Apartheid

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KwaZulu comprised twenty-nine major and forty-one minor fragments.’ 369
The parallel to the situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at the outset of the
Second Intifada could hardly be more obvious or stark: “Divided into about 63 noncontiguous
cantons, completely encircled and besieged by Israeli troops, punctuated by 140
settlements (many of them built under Ehud Barak’s premiership) with their own road
network banned to ‘non-Jews’, as Arabs are referred to, along with such unflattering epithets
as thieves, snakes, cockroaches and grasshoppers…” 370 Seventy fragments of land here, sixtythree
there. This small numerical difference is inessential, especially when compared with the
dehumanization of the chosen enemy, but also with the arrogance of these forms of land theft.
Land confiscation, expulsion, non-contiguity, and surroundedness are the keys here, and there.
As far as I know, only South Africa, modern Israel, and the USA, with its native reservations,
have ever come up with such a comprehensive system of stripping an indigenous majority of
people of their land and their rights. It is no wonder that no other countries have been as close
to modern Israel – politically, militarily and culturally – as apartheid South Africa and the
USA.
3.3. The ‘Law of Return’ and the Neo-Bantustans
‘Israel’s Law of Return had [originally] enabled anyone who either had a Jewish
mother or who had converted to Judaism to acquire immediate Israeli citizenship. However, in
1970 the Law was amended to enable anyone who only had a Jewish father, a Jewish
grandparent or simply a Jewish spouse also to claim Israeli citizenship.’ 371 It was obvious to
authorities by this time that Israel’s repopulation program was going to run into the South
African (and Ptolemaic) dilemma. The indigenous were multiplying faster than they could be
expelled or killed. At the same time as the Bantustan policy of apartheid South Africa was
being hatched, Israel also decided to split up the indigenous by means of selective and
eliminative citizenship.
Political incorporation is one of the most effective means of
neutralizing a political challenge. The granting of citizenship to
Palestinians inside the 1948 boundaries was, indeed, astute. This,
however, was less a reflection of Israeli leaders’ adroitness and more a
reflection of Palestinians’ weakness. The political incorporation of
Palestinians posed no threat to the existence of the Jewish state: On
the eve of the [1987] intifada, Palestinians composed 18 percent of
Israel’s population and less than 13 percent of Palestinians worldwide.
The astuteness of Israeli policy makers does appear, however, in the
369 Thompson 1990: 191. See also Mandela 2002 (1965): 55-57.
370 Said, August 16-22, 2001 (see footnote 233). Israel has grudgingly allowed certain measures of democracy
and self-government in its Bantustans, under the influence of idealist US liberals and others. However, the
‘democracy’ and ‘self-government’ allowed the Palestinians does not extend to curtail Israeli measures of ethnic
cleansing, such as daily killings and land theft with impunity. Nor are Palestinian refugees, the vast majority of
Palestinians, allowed to partake in any elections or governments of their fragmented home country. See
Löwstedt: The Most Important Difference between the Palestinian and the Iraqi Elections? 2005.
371 Szamuely 1999. According to some Israeli immigration officials, several hundred Arab families that had fled
or moved to Jordan after the establishment of the state of Israel had now returned and taken up Israeli citizenship
for themselves and their families in 2001. Interior Minister Eli Yishai saw this as a ‘devious way of getting Arab
refugees to return to Israel’, and a threat to the ‘Jewish character’ of the state, although Israeli law actually
allows any former citizen to return. Yishai therefore instructed ‘ministry legal advisers to look into ways of
changing legislation in order to reduce the number of Arabs who receive Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli
citizens’ and for establishing quotas for the return of former citizens. See Mualem: Yishai: Let’s Restrict
Citizenship for Arab Spouses, 2002. The article also quotes Deputy Interior Minister David Azulai telling the
Knesset in the same week that 246,037 non-Jews had received Israeli citizenship since 1988. Of these, 221,428
were from the former Soviet Union, and most probably without exception in solidarity or collaboration with
Israeli Jews in their war against the Palestinians.