employed not only these Regulations, but also 1191 military orders in the West Bank and close to 900 in Gaza. While Jewish settlers in the territories enjoy full Israeli citizenship. Palestinians in their own homeland are “permanent alien residents.” The apartheid legal system has Jewish residents subject to Israeli law, removed from the jurisdiction of the local court system, and allowed to establish their own settlement courts.

The location of Jewish settlements in West Bank and Gaza is illegal according to international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, applicable to the territories in the view of the United States as well as the United Nations, declares in Article 49. “The Occupying Power shall not depart or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The same Geneva Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” Nevertheless, between 1967 and 1978 alone, over 1,156 Palestinians were deported from the Occupied Territories and, as recently as April 1988, deportations from the West Bank village of Beita were taking place to satisfy the demands of Jewish settlers.

Confiscation of land has proceeded since 1967 to the point that 53 percent of the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem) and 81 percent of the Gaza Strip is now earmarked for exclusive Jewish settlement. Seizure is accomplished by various means: expropriation for military purposes; declaration that it is “state land”; declaration that it is “abandoned property”; and, finally, that it is land expropriated for “public” purposes.

In the West Bank approximately 65,000 Jews are illegally settled, while in Gaza there are less than 2,500 Jewish settlers, or 0.4 percent of the total Gaza population. Nevertheless, these Jewish settlers consume 19 times more water per capita than the Palestinians. In Gaza a ban on new wells applies only to the Palestinians. Israelis are sinking new wells deeper than those of the Palestinians, not only to supply the Jewish settlements, but also to meet the needs of Israeli farmers inside the “green line” of pre-1967 Israel. The 600,000 Palestinians of Gaza, about 70 percent of whom live in refugee camps, are situated in an area just 28 miles long and five miles wide. However, since most of the Gaza Strip is off-limits to Palestinians, it is estimated that they have .006 acres each, while Jewish settlers have an average 2.6 acres each.

During the 20 years of Israeli military rule, Palestinians have paid a net “occupation tax” of $800 million, thus not only financing their own subjection to foreign rule, but also subsidizing other Israeli projects. Some 100,000 Palestinians from the territories have been reduced to wage labor in menial and low-paying jobs in Israel. The average income per person in Israel is 10 times higher than for Gazans, and over four times that of workers from the West Bank. Palestinian migrant workers are not allowed to join the Histadrut union, and no Palestinian union has ever been recognized by an Israeli employer. Still, registered workers must make the same social security payments as Israeli workers.

While some 30,000 Palestinians are registered workers inside Israel, many more are part of the “Arab slave market” working illegally in Israel. Employers often prefer children and women because they are cheaper. For that part of the surplus work force who do get jobs in Israel, after a dawn awakening to congregate at places where Israelis select them for work, there is typically four hours of travelling each day to and from a work site in Israel. Reminiscent of South Africa, Palestinians from the territories are banned from staying in Israel overnight and so must return to their own areas after work. Israeli employers often skirt the law by locking Palestinians up in “dormitories” at the workplace, so that workers who leave at dawn on Sunday will not see their families until the next Friday night.

Restrictions are severe for Palestinians who try to make a living in the territories. Farmers are prevented from exporting to Israel products that might compete with Israeli agriculture. In fact, they must obtain a permit before planting any new vegetables or trees. In Gaza, an Israeli ban on new trees has caused a severe decline in the once flourishing Palestinian citrus industry.

Since 1967 the military government has functioned, not according to the requirements of international law applicable to occupying powers, but rather as an instrument for Israeli annexation of the territories and expulsion of its native inhabitants. The Hague Regulations, Article 55, declare that the occupying power may administer state property, but cannot impair its substance or alter its character In spite of this, there has been established in military headquarters a Special Land Registration Department whose records and operations are secret. It is here that confiscated land is registered in the names of Jews. In practice, the first clue that Palestinians often have of land being seized by the military is the sight of bulldozers preparing the land for construction of a Jewish settlement. Military Orders 59 and 364 make a mere declaration by the military to be sufficient evidence that property is state land, with a burden of proof to the contrary falling on Palestinians who have no right of appeal to the Israeli High Court, but only to a military committee.

All powers of land use planning are in the hands of officers appointed by the military, with no consultation of Palestinians living on the land. The purposes are evident. For example, Road Plan No. 50 seeks to avoid Palestinian towns and villages, connect Jewish settlements to each other, and create access roads for the settlements to main Israeli metropolitan areas. Apartheid of peoples is accomplished by extension of Israeli law extra-territorially specifically to Jews, and by giving Jewish settlements a different legal status from that of Palestinian population centers. The Israeli Government in 1968 invested absolute power over Palestinians in the military government, declaring “The Area Commander is the exclusive formal authority within the area. He is the legislator, he is the head of the executive, and he appoints local officials and local judges.” Whatever appearances of democracy exist in Israel itself for the Palestinians, for approximately 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza there is not even the pretense of democracy.

