Apartheid

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of their own.
Similar to what the Whites did with the South African Bantustans, the Israelis also
ensured an economic dependency on a minimum of no less than 90 per cent Israeli-made
products in ‘self-rule’ areas. This system keeps pumping Palestinian money into Israel and
leaves Palestinians at the mercy of Israeli product deliveries. 414 It was achieved not least
because of the cunning geographic positioning of the ‘self-rule’ areas, which are completely
surrounded by Israeli-administered areas, again precisely paralleled in the Bantustans in South
Africa, as well as in the Native reservations in the USA.
Even the number of Bantustans, ten in South Africa and ten (proposed in 2003) in the
West Bank (with an additional one in the Gaza Strip) speak for the depth of the inspiration
that South African elites provided to the Israeli elites. One may guess as to whether the
Israelis came up with the same number out of arrogance or unawareness. But the number ten
is no pure accident. It is simply in the nature of apartheid regimes – as well as genocidal
regimes, such as the USA – to divide the indigenous areas into a large number of isolated and
relatively small territories, which are strategically surrounded by the ethnic minority’s or
ethnic elite’s much larger tracts of land. 415
Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 2,000 houses in east Jerusalem alone, 350
of them for being built without permits, according to a European Union-funded research
project. 416 And this is no way a ‘right-wing’ government activity in Israel. In the first six
months of Ehud Barak’s Labor Party-led premiership, Israel constructed 7,128 new settlement
units, more than were built in three years when Netanyahu of the extreme right Likud Party
was prime minister. 417
It seems as if there is a basic division of labor between the Labor- and Likud-led
governments of Israel. The former steals more, the latter kills more. But that division of labor
is not part of a genuinely democratic culture, as Israeli and American elites are fond of
claiming, because the Zionist ideals and aims of both parties are identical, and they both
include the brutal maximization of Jewish-held territory inside and outside Israel. The demos
– the people – of Israel are not the people inside its borders, not the people under its military
control, not even its citizens, but its Jews.
(T)oday the Jewish National Fund, a member of the World Zionist
Organisation, administers 93% of the land of Israel. To live on land,
lease it, sharecrop or work on it, one must establish four generations
of maternal Jewish descent. In Israel, such a lineage is necessary in
responsive to calls for humanitarian access to victims than governments had been in other war zones such as
Bosnia, Chechnya, Angola and Sudan. See Leopold: UN Considers Asking Israel for Compensation Money,
2002; Butler: Israeli Attacks Hit EU-backed Palestinian Projects, 2002.
414 Related by television news correspondent Rula Amin on CNN International World News, February 3, 2001.
See also Blair: Palestinian Shoppers Urged to Fight Back at Israel, 2001.
415 Eldar: Sharon’s Bantustans Are Far from Copenhagen’s Hope, 2003, even claims that Sharon proudly and
explicitly proclaimed to Italy’s former prime minister, Massimo D’Alema, that the South African Bantustan
model was to be imposed by him on the Palestinians. Eldar also points out that Israel came the closest ever of all
countries in the world to officially recognizing a South African Bantustan, but that strong US pressure made
Israel leave it at a diplomatic representation – rather than an embassy – of Bophuthatswana in Tel Aviv.
416 Ass’adi: Israel Increases Palestinian Home Demolitions – Report, 2000. After the Intifada broke out later that
year, Israel started an unprecedented run of Palestinian home demolitions. By March 2004, UNRWA, the United
Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said Israeli forces had demolished 1,400 homes throughout Gaza, and
more than 900 in the city of Rafah alone, since the uprising began in 2000. Nearly 15,000 people had been made
homeless, according to UNRWA. Israel said the figures were exaggerated. Johnston: Palestinians Fear for
Homes at Gaza Border Hotspot, 2004. After this prophetic article was written, Israel completely destroyed at
least another 259 buildings and damaged many more in Rafah, killing scores of Palestinians in the process. As
opposed to Israeli media and outside world media, the mainstream news media in the USA hardly covered this
major world news event, except a little from the Israeli army perspective. See Parry: Time to Put the US Media
on Trial for Complicity in Genocide? 2004 and Chapter II.9.3, below.
417 Lyon: Barak ‘Far Worse than Netanyahu’ - Arafat, 2000