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- The Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine
by Uri Davis
Overview:
The political awareness that Israel was
an apartheid state existed for many years among most anti-Zionists in
Israel. But in the wake of the breakdown of the Oslo Accords, before the
eruption of the second Intifada,
that awareness began to spread beyond the circles of committed
anti-Zionist activists and academics to circles that would not necessarily
identify themselves as anti-Zionist. By the year 2000, a loose coalition
of activists based primarily in Jerusalem and Haifa had begun a campaign
under the slogan "No Apartheid." Although their work was cut short
largely due to the Intifada,
they left their mark on society and were a catalyst in spreading the
understanding of Israel as an Apartheid state.
Scholarly interest in the parallels
between Israel and South Africa dates back to immediately after the June
1967 war and George Jabbour's seminal work in 1970,
Settler Colonialism in South Africa and
the Middle East. In 1976 Richard Sevens and Abdelwahhab
Elmessiri wrote Israel and South
Africa: The Progression of a
Relationship. In 1986, Jane
Hunter wrote Undercutting Sanctions:
Israel, the U.S. and South Africa, and Benjamin Joseph wrote
Besieged Bedfellows: Israel and the Land
of Apartheid in 1988,
and Israel: An Apartheid
State in 2001.
Israel's Democracy at
a Crossroad:
Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister
of Israel in 2001, in 2002, his government's priorities came into sharp
focus with the re-occupation of Palestinian territory in March.
Effectively endorsed by the United States, Israeli tanks rolled into
almost every Palestinian city and refugee camp in the West Bank and Gaza
wreaking havoc and mass destruction, in blatant violation of the Oslo
Accords and international law. The main commitment of the Sharon
government-its coalition with the Labor Party notwithstanding-is to
maintain, expand, and defend the illegal Israeli settlements in the
post-1967 Occupied Territories. To this end, a Sharon-led government
would not only smash the Oslo Accords and illegally attempt to dismantle
the Palestinian Authority (PA), but would attempt to perpetrate a mass
expulsion of the Palestinian people from the geographic territories of
Palestine under the cover of another war, a process referred to in current
Israeli political parlance as "transfer".
Such a plan, however, is costly. The
Sharon government is already burdened with a deficit of 14 billion
Shekels, approximately $2.7 billion. In a desperate attempt to plug the
fiscal hole, Israeli Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom declared the Israeli
economy on the verge of collapse. The treasury cobbled together a
draconian emergency plan that caused a major government crisis. The
weakest and already much pauperized sectors of the population in
Israel-the Palestinian Arab citizens-would be the first victims of the
economic costs of the government's war policies. Impoverished Jewish
development towns such as Ofaqim will also suffer. Strikes and mass
protest will flare up in Israel. Tires will be set on fire, roads and key
highways will be blocked, and police will be overrun by an angry public
unable to meet the basic costs of shelter, clothing, food, and education.
Faced with this, the government will not hesitate to set itself up as an
emergency government or a military council, suspend the Knesset and send
in the army.
The
deterioration of Israel's party political system and the demise of
parliament is already well advanced, as is evidenced by the
nullification-for the first time in the history of the Knesset-of the
parliamentary immunity of one of its members. His Immunity was lifted in
order to permit his prosecution for political utterances delivered in the
course of the execution of his political work, rather than for criminal
actions. It does not matter that the Member of Knesset (MK), in question,
Dr. Azmi Bishara, is a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel. The demise of
the Knesset is further underlined by the recent passage of the
government-sponsored laws against incitement to violence or terror and the
law preventing those who support an armed struggle against the state from
participating in Knesset elections. The proceedings directed against
Bishara today will be directed against MK Yossi Sarid tomorrow. The
Israeli sharpshooters brought into Umm al Faham to shoot-to-kill civilian
protesters in Habbat al-Aqsa in September 2000 will also be brought to
quell disturbances in Ofaqim.
The Movement Against
Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP):
In this context, and underscored by the
United Nation World Conference Against Racism (UNWCAR) that celebrated the
transformation of South Africa from an apartheid state to a constitutional
democratic state, the political awareness that Israel is also an apartheid
state-namely, a state which regulates racism in law through Acts of
Parliament-is spreading among both Palestinian solidarity constituencies
worldwide and Hebrew and Arab democracy constituencies committed to the
values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Against this backdrop, frustrated by the failed attempts to form a
coherent anti-apartheid organization in Israel and empowered by the UNWCAR,
the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP), was launched
on 9 August 2001. Its founding conference was held in Jerusalem at the
Qaddumi Building, next to the Ram checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the
central and northern West Bank on 22 March 2002. By then, MAIAP had the
UNWCAR non-governmental-organization (NGO) forum declaration as a
reference. As difficult as it was to convene the founding conference in
the current circumstances, participants believed that their initiative
represented a meaningful contribution to the defense of the occupied and
dispossessed Palestinian people. MAIAP provided a sound platform to
develop the strategies needed to limit the capacity of the Israeli
occupation forces to further destroy Palestinian society and polity.
MAIAP's Founding
Document:
MAIAP takes as its point of departure the
values of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their articulation in
international law and
the struggle of the peoples of South
Africa against apartheid and their work for democracy and reconciliation.
MAIAP aims
to work toward democratic solutions in geographic Palestine-defined for
the British Mandate by the Council of League of Nations in 1922 as being
between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean sea-to ensure the
implementation of equal rights for all residents and refugees of this
area. MAIAP is committed to work democratically to promote the welfare
and the right of self-determination for all people in the area including
refugees, internally displaced persons, and residents in opposition to the
bantustanization of Palestine and against Israeli apartheid.
MAIAP
intends to expose the legal and other structures of Israeli apartheid
within both Israel and the Occupied Territories; work toward the
classification of Israel as an apartheid state in relevant international
forums including the UN; work with the public to understand, resist, and
defeat Israeli apartheid; educate the general, local, regional, and
international public to appreciate that under the prevailing conditions,
alongside an apartheid, Zionist Israel, even an independent Palestinian
state will remain part of, and continue to be victimized by, Israeli
apartheid.
Future Action:
MAIAP's immediate priorities include
organizing lecture tours across Palestine of prominent South African
anti-apartheid activists. MAIAP will add its voice to campaigns calling
for international sanctions against Israel and business divestment from
Israel until the Israeli government complies with UN Security Council
resolutions, most notably resolutions 242, 338, and 194. MAIAP will also
lobby for the revocation of the tax-exempt status of Zionist fundraising
in the West.
Just as the international
anti-apartheid solidarity movement made a critical contribution to the
success of the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa,
MAIAP's goal is to mirror that success against the apartheid regime in
Palestine.
Uri Davis
is Chair
of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Israel.
Source:
by courtesy & ©
200 2 CPAP &
Uri Davis
by the same author:
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