Apartheid

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distinction between ‘citizens’ and ‘nationals’, which effectively denies
even Palestinian citizens of Israel a broad range of rights and benefits
reserved for Jews. Thus, by granting parastatal agencies control over a
variety of social and economic functions – including land ownership
in the state of Israel – which they discharge solely for the benefit of
Jews, Israel is shielded from charges of discrimination when non-Jews
are excluded from those benefits.
Similarly, having granted control over matters of ‘personal status’ to
the religious Authorities, and lacking provisions for civil marriage, the
Israeli state effectively deters intermarriage between Jews and non-
Jews without legislating prohibitions.
Thus, the Israeli state has achieved ends comparable to apartheid
without drawing similar condemnation. That is, until 1967 when Israel
began to rule territories with a majority Palestinian population. 372
The last sentence highlights the return to ‘normal’ and brutally state-imposed apartheid
in Historic Palestine. It should be kept in mind that the Israeli military occupation of the
remaining Palestinian Territories from 1967 onwards also shares characteristics with both
colonialism and genocide. Yet here too it is predominantly an apartheid system, characterized
by the vastly preferential treatment of people of a certain ethnicity and discriminatory,
oppressive practices against the indigenous majority.
Israel has established a system of segregation and discrimination, in
which two populations living in the same area are subject to different
systems of law. While Palestinians are subject to military law and
usually tried in military courts, Israelis who commit the same offence
in the same place are subject to Israeli law and tried in civil courts
inside Israel. Jewish settlers enjoy all the rights of Jews in Israel,
including complete freedom of movement, speech and organisation,
participation in local and national (Israeli) elections, social security
and health benefits, etc. For Palestinians, on the other hand, even those
living a few hundred metres from Jewish settlements, freedom of
movement is limited. They cannot, obviously, vote to curtail the
powers of the IDF [the Israeli Defense Force] and they do not enjoy
Israel’s social security or health benefits. In Afrikaans they call it
apartheid. 373
372 Younis 2000: 14
373 Felner: Apartheid by Any Other Name: Creeping Annexation of the West Bank, 1999. I have refrained from
creating a separate chapter on apartheid law, since I believe that the practice of apartheid by far outweighs the
law in importance, and that it is more structured at a macro-level than the law is, especially apartheid law.
Sometimes the law will contradict practice and sometimes the judiciary will resist biased government directives,
as in South Africa. This may even make a difference between life and death as in the treason trials against
Nelson Mandela. The judges in his cases had joined the judiciary before 1948 and showed more allegiance to
British traditions, more sensitivity to contemporary western sentiments about the notorious trials and perhaps
also a more cunning insight into the potential propaganda value of a martyrization of Mandela for black
resistance than the executive powers did. See Mandela 1995 (1994): 260f. Yet the relationship between apartheid
laws and apartheid practices is not and never was a defining moment of apartheid. (See Cilliers 1998.) Its
occasional adversary aspects are rather like other unessential inner (potential) tensions in these societies, e.g. the
exploitation of white labor by white South Africans, or ‘Black-on-Black’ violence in that country, i.e. something
that is contingent and mainly dependent upon the constantly changing overall situation. Israel, which shares so
much with apartheid South Africa, even seems to make a point out of formulating its laws as differently from the
South African racist laws as possible, apparently in order for its apartheid system not to be ‘found out’ as such.
The Israeli state and other Israeli elites are easily able to achieve the same results by other means. As we have
seen, the religious institutions, especially, have proven useful in this sense. See also footnote 378, and Davis, U.
2003: 82ff.