The idea of evoking the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians was not invented by Israel's critics, but by Israel itself.
A recent U.N. report has found Israel guilty of apartheid, causing a diplomatic skirmish between Israel’s supporters and opponents. The report, published by the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), compares Israel’s rule over Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank to South Africa’s treatment of non-whites during its apartheid phase.
Israeli officials and diplomats, meanwhile, rushed to slam the report as sheer Palestinian propaganda, an anti-Semitic slander akin to Nazi propaganda, and an Arab-led anti-Israel smear campaign aimed at tarnishing Israel’s international image.
Following suit, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blasted the report as “anti-Israel propaganda,” demanding its immediate withdrawal, and pledging to block “biased and anti-Israel actions across the UN system and around the world.”
The irony is that the idea of evoking the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was not invented by Israel’s enemies, let alone Arabs and Palestinians, but by Israel itself. For decades, Israeli officials have employed the Hebrew term Hafrada (“Separation” or “Segregation”) to describe Israel’s governing policy in the West Bank and Gaza, and its attempts to separate the Palestinian population from both the Israeli population and the Jewish settlers population in the occupied Palestinian territories. The so-called Israeli West Bank Barrier, known in Hebrew as “Gader Ha-Hafrada” (“Separation Fence”), was built on this Hafrada vision.
But the magic has apparently turned over the magician: By citing the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s official policy towards Palestinians, Israel’s critics are simply using Israel’s own terminology against it. They have at their disposal a long series of official declarations, platforms and plans predicated on Israel’s commitment to the principle of Hafrada.
The beginning was in the early 1990s, when Yitzhak Rabin, the then Israeli prime minister, proposed to build a physical barrier to separate Israelis from Palestinians, before ordering the construction of a 30-mile barrier along the Gaza Strip. Rabin’s Hafrada vision was summed up in his famous pledge to “take Gaza out of Tel Aviv.” “We have to decide on separation [Hafrada] as a philosophy,” he declared in 1994. A year later, he told Israelis: “We have to reach a separation between us and them.” In 1995, Rabin established a special commission to discuss the implementation of Hafrada and formulate a ‘separation plan.’ Demanding a complete separation from Palestinians, he endorsed a plan to build a 200-mile ‘separation line’ of fences with the West Bank. Ironic as it may sound, Rabin often described the peace process with Palestinians as a form of Hafrada.
Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, seemingly conceded to the same Hafrada logic when, on the eve of the 1996 elections, he told Israelis: “Build a fence to keep out the Palestinians.”
In 1998, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ran on a platform based openly on the Hafrada doctrine, campaigning under the slogan: “Us here. Them there.” In a famous speech to B’nai B’rith International (dated August 26, 1998), Barak declared: “We should separate ourselves from the Palestinians physically, following the recommendation of the American poet Robert Frost, who once wrote that good fences make good neighbors. Leave them behind the borders that will be agreed upon, and build Israel.”
Thanks to his unwavering devotion to the principle of Hafrada, Barak won the general election of 1999 in a landslide victory. From his new office, he sought to put his Hafrada vision to practice. To stimulate cabinet discussion of segregation, he handed his ministers copies of a separatist manifesto composed by the Israeli academic Dan Schueftan, titled Korach ha-Hafrada (The Necessity of Separation), which is said to have inspired Barak’s segregationist vision. Barak was shrewdly aligning himself with the dominant popular sentiment in Israel: A national poll conducted in late December that year showed 75 percent of Israelis in favor of Hafrada.
Come the 2000s, Hafrada rapidly became Israel’s raison d’être and founding ideology. In 2003, Ariel Sharon, who two years earlier had defeated Barak in a crushing landslide, proposed his own version of Hafrada: Unilateral separation, which translates in Hebrew as “Hafrada Had Tzdadit.” Sharon’s vision of Hafrada ultimately prevailed over Barak’s. It was adopted by the Israeli cabinet in June 2004, approved by the Knesset in February 2005, and enacted in August 2005, culminating in Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza.
Sharon’s “Unilateral Separation Plan”, or “Tokhnit Ha-Hafrada,” paved the way for the construction of the notorious separation wall, dubbed by Israeli officials as the physical incarnation of Sharon’s vision of Hafrada. Curiously, the original Hebrew term for the plan, “Tokhnit Ha-Hafrada” (Segregation Plan), was changed to “Tokhnit Ha-Hitnatkut” (Disengagement Plan), apparently for fear that the Hebrew “Hafrada” might echo the Afrikaans term “apartheid.”