Palestinians may have their premises searched and may be arrested by any Israeli soldier without a warrant. The detainees can be held for 18 days without trial, and the detention is renewable without the presence of a lawyer for the defendant. Applications for habeus corpus are not accepted, and access to legal representation (subject to the discretion of the Prison Commander) is not permitted until “interrogation” has been completed. Complete isolation from the outside world for at least 14 days (after which a visit from the Red Cross may occur) sometimes produces a confession. For years Palestinians complained of torture to force confessions while in detention. When, in 1983, I questioned a member of the Knesset in her Jerusalem office about consistent reports of torture, I was assured by her, as member of a committee that had oversight of prisons, that Palestinians were not mistreated, but rather that “the PLO instructed them” to make such allegations.

In August 1987 an inquiry was finally undertaken. A commission headed by former High Court Justice Moshe Landau was set up to investigate the case, not of a Palestinian, but of a Circassian officer in the Israeli army who was convicted of treason on the basis of perjured testimony by Israel’s General Security Service (also known as Shin Bet). Although the commission concluded that the S.S. had systematically tortured Palestinians for at least sixteen years, and had also routinely lied in court about the methods used, it recommended no action against those responsible for what it called “ideological criminality.” Rather, it expressed its approval of a “moderate amount of physical pressure” during some interrogations, thus giving the go-ahead for torture in future situations.

Confessions written in Hebrew are in a large percentage of cases the only basis for judgment by the military court, whose decisions are not subject to appeal. The Israeli High Court has accepted military government contentions that the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, international law on the rights of civilians under military occupation, is not binding. And the High Court regularly refuses to question actions of military authorities based on “security” considerations. Even in cases where Palestinians attempt appeal to the High Court in Israel, they are not allowed to be represented there by Palestinian lawyers, although Israeli lawyers are permitted by military order to appear before all West Bank courts.

”Security” has become a blanket which is used to justify whatever action the military chooses--for example, refusal to permit a needlework cooperative or establishment of a YWCA center. In 1984, Hebrew newspapers reported that a cement factory project in Hebron had for years been denied a permit by the military because Israeli factories were not selling enough cement.

Military control over the personal lives of Palestinians is comprehensive. Reminiscent of the hated pass laws in South Africa (which have now been repealed in South Africa), Palestinians in the territories are required at all times to carry identity cards that may be confiscated by any soldier without reason. Even with an identity card, no Palestinian may leave the territories without permission, nor is he or she permitted to be in Israel between 1 A.M. and 5 A.M. Military authorization is required to practice a profession such as law or medicine, to obtain a driver’s license or license a vehicle. Sameeha Khalil, director of the Society for Family Assistance in Bireh, told me in 1985 that a bus purchased to transport children to the center had sat idle on the grounds for one year, because the military refused to issue a license for its use.

Mrs. Khalil also answered my question concerning why a map of Palestine on the wall of the office was utterly devoid of place names. She explained that the military had ordered removal of an earlier map which contained names of towns and villages, because Israel since 1947 has destroyed 385 of the 475 Arab villages within the “green line.”

A military permit is necessary for any transaction in real property, for receipt or entry of money into the territories, for start-up of a business, to dig a well or to transport water, to print any publication whatsoever, to bring into the territories any newspaper or other publication, to possess audiovisual material including cassettes and videos, to wear any clothing or possess any article whatsoever that contains the four colors of the Palestinian flag.

Punishment is not restricted to individuals suspected of having committed offenses. A favored practice of the military is house demolition, which has been condemned by both Amnesty International and the Red Cross as a violation of international law that prohibits collective punishment. In April 1988 the military blew up fourteen homes belonging to families in the village of Beita and also deported six villagers. No trial occurred prior to any of these actions.

On June 3, 1988 The New York Times reported that 2,000 Palestinians from the territories were prisoners in a corner of the Negev desert, “home only to lizards, scorpions and hellish heat that often inches up toward 120 degrees.” These Palestinians, reported Joel Brinkley, “have not been charged with a crime, given a hearing, or even told what offenses they committed ...” Removal of Palestinians from the territories into Israel is itself a violation of international law.

