Apartheid

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Third World citizens or worse: ‘Jerusalem’s Jewish population, who make up about 70% of
the city’s 700,000 residents, are served by 1,000 public parks, 36 public swimming pools and
26 libraries. The estimated 260,000 Arabs living in the east of the city have 45 parks, no
public swimming pools and two libraries.’ 496
The policy of closure of Palestinian towns and cities implemented by the Sharon
government from March 11, 2001 led to new depths of repression. A Palestinian member of
the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, said it made Israel even worse than South Africa ever was,
‘since the blacks in South Africa at least had a status and pregnant women were not prevented
from reaching hospitals.’ 497
In the summer of 2002, the Palestinian NGO Medical Relief Committee said 67
Palestinians had died since the beginning of the Second Intifada simply because they could
not reach a hospital, due to Israeli military closures. The cases included people needing
kidney dialysis and women who died in childbirth. The Palestinian Ministry of Health
estimated that the number of women giving birth at home had risen from 3 per cent to 30 per
cent, while those giving birth with the assistance of skilled health workers had decreased from
97.4 per cent to 67 per cent, both of which endangered the lives of both mothers and children.
The Israeli army, however, says it must check ambulances out of concern they could be used
to carry weapons or explosives. It said explosives were found in a Palestinian ambulance in
March 2002.
At the same time, malnutrition was higher than 50 per cent among Palestinian children
in some rural communities. Nearly one in every two young Palestinian children was now
reportedly suffering from chronic malnourishment. According to a World Bank report, 70 per
cent of Palestinians were living in poverty – officially set at an income of under US$ 2 a day.
These can be seen as direct results of military closure, military curfews, economic and
financial strangulation and, last but not least, Israeli wishes and intentions along with US and
EU blessings. 498
496 McGreal: Worlds Apart (Israel and Apartheid Part 1), 2006. East Jerusalemites also have checkpoints, the
Apartheid Wall, and harassment and humiliations by Israeli police, soldiers, paramilitaries, civilians, and mainly
pro-Israeli tourists to look forward to on a daily basis.
497 Gilbert: MK Mahoul: Ramallah like ‘Concentration Camp’, 2001. It should not be forgotten that Blacks in
South Africa, as we have seen, hardly had any hospitals, nor that the few hospitals they did have were seriously
under-funded. However, see further, N.N.: Israel Strengthens Apartheid Policies, May 23, 2002; and Chomsky:
A Wall as a Weapon, 2004, in which Israel’s Apartheid Wall is seen as a means among many others for Israelis
to intentionally ‘...turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the Bantustans of South Africa
look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.’ Again, there are South Africans extremes left
out of this comparison, most of them targeting women: aside from the horrendous ‘health care’ offered to Blacks
as referred to in the previous chapter, black women were forcibly injected with possibly harmful contraceptives,
Blacks and Whites were prohibited from becoming ‘intimate’, and finally, millions of Blacks were killed
throughout southern Africa by the apartheid regime and its allies in Angola and Mozambique.
498 Hauser: Palestinians Struggle with Weak Health Services, 2002; N.N.: Information Update: Humanitarian
Crisis in the West Bank/Gaza Strip, July 29, 2002; Heinrich: Palestinian Hunger Rises as Israeli Blockades Bite,
2002. According to a counter-survey, funded by the US-based groups, CARE International and the US Agency
for International Development (USAID), however, ‘only’ 22.5 per cent of Palestinian children were suffering
from malnutrition. Al-Mughrabi: Survey Finds Palestinian Children Malnourished, 2002. Israel in fact made
reliable, independent investigations more or less impossible by imposing curfews and refusing to allow medical
teams or researchers into certain or any Israeli-occupied areas. For example, it would not let the United Nations’
World Health Organization (WHO) director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, into any of the areas despite
several appeals by the United Nations and others. See N.N.: WHO Assembly Condemns Israel, May 21, 2001;
N.N.: Israeli Closures Harm Palestinians’ Health -U.N., September 27, 2002.