Apartheid

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to keep people locked in. Due to it already dwarfing the Berlin Wall, Israel’s Apartheid Wall
could be compared more usefully with the Great Wall of China, also designed to lock people
out. It is also very likely that Israel’s experiment will share the fate of both predecessors, that
of utter failure to achieve its officially stated purpose.
A United Nations human rights envoy, the South African law professor, John Dugard,
has said that the main aim of the Wall is in fact to seize land rather than give protection
against suicide attacks. Furthermore, by creating ‘anger, anxiety and humiliation’ among
Palestinians, the Wall would raise rather than reduce Israel’s physical insecurity. Dugard’s
report for the UN Commission on Human Rights says: ‘The main beneficiaries of the Wall are
[Israeli] settlers...[who] will find themselves...with access to land separated from its
Palestinian owners’. 477 In other words, it is to a large extent an apartheid land issue. It is
blatant theft of land.
On July 9, 2004, the ICJ ruled that the wall violates international law and
recommended that it be torn down. By this time a third of it had already been built. It also
recommended compensation paid to those who already suffered from it. The court’s rulings
are non-binding, but Israel reportedly feared an ICJ ruling against it would be so influential as
to prompt efforts in the UN General Assembly to lobby for international action against it, such
as sanctions. In fact that is what happened with another apartheid regime in a similar case. In
1971, the ICJ ruled on the legal consequences of South Africa’s occupation of Namibia. As
Israel would do 33 years later, South Africa tried to argue that the World Court was not
competent to rule on the case, a view rejected by the court in its 1971 ruling. However, in the
case of South Africa, the UN Security Council had already declared the occupation of
Namibia illegal, a fact the World Court took as the basis of its ruling that UN member states
should take action against South Africa. That action came to include comprehensive sanctions
that contributed to the eventual downfall of the South African apartheid regime. In Israel’s
case, the Security Council did not condemn the barrier and any attempt to ask the Council to
approve sanctions was expected to be blocked by the anti-democratic veto power of the USA.
Nevertheless, the UN General Assembly declared the barrier ‘in contradiction to international
law’ in a resolution approved 144-4 in October 2003, backed by all the major European states,
but opposed by the US and Israel. Like his South African apartheid role models, Ariel Sharon,
the Israeli prime minister, rejected the World Court ruling, calling it ‘one-sided and politically
motivated’. 478
Even more similar to apartheid South Africa are the Israeli pass book laws. In the
West Bank, Gaza and Israel, Palestinian residents are required to carry ID passes according to
their region. Those in the West Bank carry orange passes, Gaza is green and those in the rest
of Israel (including Arab east Jerusalem) are required to carry a blue ID. These IDs could be
seen as ordinary residents’ IDs, but, due to their differentiation, they are used by Israel as a
way to maintain security, and – more importantly – control. At the various checkpoints,
citizens are required to show their ID cards when crossing from one zone to another. If a
person possesses an orange card and does not have a permit to enter the area, s/he will not be
permitted to enter. The same method is used with vehicle plate numbers. They too differ in
color according to zone, thus it is even easier for Israeli security to spot the origin of each car.
Apart from severely hampering freedom of movement, this has caused great divisions
between the residents of zones.
Furthermore, this division has prevented people from access to different institutions.
One major problem concerns hospitals and medical treatment, which are limited in the West
Bank and Gaza, especially during riots and attacks, when most hospitals in these regions are
477 Quoted in N.N.: Israeli Security Fence Aims at Annexation-UN Envoy, March 10, 2004.
478 N.N.: Factbox: World Court Ruling on Israel Barrier How It Works, July 9, 2004; Thomasson: World Court
Says Israel’s Barrier Must Go, 2004; N.N.: Sharon Rejects World Court Ruling on W. Bank Barrier, July 11,
2004