Category: News and Views
On the New Book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”
Carter's apartheid charge rings true
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Saree Makdisi
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Former President Jimmy Carter has come under sustained attack for having dared to use the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's policies in the West Bank.
However, not one of Carter's critics has offered a convincing argument to justify the vehemence of the outcry, much less to refute his central claim that
Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land, while denying the same rights to the indigenous Palestinians. Little
wonder, for they are attempting to defy reality itself.
Israel maintains two separate road networks in the West Bank: one for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not
apartheid?
Palestinians are not allowed to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank; their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked altogether
by a grid of Israeli army checkpoints -- but Jewish settlers come and go freely in their own cars, without even pausing at the roadblocks that hold up
the natives. Is that not apartheid?
A system of closures and curfews has strangled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank -- but none of its provisions apply to the Jewish settlements there.
Is that not apartheid?
Whole sectors of the West Bank, classified as "closed military areas" by the Israeli army, are off limits to Palestinians, including Palestinians who own
land there -- but foreigners to whom Israel's Law of Return applies (that is, anyone Jewish, from anywhere in the world) can access them without hindrance.
Is that not apartheid?
Persons of Palestinian origin are routinely barred from entering or residing in the West Bank -- but Israeli and non-Israeli Jews can come and go, and even
live on, occupied Palestinian territory. Is that not apartheid?
Israel maintains two sets of rules and regulations in the West Bank: one for Jews, one for non-Jews. The only thing wrong with using the word "apartheid"
to describe such a repugnant system is that the South African version of institutionalized discrimination was never as elaborate as its Israeli counterpart
-- nor did it have such a vocal chorus of defenders among otherwise liberal Americans.
The glaring error in Carter's book, however, is his insistence that the term "apartheid" does not apply to Israel itself, where, he says, Jewish and non-Jewish
citizens are given the same treatment under the law. That is simply not true.
Israeli law affords differences in privileges for Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the state -- in matters of access to land, family unification and acquisition
of citizenship. Israel's amended nationality law, for example, prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel who are married to Palestinians from the occupied
territories from living together in Israel. A similar law, passed at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, was overturned by that country's supreme court
as a violation of the right to a family. Israel's high court upheld its law just this year.
Israel loudly proclaims itself to be the state of the Jewish people, rather than the state of its actual citizens (one-fifth of whom are Palestinian Arabs).
In fact, in registering citizens, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns them a whole range of nationalities other than "Israeli." In the official
registry, the nationality line for a Jewish citizen of Israel reads "Jew." For a Palestinian citizen, the same line reads "Arab." When this glaring inequity
was protested all the way to Israel's high court, the justices upheld it: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people." Obviously this
leaves non-Jewish citizens of Israel in, at best, a somewhat ambiguous situation. Little wonder, then, that a solid majority of Israeli Jews regard their
Arab fellow-citizens as what they call "a demographic threat," which many -- including the deputy prime minister -- would like to see eliminated altogether.
What is all this, if not racism?
Many of the very individuals and institutions that are so vociferously denouncing President Jimmy Carter would not for one moment tolerate such glaring
injustice in the United States. Why do they condone the naked racism that Israel practices? Why do they heap criticism on our former president for speaking
his conscience about such a truly unconscionable system of ethnic segregation?
Perhaps it is because they themselves are all too aware that they are defending the indefensible; because they are all too aware that the emperor they keep
trying to cover up really has no clothes. There is a limit to how long such a cover up can go on. And the main lesson of Carter's book is that we have
finally reached that limit.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on Middle East issues.
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URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/20/EDGOULJ69N1.DTL
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I have not read the book yet, but i am buying it this Friday. and to make it easier for some people, I am going to post another message to make the context easier for people to debate, so stay tuned.
Chris, Thank you for posting this. it is right now in a way difficult to make valuable comment on, however it's made me think in a way i don't believe I have before concerning this situation. I will await your next post and look forward to a good debate.
As will i, I think the way the government of israel has treated the arab members of its nation is disgusting and it is in many ways just like the african situations were...
it scares me though, because israel can, and have faught for their way of doing things.
Agreed Happyman and here is another risky opinion. I know the Palestinian people really had no choice but to vote for Hamas, but in the current climate, how can they hope to gain support from the west when they vote for terrorists, who fire rockets into Israel, in the middle of a cease fire agreed between the two sides. You can't have it both ways.
as I promised in my first posting, I will make few comments to enable those who are not acquainted with the history of the Middle East to participate more fully in the discussion. The author of the piece I chose in the first posting assumed readers' familiarity with the general historical & geopolitical context of the debate caused by president Carter's book.
