Apartheid

Alex and Stephen Shalom:
More than half a century ago, the United Nations (which at the time
had comparatively few Third World members) recommended the
partition of Palestine into Palestinian and Jewish states, and an
internationalized Jerusalem, with the Jewish [and most recently
immigrated] minority to receive the majority of the land, as well as
most of the fertile land. A civil war and then a regional war ensued
and when the armistice agreements were signed there was Israel, the
Jewish state, but no Palestinian state and no international Jerusalem,
both of these being taken over and divided between Israel and Jordan
[and the Gaza strip by Egypt]. The occupying Israelis, however, were
not content to block the emergence of a Palestinian state; they wanted
as well to expel as many Palestinians as possible. This ethnic
cleansing – forced expulsions facilitated by acts of terror – drove
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral lands, to
refugee camps where they lived in squalor, longing to return [and with
international law on their side]. In 1967, Israel conquered Jordan’s
[and Egypt’s] share of Palestine, creating a new wave of Palestinian
refugees, and subjecting many more to ruthless Israeli rule in the
occupied territories. 128
There were only 24,000 Jews in Palestine in 1881. At that point in time Arabs made up
95 per cent of the population of Palestine. Although ruled by Turks, Arabic-speaking
Palestinians had continuously owned the territory of Palestine for over a millennium. After the
birth of the Zionist movement in 1896 (see Chapter II.9.3, below), however, Jewish
immigration into the country gathered steam, so that around 60,000 Jews inhabited the
country when the British took over the province from the Turks at the end of World War I.
Yet, they were still only around ten per cent of the total population. In 1917, Britain issued its
‘Balfour declaration’, in the words of the Guardian newspaper: a “masterpiece of political
obfuscation, in which the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, writing to Lord Rothschild
of the World Zionist Organisation, promises all things to all men: ‘His Majesty’s Government
view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and
will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of
existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by
Jews in any other country.’” And so, it did not quite promise all things to all men. In
particular, the political, social, and economic rights of the indigenous 90 per cent of the
population are conspicuously absent. Yet the British had previously promised Arabs political
independence if the Arabs would help them topple Ottoman rule, a promise that was broken.
The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, admitted in November 2002 that the British had
helped create the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Balfour Declaration. But it should not be
forgotten that it was also the result of Zionist lobbying, and more generally of western
nationalism and racism against Arabs. In the years following the Balfour declaration, another
35,000 Jews arrived, many with a Zionist notion of creating a Jewish national home in
Palestine, and clashes between them and the indigenous Palestinians started to erupt. 129
Applying to Join EU, May 20, 2003. See also Löwstedt: Comparing Israeli Oppression with South African
Apartheid, 2005, and footnote 415 below on Sharon’s admission to be practicing apartheid.
128 Shalom & Shalom: Turmoil in Palestine: The Basic Context, no date. I will deal with the wider historical
ramifications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in detail in Chapter II.9.3.
129 Abi-Aad & Grenon: Instability and Conflict in the Middle East: People, Petroleum and Security Threats,
1997: 6f; Brown: Israel and the Middle East: Key Events, 2002; N.N.: British Empire Blamed for Modern
Conflicts, November 15, 2002
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