When information of this sort does reach the outside world, it sometimes occurs in spite of Israeli censorship. Frequently, a village or refugee camp is declared a “closed area” to journalists and anyone else before the army moves in to shoot, beat and arrest Palestinians. Other times the press credentials of offending journalists are lifted, as happened in April 1988 to Martin Fletcher of NBC News and Glenn Frankel of theWashington Post. When Israel in 1982 was daily dropping U.S. bombs from U.S. planes on the civilian population of Beirut, American TV news was broadcast sometimes with a blacked-out picture due to Israeli censorship of the footage.

All publications in Israel and in the occupied territories are censored, although the heaviest burden is borne by Palestinians. Publishers are deported (e.g., Akram Haniyeh in December 1986 after the High Court denied him and his attorney access to alleged evidence against him), or given administrative detention, a euphemism for imprisonment without trial for up to six months, which can be renewed repeatedly. Such was the fate of Reduan Abu Eyash, head of the Arab Journalists’ Association, who told The New York Times after his release in June 1988 that so many people were packed into his cell, “we had to eat standing up.” Often the newspapers themselves are shut down (e.g., Al-Ittihad in March 1988). A major source of information for the foreign press was Palestine Press Service, closed by the military for six months in 1988, in spite of the fact that the press service had always submitted its material to the military censor.

Repression in the occupied territories increasingly infects Israel itself. The Israeli newspaper Derekh Ha-Nitsots was shut down in February 1988, and its editors at the time of this writing are still in prison without access to their lawyers. In February 1987 the Jewish director of Alternative Information Center in West Jerusalem was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Among the charges leveled against the center was that its staff had been preparing a study on torture of Palestinian detainees in Israel prisons. The prosecutor argued that this was evidence the center was carrying out incitement, declaring, “Such a study would teach detainees how to resist torture.”

Educational institutions at all levels are the object of continual harassment by Israel military authorities. Universities are repeatedly raided and closed down; students are prevented from reaching campus because of roadblocks or lengthy inspection of identity papers; books are banned; laboratory equipment is heavily taxed; and professors are deported.

Dr. Hanna Nasir, exiled president of Bir Zeit University, was arrested by the Israeli military on the night of November 21, 1974, blindfolded, driven to the border, and ordered to walk across into Lebanon. Other professors were barred from teaching or summarily deported for refusal to sign a “loyalty oath” drawn up by the military in 1982. Dr. Muhammed Shadid of Najah University dared to publish in 1986 the results of a scientific poll and was promptly denied a permit to continue teaching.

Palestinian intellectuals not deported or imprisoned have been served with town arrest or house arrest orders. Faisal Husseini, head of the prestigious Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem, is currently in prison under a second consecutive six-month administration detention. This follows six years of town arrest during the day and house arrest at night. In 1985 the Israeli High Court refused his request to be charged and tried. The judges told him that his file is secret, unavailable to him or his lawyers.

The last elections permitted by the Israeli “democracy” were in 1976. Since then, Palestinian mayors have been deported (e.g., the mayors of Hebron and Halhoul) or have been the victims of car bomb maimings (e.g., the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah). Elected city councils throughout the occupied territories were dissolved, and today all government is controlled by the Israeli military. When Israel claims that there is nobody with whom to negotiate among the Palestinians, it is in part because any emerging leadership is crushed. In 1985-86 there were 36 deportation orders, 168 administrative detentions, 93 town arrests, and 103 home demolitions. In June 1988 Israel even deported the Gandhian disciple of non-violence, Mubarak Awad.

The Israel-South Africa Connection

Comparisons between Israel and South Africa exist by design, rooted in a history of collaboration that traces as far back as thirty years before the state of Israel came into being.

Chaim Weizmann and Jan Smuts, after their London meeting in June 1917, would become, respectively, the first president of Israel and prime minister of South Africa. Both of them saw the possibilities of exploiting British imperial interests for their own purposes. Weizmann had written in 1914 that England needed Palestine to safeguard approaches to Egypt and that, if Palestine were opened for Jewish settlement, then “England would have an effective barrier and we would have a country.” And Smuts envisioned an Anglo-Boer union in South Africa, he and his colleague General Botha forming a political party “open to all white men whether Boer, Jew or Briton.”

Although racist and sometimes anti-Semitic, South Africa’s leaders saw the wisdom of supporting Zionism. Jews were well represented among the industrialists and financial interests of South Africa and, by the end of World War I, constituted per capita the wealthiest Jewish community in the world.