DEMOGRAPHY:
BEFORE THE ADVENT OF ZIONISM (JEWISH NATIONALISM) in Russia IN THE EARLY 1880'S' THE POPULATION IN PALESTINE WAS ROUGHLY 650 THOUSANDS OF WHOM 5% WERE JEWISH, 25% Palestinian CHRISTIANS, & 70% Palestinian MUSLIMS. All three communities were indigenous to Palestine. More than 70% of the Palestinians were peasants & owned more than 99% of the land. The Palestinian Jewish population was mostly urban & owned less than 1% of the land. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT TOOK UPON Itself THE TASK OF FACILITATING THE IMMIGRATION OF EUROPEAN JEWS INTO PALESTINE in order TO CREATE A JEWISH STATE IN THE PLACE OF THE JEWISH KINGDOM THAT EXISTED FOR A SHORT PERIOD IN PALESTINE IN THE PRE-CHRISTIAN Era. The Zionists saw in the creation of a Jewish state as a solution to the endemic anti-semitism against the Jews in Eastern Europe. FROM THE MID TO THE LATE 1930'S, AS A RESULT OF THE ANTI-SEMITIC PRACTICES OF NAZI GERMANY, THE ZIONIST EFFORTS OF SETTLING EUROPEAN JEWS IN PALESTINE BEGAN TO BARE some FRUITS, but failed to make the Jews a majority in Palestine. BY 1948, THE YEAR IN WHICH THE STATE OF Israel WAS CREATED, THE NUMBER OF JEWS IN PALESTINE REACHED 450 THOUSANDS, ROUGHLY 30% OF A TOTAL Population OF 1.4 MILLION, & owned 5.7% of the total surface area, or 13% of the arable land.
The Creation of Israel:
Before WWI, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. during the war it fell under British occupation, & in 1922 the League of Nations placed it under a British mandate. The mandate was a system of tutelage by which the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire were made into new nation states under the guardianship of Britain & France, presumably to prepare them for "independence". The new nation states included Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, & Palestine. In November 2nd 1917, five years before the British mandate over Palestine went into effect, Arthur Balfour the foreign secretary of the UK. made a declaration committing his government to facilitate "the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine". He also made it clear that his majesty's government shall do nothing that "may prejudice the civil & religious rights of the existing communities in Palestine". The reference to the political rights of the indigenous Palestinian people was suspiciously missing from his statement. Balfour seemed to have assumed that the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, & the protection of the civil & religious rights of the indigenous people can be reconciled, but history proved the contrary. His declaration was prompted by war-time considerations within the larger context of British colonial ambitions at the time. These issues require a lot of space & too complicated to explain here. The important thing is that the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine made it easier for European Jews to settle in Palestine & arm themselves, ostensibly to protect themselves against the eventual reaction of the indigenous population. it is worth noting that the Palestinian rights to bare arms to defend themselves against the encroachments of Jewish settlers were strictly prohibited, & the death penalties against Palestinian violators were consistently upheld. The British authorities in Palestine allowed several Jewish militias to sprout. In addition a host of other Jewish political & financial institutions intrusted in land transformation & the settling of large numbers of European Jews in Palestine were found.
However, in 1939 the British government, inspired by war-time considerations again, reached to the logical conclusion that the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine & the protection of Palestinian civil & religious rights were irreconcilable objectives, & that the entire mandate was unworkable. Therefore, the British authorities began to impose restrictions on the transfer of Palestinian lands to the European Jewish settlers, & imposed strict limitations on Jewish immigration. The change of course in British policy was met by a swift reaction on the part of some Jewish para-military groups. Thus, 1939 marked the beginning of a conflict between Britain & the Zionist movement which escalated into a war between the two in 1944. The change of direction in the British policy convinced influential Zionist leaders that Britain was no longer a reliable protege & began to solicit the help of the United States in realizing the Zionist hopes to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
The league of Nations ceased to exist by the end of WWII, & the United Nations Organization was established to deal with the consequences of the war, promote world peace, & resolve international conflicts. By the end of WWII Britain's military & economy were exhausted, its position in Palestine became untenable, especially in view of the ensuing violent conflict between the British forces & the Zionist militias. As a result, the British government abdicated its role as the mandatory power over Palestine in the spring of 1947, & deferred the problem to the United Nations. The British government informed the UN general secretary that the British military & civilian administration would leave Palestine by may 14th 1948. In November 29th 1947, with strong US. backing, the UN general assembly passed resolution #181 which called for the partitioning of Palestine into two states equally divided between the Jewish settlers' minority & the indigenous Palestinian majority, with a small international enclave comprised of Jerusalem & Bethlehem to guarantee free access to the holy places for the three world religions. As a result, the ongoing war between the British forces & the Jewish para-military organizations began to subside, & another war between the Palestinian population & the Zionist settlers immediately started.