Under Ehud Olmert, Sharon’s successor, Hafrada put on a new face: “The realignment plan”, or the “convergence plan,” which was coined to designate Israel’s plan to unilaterally disengage from most of the West Bank after annexing Jewish settlements into Israel. Notwithstanding the milder and lightly modified terminology, the new plan explicitly sought to continue the “segregation policy” (Medinyut ha-Hafrada) implemented by Olmert’s predecessors.
The current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares his predecessors’ infatuation with the principle of Hafrada. In 2011, he told members of his cabinet: “The debate over how many Jews and how many Palestinians will be between the Jordan and the sea is irrelevant. It does not matter to me whether there are half a million more Palestinians or less because I have no wish to annex them into Israel. I want to separate from them so that they will not be Israeli citizens.”
While some Israelis tend to distinguish between “hard separation” (Rabin and Barak) and “soft separation” (Perez and Olmert) the result has been one and the same: A rigid form of physical separation where one ethnic group enjoys more freedom than the other.
This is not to suggest that Israel’s Hafrada is identical to South Africa’s apartheid, but that apartheid, or separateness, as a system of enforced segregation based on ethnicity and imposed by a sovereign and dominant group over an impoverished one, can take myriad forms.
The term “Hafrada” has rapidly dropped from official use, apparently to avoid association with the notorious term “apartheid.” In Israel’s public discourse, though, the term has lost none of its force. Today, “Hafrada” is used as a broad term to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, be they in the West Bank, Gaza, exile, or even in Israel. Indeed, as the U.N. report put it, Hafrada is no longer limited to describing Israel’s policy towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but also applies to its treatment of its own Palestinian citizens.
This form of internal Hafrada has its origins in the military regime period (1948-1966), when Israel imposed a formal military administration on the majority of its Arab citizenry, putting in place a repressive apparatus of ethnic and economic segregation, land appropriation, and restrictions on movement and political activity. While less visible, internal Hafrada persists today in various forms. In 2005, an art exhibition organized by an association of Israeli architects in the city of Jaffa, aptly titled “Hafrada” (“Separation”), featured images of a dozen separation sites inside Israel, not only between Jewish and Arab towns, but between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods within Israel’s so-called mixed cities, including Haifa, Jerusalem and Lod.
Hafrada, Israel’s equivalent for ethnic segregation, is a purely Israeli invention whose basic etymology was coined for want of a practical and descriptive term that would better account for Israel’s policy towards Palestinians on both sides of the border. In Israel, the term is evoked by supporters and opponents of segregation alike. While in official discourse the term has been cloaked in softer and gentler expressions–– such as “convergence” and “disengagement”––to the average Israeli, the term simply meant, and continues to mean, one thing: “Separation” and “segregation.” In other words, “apartheid.”
Ironically, whereas Israelis across the political spectrum insist on employing the term Hafrada to describe Israel’s policy towards Palestinians, in U.S. official discourse and mainstream media Hafrada is oftentimes wrapped in the rather milder terms of convergence and disengagement. U.S. diplomats need not look beyond Gader Ha-Hafrada to grasp the irony.
This article is based on a false premise. The simplistic application of the “apartheid” tag to the
Israel-Palestinian conflict misses the essential point that Jews and Arabs are not members of the same national community. Apartheid involves separation, and different fundamental rights, between members of the same national community, based on race. Unlike the conflict
in South Africa, for example, which was a struggle by blacks and coloureds for equal rights with
whites, as citizens of the same national community, Jews and Palestinians do not see
themselves, and are not seen by others, as members of a single national
community. Each is a distinct national community in its own right.
Each of them has a combination of shared language, customs, beliefs and
traditions derived from a common past which gives them an historically
determined social identity in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. In
essence, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza is an international conflict, whereas the conflict between the races in
South Africa was internal.
To say that Israel is practicing apartheid is not to say that the situation is exactly the same as it was in South Africa. It is easy to point out differences. Nevertheless, as the recent UN report observed, the internationally recognized definition of “apartheid” does apply.
And regardless of whether the word applies according to its accepted meaning in the international community, the point is that Israel’s policies are discriminatory and criminal, which is inarguably true.