Weizmann sought the influence of General Smuts, who had joined the War Cabinet in London. Smuts responded with such support that he was later able to write the Anglo American Committee of Inquiry “as one of those who in 1917 took an active part in the planning of the Balfour Declaration.” Until his death in 1950, Smuts maintained a close, cooperative relation with Weizmann, neither of them questioning the other’s right to fashion a state that denied the indigenous people. Near the end of his life, in 1947, Smuts wrote that “I am a South African European proud of our heritage and proud of the clean European society we have built up which I am determined not to see lost in the black pool of Africa.” When he died, the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Joseph Sprinzak, declared, “General Smuts is written on the map of Israel and in the heart of our nation.” Two years later, on March 18, 1952, Israel formally dedicated Smuts Forest in the Judean hills, overlooking the Weizmann Forest.

The Nationalist Party, which succeeded to power in South Africa after the creation of Israel, worked to contain its pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic attitudes in order to preserve the economic support of South Africa’s wealthy Jews, and to maintain white solidarity in backing of a minority racist regime. In return for a Nationalist Party embrace of South Africa’s Jews and the party’s strong support for the state of Israel, the Jews of South Africa accepted Nationalist Party politics and policies. The natural basis of such kinship was recognized by the virulently racist prime minister of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd. He noted in 1961 that Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” At a Cape Town memorial service following Verwoerd’s assassination in 1966, the Chief Rabbi manifested how Jews looked on him as “a man of sincerity and of deep integrity..a moral conscience underlay his policies: he was the first man to give apartheid a moral ground.”

By 1961 South Africa had become Israel’s chief trading partner in Africa. When Israel launched the Six Day War in June of 1967, Prime Minister Vorster’s government in South Africa released over $28 million to Israel from Zionist groups and permitted South African volunteers to work and fight in Israel. As Vorster saw it, both South Africa and Israel must “deal with terrorists across the border” and “fight against enemies bent on their destruction.”

South Africa outlawed the African National Congress, as did Israel the Palestine Liberation Organization. both countries still refuse to negotiate with those nationalist organizations of the indigenous populations, thus blocking direct negotiations that could resolve differences by diplomacy and nonviolence. It was Percy Yutar, president of the Johannesburg United Hebrew Congregation, who served as prosecutor in the infamous trial of Nelson Mandela and his ANC associates, and in 1968 Yutar was made Attorney General of the Orange Free State.

Over the years Israel and South Africa cultivated increasingly intimate relations, culminating in joint research and production of nuclear weapons. In 1950 the Israeli prime minister visited South Africa, and three years later South Africa’s prime minister, Daniel Malan, was the first foreign head of government to pay a visit to Israel. Diplomatic ties between the two countries were elevated to full ambassadorial status, and the Jerusalem Post indicated that Israel “is the first country with which South Africa has set up a joint ministerial committee to promote economic cooperation.”

The diamond cutting industry, which has at times accounted for more than 30 percent of Israel’s total exports, gets raw material from South Africa. During the 1980s South Africa has exported in excess of $100 million of uncut gems to Israel each year.

Military cooperation began as early as 1955 with the delivery of Uzi sub-machine guns from Israel. Centurion tanks were sold to South Africa in 1962, and that same year South Africa shipped ten tons of uranium to Israel for use in the Dimona nuclear reactor.

The two countries refuse to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, and consequently do not permit inspection of their nuclear plants by the International Atomic Energy Commission. However, the world has long known what Mordechai Vanunu, now serving an 18-year prison sentence in Israel, confirmed. The Israeli technician, who had worked in the Dimona plant for ten years, talked to the Sunday Times in London, which then published in October 1986 details of Israel’s nuclear build-up, an assembly thus far of at least 100 and as many as 200 nuclear weapons. Vanunu also expressed awareness that South African metallurgists, technicians and scientists were at the Israeli plant.

In September 1979, the two countries detonated a nuclear device over the South Atlantic, and Israel has supplied South Africa with the Jericho missile, which is able to carry a nuclear warhead. A joint naval project is development of nuclear submarines which are being built in South Africa, with assistance from Israeli engineers and design experts. Israeli expertise has provided South Africa with patrol and missile boats, Gabriel sea-to-sea missiles, and training in Israel for South African navy personnel.

The South African air force has been described as entirely an Israeli creation. Using the same Mirage-3 jets, Israel and South Africa were able to share experience and spare parts. In 1986 South Africa unveiled its new jet fighter, the “Cheetah,” which is virtually identical to the Israeli Kfir-2 jet. The Jerusalem Post reported in November 1987 that South Africa was vigorously recruiting Israeli engineers who worked on the Lavi aircraft project, offering salaries of $84,000 a year. These new recruits join 12-15,000 other Israelis already at work in South Africa. What should be especially unsettling to Americans is the fact that it was the United States that heavily subsidized the Lavi project in Israel--technology of which is now being transferred to South Africa.