Because the Jews were still a minority in Palestine, the Zionist leaders made the decision to embark on a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to clear out the areas designated by the United Nations for the Jewish state of their Palestinian inhabitants. During the ensuing conflict neither the British military who were still occupying the country since WWI, nor the United nations or the United States made any serious effort to stop the war or put an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. At the time of the partition resolution the western public was in a state of shock & trauma, caused by the horrors of the Holocaust. They lined up behind the Zionist project in Palestine. The death of millions of Jews in Nazi concentration camps handed the Zionist movement a political victory which would have been otherwise unattainable under different political conditions. The plight of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust overshadowed the notion of justice & political rights for the Palestinians. The Palestinians became victims of the victims of Western civilization for failing to protect the European Jewry & getting rid of western guilt by creating an injustice for the Palestinians.
In May 14th 1948, the last British soldier sailed away from Palestinian shores and the state of Israel was proclaimed. by then, more than 300 thousand Palestinians had already been forced out of their homes at the hands of Jewish militias. The fleeing Palestinian refugees forced the hands of governments in the neighbouring states to send troops to assist the Palestinians, & hence an Arab Israeli war broke-out.
See Next Posting For More
Please read the previous posting if you have not already done so, the two go together.
The Consequences Of The 1948 Arab-Israeli War:
The 1948 war between Israel & the neighbouring Arab states is a watershed in the history of the Middle East, not only because it marked the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but mostly because of the grave consequences the creation of Israel had on Palestinian society. immediately after David Ben-goriun read Israel's declaration of Independence, The various Jewish para-military organizations were united to create the Israeli defence forces (IDF). Over 43 thousands of them received modern training & gained first-hand war experience while fighting in Europe during World War II.
To the Israeli leaders, the defeat of the Arab armies was a foregone conclusion. What was not certain is how long it would take & at what cost. Thus, the major concern of the Israeli leaders was not simply to win the war, but how to capture as much Palestinian territories as possible, & how to clear them out of their Palestinian inhabitants before an international intervention force Israel to stop. Therefore, the Israeli military embarked on a campaign of massacres, rapes, & sustained psychological warfare to force the Palestinian civilians to flee. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly removed by the Israeli military at gun point. Ishac Rabin, who held the position of israel's prime minister several times before his assassination by a Jewish extremist in November 1995, described in detail how the military battalion he commanded forced 50 thousand Palestinians from two towns in central Palestine to flee East towards Jordan. the Israeli military censors deleted this description from his memoir which was published in 1979, but the deleted section was later published in the New York Times.
When the United Nations & the US finally pressured Israel to sign armistice agreements with the Arab states in the Winter of 1949, approximately 420-480 thousand more Palestinians have already been forced out of their homes. Add it to the 300 thousands who were evicted in the six months that preceded the Creation of Israel in may 14th 1948, the total would be 720-780 thousands, roughly two thirds of the entire Palestinian population. The injustice inherent in the UN Partition resolution #181 which designated nearly 50% of Palestine to a Jewish state put aside, by the end of the war Israel conquered 77.4% of the country, thus swallowing half of the area designated for a Palestinian state. Less than 150 Palestinians were allowed to stay in the parts of Palestine where the Jewish state was established. Israel gave those Palestinians Israeli passports, but never welcomed them as full citizens. Those Palestinians & their descendants constitute a significant Arab Palestinian minority inside the 1948 borders of Israel--20% of the Israeli population, or 1.2 million.