Discrimination is not apartheid. It exists in every society. Further, even though racial discrimination is recognised as wrongful under international law it is not a crime, unlike the crime of apartheid. The definition of apartheid does not apply in the context of an international conflict. Every country discriminates in favour of its own citizens against other nationals. Within Israel there is discrimination against its Arab citizens but they also have the same voting, civil, religious and legal rights as Jews. There have been Israeli Arab
members of the Knesset ever since the first Israeli elections in 1949; seventeen
of them are currently members of the Israeli Parliament. Israel’s Jews and Arabs have much the same
life expectancy and infant mortality rates, use the same public transport, eat
in the same restaurants, get treated at the same hospitals, share the same
beaches, theatres and cinemas, shop at the same malls, attend the same public
schools and universities and work side by side in many occupations. Immense
resources have been invested in certain sectors to address areas of inequality
and discrimination. Palestinian natives of Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi etc suffer far worse discrimination, but these countries never get lumbered with the apartheid tag. The recent UN report was publicly repudiated by the UN Secretary General and many western governments (including the US and UK governments) because of its legal and intellectual sloppiness and patent bias.
Like I said, “regardless of whether the word applies according to its accepted meaning in the international community, the point is that Israel’s policies are discriminatory and criminal, which is inarguably true.”
The Occupying Power has certain responsibilities under international law. Numerous of Israel’s discriminatory policies under its occupation regime violate international law (e.g., its settlement regime, home demolitions, etc.).
That is false. There is nothing in the internationally recognized definition of “apartheid” excluding its application to an ongoing occupation regime. On the contrary, it explicitly applies to all territories under a state’s jurisdiction, which includes occupied territory.
You have accurately stated the pretext for repudiating the report, but it’s a similar situation as with the Goldstone Report. As in that case, the claim of erroneous conclusions were made despite no errors actually having been pointed out. As in that case, the repudiation is not actually grounded in the question of whether the report’s findings and conclusions are reasonable, but in politics and Western complicity in Israel’s occupation regime.
It takes a lot more than discrimination and other alleged violations of international law to prove the
crime of apartheid. The reason why the word apartheid does not apply according to its accepted meaning in the international community (as you appear to concede) is because it does not apply according to its legal definition.
The definition of apartheid does not apply in the context of an international conflict. You say that the
legal definition of apartheid explicitly applies to all territories under a state’s jurisdiction, but then you wrongly state that this includes occupied territory. Not so. If a state extends its jurisdiction to
territory it occupies, this is tantamount to an annexation. “Extending its jurisdiction” to occupied territory means making its own law the sole law of the land. Israel has control over the West Bank, but has never extended its jurisdiction over, or otherwise purported to annex, the West Bank. On the contrary, it has expressly refrained from doing so. If Israel had annexed the West Bank and denied citizenship to its Arab inhabitants, then that would be apartheid, but it is a basic fallacy to assert that it makes no difference in this regard whether the territory is its own or not.
As for the Goldstone Report, the factual errors were pointed out ad nauseam by its critics but the most devastating was the retraction by Goldstone himself of the report’s central assertions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html?utm_term=.7a3ff40d4106
The Goldstone Report was not retracted, Goldstone’s op-ed was a hoax, and I challenge you to identify even a single factual error it contained. More about the hoax you are citing here:
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/11/28/10-zionist-arguments-youve-encountered-but-didnt-have-answers-to/
For a full dissection of the hoax, see:
https://www.obstacletopeace.com
You have taken the international law out of context. No problem that you would like to call Israel occupying the west bank. However, since Israel did not violently attack any sovereign country and take over the land and forcibly relocate it’s own citizens to the ‘occupied’ land the international law you are referring to does not hold here. Israel was attacked, won the war, took over lands that were illegally occupied under international law (the one you purport to know about) and opened the areas to settlement by those who chose to live there. This is not illegal under any law of Israel and certainly not internationally since the land was one from an entity who was illegally occupying land that was abandoned in WWI by the former rulers — the Ottomans. As far as I understand that empire fell in 1917.
Taking facts out of context does mean that what you falsely believe is accurate. Arabs have equal rights throughout Israel. The Arabs (Palestinians has they have called themselves for nearly 50 years) want their own country. Israel has given them the opportunity to build one on their own — after providing mandatory education, built universities, hospitals, roads and public buildings for them. It is time for the Arabs to build their country — your nonsensical hatred will not help them.
That is a perfectly meaningless statement. You are trying to deny that Israel is the Occupying Power in the West Bank under international law. But it is. This is a simple and uncontroversial point of fact.
This entire article is based on the flimsy statement that the terms hafrada (Hebrew for separation) is synonymous to apartheid (Afrikaan for separate development). The paralled is no doubt appealing for the usual crowd of lazy partisans happiest when they can use slogans instead of full, intelligent phrases, but it doesn’t change anything to the fact that this analogy has no ground in reality. Others have already described at nauseam the differences, so I won’t repeat them here, but one question the author could have addressed though is the Arabic term for banning Jews or barring them altogether from either staying or visiting some 33 Muslim countries (out of the 56 existing ones), including of course the Palestinian Territories. Rank hypocrisy, anyone?