In an encounter with Israel’s Prime Minister Shamir on March 16, 1988, the Congressional Black Caucus raised the Lavi issue and described it as an “unconscionable” use of U.S. aid. In the meeting with Shamir, Congressman George Crockett questioned the Prime Minister on “his government’s brutal response to the Palestinian uprising” and asked when “the curfews, the closed military zones, the beatings, the house raids, the gunshots, the rubber bullets, the tear-gassing and mass deportations would end.” American Jews have manifested alarm in recent years about growing estrangement between Black and Jewish communities in the United States. The Congressional Black Caucus got to the heart of the matter with Shamir. “Recalling the inhumanities of slavery in this country, having suffered the indignities of racial discrimination, Black Americans recognize and identify with those who are oppressed throughout the world. We, thus, feel a growing kinship with the Palestinians.”

Inconsistency and self-contradiction applies to Israel’s relation with South Africa. Prime Minister Vorster’s official trip to Israel in April 1976 included a visit of this Nazi collaborator to Yad Vashem, the memorial to victims of Nazism. In 1984, R.F. Botha, South Africa’s foreign minister, was greeted at the airport by Shamir, and a red carpet was rolled out for him as it had been for Vorster. He was feted at a luncheon with Abba Eban at the King David Hotel and also met with the Israel Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

Israeli officers train South African white soldiers; Israeli military advisors assist South Africa in Angola and are stationed in Namibia; Israeli technicians are busy erecting along South Africa’s borders a network of electronic fences, microwave detection and radar systems, and mine fields--all of which copy Israel’s blockade against Palestinians. South Africa is second only to the United States as a place of immigration for Israel’s Jews seeking a new home.

With more Jews today leaving Israel than moving to Israel, the motivation becomes clearer in pro-Israeli agitation to release Soviet Jews. Israel needs more Jews to populate West Bank and Gaza settlements on confiscated Palestinian terrain. Not only are these settlements sparsely populated, but Israel worries about how to offset the “demographic time bomb” that promises to produce a majority population of Palestinians after the turn of the century, thus establishing one further similarity between Israel and South Africa.

The U.S. approach to both countries has done little to discourage Israeli and South African intransigence toward their native peoples’ rights. For example, in 1987 the United States was continuing to use its threat of withholding dues to prevent the International Atomic Energy Agency from expelling Israel and South Africa. The U.S. resists ejection of these two countries despite the fact that both refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty, both collaborate on nuclear weapons development, and both disallow IAEA inspection of their nuclear facilities. And, at the same time as the United States has publicly expressed criticism of Israel’s brutality during the Palestinian uprising, it has quietly advanced military cooperation.

In its March 1988 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shamir, the Congressional Black Caucus pointed out another disturbing aspect of U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Black congressmen complained, “All of the federal programs geared toward helping low-income Americans received only $491 per capita” for fiscal year 1987, while aid to Israel in 1987 was $686 per capita.

However, effective the Jewish lobby has been in downplaying Israeli/South African comparisons, the victims of apartheid under both regimes know well the similarities. Rev. Allan Boesak, President of the World Alliance of Churches and a leader of the struggle in South Africa, spoke at a conference sponsored by Palestine Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. in September 1987. He said:

What is it that makes Israel take into its bosom a government that in spirit, philosophy, and actions reminds us more of Hitler than any other government today? There is something wrong here. And this is what brings me tonight to speak to you ...

We must remember because, you see, your struggle and our struggle is not only against apartheid either here or there; it is not only against injustice, exploitation; it is not only against the dehumanization of our peoples; it is also a struggle against forgetfulness … We must remember that this land, yours and ours, belongs to all of us and not simply to a small elitist clique who now has claimed the land simply because they have more guns, more deadly weapons, and more friends in high places.

Until U.S. human rights rhetoric, as expressed by President Reagan at the Moscow summit in May 1988, is matched by effective action against apartheid in Israel and South Africa, human rights advocates will continue to accuse the United States of hypocrisy, and American foreign policy increasingly will be seen as an instrument for the alienation of Third World peoples. Meanwhile, the siege mentality shared by South Africa and Israel deepens as the power of Third World countries grows. Paranoia about “survival” and “security” will come to have more and more basis in reality if a hybrid Bantu-Zionism persists in denying self-determination and genuine equality to both native peoples.

Robert Ashmore is chairman of the board of Palestine Human Rights Campaign, co-leader of fact-finding missions to the Middle East in 1983 and 1985, and author of Building a Moral System (Prentice Hall, 1987).

Back to Top
Return to Article