Palestinian Refugees:
The Palestinians who were forced out of their homes & towns by the Israeli military in 1947-48 wars fall in three categories. The first consists of a small number of Palestinians who were either forced out by the Jewish Militias or the Israeli military & sought refuge in safer areas that fell under Israeli control in 1948, nonetheless the Israeli government did not allow them to go back to their homes for various "security" reasons. The second category of refugees consists of those Palestinians who were forced to flee to the parts of Palestine which were not conquered by Israel in 1948, often referred to as the West Bank & the Gaza Strip. The third category of Palestinian refugees consists of those who were forced to flee to areas completely outside the borders of historic Palestine. Today, the vast majority of them live in refugee camps in Jordan, followed by Syria & Lebanon. Smaller numbers of refugees made their ways to Egypt, Iraq, & other Arab countries, or were lucky enough to escape to the US & Europe. It is hard to find any country in the world without some Palestinian presence. Shortly after the last armistice agreement between Israel & the Arab States in the Winter of 1949 was signed, the UN security council passed resolution #194 requiring Israel to repatriate/or compensate the Palestinian refugees, a call that has never been heeded by Israel. Instead, Israel passed the 1950 law of return which opened up the country for the world Jewry to come, settle, & receive instant Israeli citizenship. More than 600 thousand Jewish settlers arrived to Israel between 1949-1953 from the different parts of the world. Most of them were settled in the recently abandoned Palestinian homes, while their Palestinian owners languish in the misery of the refugee camps outside. To destroy any hope of repatriation of the Palestinian refugees, Israel erased 418 Palestinian villages which were not deemed fit for Jewish settlements, between 1949-1951.
The Land And The People:
As noted above, Israel was created on 77.4% of the richest & most arable lands of historic Palestine. What was left unconquered was 23.6% of the country in two non-contiguous pieces, the Gaza Strip on the Egyptian borders in the South, & the Eastern part of Palestine, West of the river Jordan, whence came the geographic designation "West Bank". The Gaza Strip is a thin piece of territory, about 400 square kilometers large, located between the Mediterranean & the Negev Desert. It is by far the most congested part of historic Palestine with a population density rivaling that of China. Today, more than 1.3 million Palestinians are living in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them are refugees from the 1947-48 wars & their descendants. The West Bank is mostly rugged hills, about 5,600 square kilometers large. The vast majority of its population are Palestinian natives with a significant minority of Palestinian refugees from the 1947-48 wars and their descendants. Today there are approximately 2.5 Million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Geopolitical Comments:
After 1948 the Gaza Strip fell under Egyptian control. The Egyptian government kept the Palestinian population in the strip under strict military supervision & surveillance. The area was not annexed to Egypt & therefore its Palestinian population did not obtain Egyptian citizenship. Travel required a special Egyptian permission & a special travel document. The West Bank was annexed to Jordan against the wishes of its people. The Palestinians of the West Bank were given Jordanian passports but the regime was extremely suspicious of Palestinian political activities.
The situation in both the West Bank & the Gaza Strip dramatically changed when the two areas fell under Israeli occupation during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Israel placed the newly conquered Palestinian territories under military administration & opened them up for Jewish settlements. Today there are over 400 thousand Jewish settlers living on confiscated Palestinian properties in the West Bank, almost half of them concentrated in & around East Jerusalem. Between 1967-2004 over one third of the land of the Gaza Strip was confiscated & put for the use of roughly 8,000 Jewish settlers. Israel vacated the confiscated lands & tore down the settlements in the Summer of 2004.
In the 1967 war Israel also occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, & the Syrian Golan Heights. Jewish settlements were also encouraged in these Arab occupied territories as well. Israel vacated the Jewish settlements & returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in April of 1982, after the two countries signed a peace agreement brokered by American President Jimmy Carter in 1979. However, the Syrian Golan Heights is still under Israeli occupation, & has over 18 thousand Jewish settlers.
I hope that the comments in this posting & the previous one are valuable enough for those wishing to discuss president Carter's book or any other Palestine/Israel related topics.
Chris, firstly thank you for posting this. It's interesting to read something from the side of the palastinians instead of the jews, something I don't believe we get very often. I think sadly it's not going to stur any real serious debate as it's very in depth, and possibly won't be digested by many. I know that I find it difficult to take in so much fact imediately. You've given me much to consider, and have taught me much by writing this, so if that is all that happens, in my opinion it was worthwhile. I wonder if there are any good fictional works that I could read that illustrate much or any of this, as it would be easier to take in with action and the like. I know that might detract from the facts, but it's a way I often find easier. Places that have gone through serious conflict in the world often interest me, for example reading about the killing fields of Cambodia was very interesting though again something we were taught little or nothing about. I hope maybe to come back and read this all again and see if I can't find something more worthwhile to say, but again thank you.
I see you chose to ignore the issue of Hamas continually bombing Israeli's if only they could do the same when the rockets arrive. You are without doubt the biggest hypocrit I have ever met.