Let’s not overlook how Israel actually came into being: via the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Arabs from their homes in Palestine.
Not exactly. Approximately 700,000 Arabs left their homes willingly when the Arab League told them to leave until Israel is destroyed. However, more than 300,000 returned within a few years. Ethnic cleansing means get rid of a certain ethnic group, like the Arab countries did with nearly 1 million Jews they kicked out of there lands once the State of Israel was founded. Today you will not find a single Jew in most of those countries — THAT is ethnic cleansing. Israel has a population of over 20% Arab, with an additional several million living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the lands they have occupied for at least 120 years.
700,000 dead or forced into exile, sounds like an ethnic cleansing to me.
I like how you conveniently lead your sentence with “dead” even though the number of dead is at most around 10,000. In other words, you’re very deliberately misrepresenting/distorting reality to push a certain narrative: Israel killed most of the 700,000… when in reality the number of dead Palestinian Arabs is about 1%, the same percentage of Jews that died in the war. This beautifully exemplifies the shameless and very conscious distorting made by “anti-Zionists.”
That is a malicious lie. More than 700,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from their homes in order for the “Jewish state” to be established.
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/11/14/benny-morriss-untenable-denial-of-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/
Amazing how anti-Israel sympathizers use information out of context to twist the reasoning behind various elements. Separation wall is so far from apartheid that it is nauseating. Ask not why there is a wall that separates Israel from the Arabs who are determined to destroy Israel and make their own State, but how is that that Israel provides the freedom the Arabs want. Since the fence was built — yes it is a fence, mostly chain linked has lowered terrorism attacks by 99%. However, the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. west bank) have freedom of movement throughout the areas under the PA and within Israel. They enjoy shopping in Israel malls, receiving medical care in Israeli hospitals, education in Israel schools, freedom of movement throughout Israel on all roads, etc. This is far from the definition of apartheid. The author is clearly influenced by anti-semetic propaganda with a clear agenda to undermine the State of Israel and support it’s destruction. What is most sickening is that he has a doctorate.
Undermining a racist state founded on ethnic cleansing seems pretty legit.
Jews and Arabs (especially Levantine Arabs) are of the same “race” by almost every standard.
It is astounding that a scholar with a PhD from Georgetown writes a piece with such factual falsifications, and even more astounding that it was actually published by “Foreign Policy”. That’s what happen when historians harness their knowledge for a second career as “activists” and propagandists.
An Apartheid policy entails separation in all walks of life: segregated bathrooms, parks, swimming pools, restaurants, schools and universities for different ethnic groups *inside* one’s polity. The meaning of “Hafrada” in Hebrew, as Assi quotes it, is territorial separation between Israel and the West Bank, established only after years of suicide bombings in Israel. The wall was indeed built in a skewed manner, illegally and unjustly incorporating Palestinian agricultural land – but it has nothing to do with Apartheid.
Inside Israel, Arabs and Jews study together in the same universities, visit the same parks, restaurants, cafes and shopping malls, and work together in the same places. There are Arab generals in the army and the police (both Druz and Muslim), Arab judges in the supreme court, and also Arab ministers (in previous cabinets). In the Hebrew University, where are I teach, I have Arab colleagues, and numerous Palestinian students, both Israeli, West Bank and East Jerusalemite.
All is not perfect. There is certainly discrimination, in Israel and in many other countries. It is deplorable and has to be countered. Writing falsehoods in quasi-academic language is certainly not the answer.
It’s Siraj not seraj. NO to arab/persian ignorance.
Israeli general Yair Golan in which Golan claimed that the purpose of the wall was not to keep out the suicide bombers – that was done through intelligence work. No, GeneralYair Golan correctly explained in 2007, the purpose of the separation wall was to prevent the mixing of Palestinian and Israeli populations.
Page 103:
“The Wall of Separation is the most prominent symbol of the decision by Israel’s government to enforce separation between the Israeli and Palestinian populations. Yair Golan, the commander of Israel’s forces in the West Bank, has said that the Wall is not the best or cheapest solution to provide security for Israelis, but it was chosen because it prevents the people from intermingling” General Yair Golan- lecture at Van Leer Institute, April 29, 2007. the wall is to prevent the mixing of Palestinian and Israeli populations.
It’s an annexation wall.