In posting #8, Goblin wrote in response to my postings:
“I see you chose to ignore the issue of Hamas continually bombing Israeli's if only they could do the same when the rockets arrive. You are without doubt
The biggest hypocrit I have ever met".:
I chose to ignore your posting in order not to expose your ignorance to other readers. I sincerely thought you did not understand all aspects of the conflict and hoped you would benefit from the concise outline in my two subsequent postings. Now I realized that you are having so much pleasure commenting on every posting on every board despite the fact that in the vast majority of cases you have no knowledge in the subjects being discussed, or the purposes of the chosen topics. By the way, we never met, and I am certain that we never will.
I carefully used the word “ignorance” for the following reasons:
First, it is not Hamas who is launching rockets against Israel. Hamas declared a unilateral ceasefire against Israel for over two years now. The rocket attacks against Israel are the works of the Islamic Jihad and some splinter groups from various Palestinian factions who are disillusioned with their leaders and their reconciliatory overtures towards Israel without bringing any tangible benefits to the Palestinian under Israeli occupation. These groups are not under the control of the Palestinian national authority led by Hamas. Despite my vehement disagreements with the ideological orientation of Hamas due to my secular position, I consider the elections which put Hamas in control of the Palestinian legislative Council and national authority to be fair and free. My view is shared by thousands of international monitors from the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan. Incidentally, President Carter was one of those monitors. Blaming the Palestinians for voting for Hamas candidates in January 2006, as Goblin did in posting #4, and hence justifying the subjection of an occupied nation to Western economic sanctions is the epitome of hypocrisy, and makes Goblin the Quintessential hypocrite. Just imagine how would be the world reaction if China and Russia suggested putting the American people under economic sanctions for electing war mongering congress and president, or suggesting imposing similar penalties on Britain for electing Tony Blaire. It is worth noting that subjecting an occupied nation to such economic hardships never happened in history before.
Secondly, the purpose of my postings was, and is not to rant about the latest thing I heard on the morning news, but rather to discuss the roots of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the larger historical context. I chose President Carter’s book for initiating such a discussion because I consider it to be a modest attempt, on his part, to educate the American and the world public about the essence of this problem. Carter’s book generated strong reactions and furious debates in the US media, simply because it presents a challenge to the Western Conventional wisdom that Israel is a victim of Palestinian and Arab aggression.
Finally, I deliberately ignored Goblin posting because I found nothing in it that may be remotely considered to be relevant to the apartheid system the Israelis are creating in the West Bank. The rocket attacks are all from the Gaza strip which the Israelis “evacuated” in the summer of 2004 and turned it in to the largest open-air prison in history. Israel continues to control Gaza's borders, airspace and coastline and continues military strikes and operations inside Gaza at will, but strangely is not part of President Carter’s apartheid hypothesis.
I hope Goblin would read people’s postings more carefully before he rushes into attacking the individuals instead of tackling their ideas.
Hmm unlike Hamas eh? They take their time before launching rockets while hiding behind the very people they claim to defend. When You openly support terrorism, how can you claim I am ignorant and hypocritical. When you chose not to listen you are the ignorant close minded idiot.
Goblin, it would not be too difficult for people who read this board to discover quickly that your feeble mind is not up to power with this type of intellectual discussion. You will be making yourself a favour if you stop making fool of yourself. In respect of those who are interested in discussing President Carter's book, i will leave it right there to spend my time & energy on those who are worthy of them.
I didn't truely realise how ignorant i was.
unfortunately, none of this will change because isreal are the ones with the fire power, and the United states are the ones with the United ations veto. how do you think they get away with what they're doing to Cuba?
I sponser a little girl in the west bethlehem project through world vision, and the occupation of palestine by the jews is actually causing ople to die. not just because they are bombed contineuously, because there is jus so much discrimination and these people are very poor trying o ive under conditions which discriminate.
it's a sad thing when a little girl sends you pictures of a tank as a gift...
Wow, how little I knew. Cris, like Kev, this is something I am going to have to read more than once to fully digest it. Thank you though, for posting it. I too, hope to have something more valuable to say when I digest the facts more fully.
Loui, Should that though prevent efforts for change? So much change has happened for the better because of people fighting against injustice. Long may it continue, and may it also include the fight against the countless human rights violations against the Palestinian people. Education also needs to happen. The more people know about this, the better. So once again thanks, Cris.
Cheers,
Simon