The latest extension to racist citizenship laws has turned Israel into an apartheid state, according to a June 29 report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The Citizenship Law (Temporary Order), introduced in 2003, establishes that the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for non-Jews. This destroys the rights for young Israeli and West Bank Palestinians, under 25 for women and 35 for men, to be able to marry and live together.
The ban also covers Palestinians of all ages residing in Gaza. The law was extended for the eighth time since 2003. In 2006, five judges in the High Court of Justice argued that the laws were unconstitutional. This bold move was opposed in a deciding vote by Justice Edmond Levy, who argued on the basis that the law was only two months from expiration.
Two years on, however, the laws still exist.
The decision from the Israeli government has been flanked by claims that it was purely for security purposes. The Haaretz report explains that the administration’s rationale for the laws relied on a belief that through implementing further citizenship laws, they could prevent “terrorists” being “planted” in the Israeli territory via marriage.
Haaretz journalist, Amos Schocken, argued in the June 29 report, entitled “Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state”, that, with the laws extension, the apartheid nature of the Israeli state needed to be acknowledged.
“The claim that there are characteristics of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world”, Schocken wrote. “The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel.
“However, we do not need to replicate exactly the characteristics of South African apartheid within discriminatory practices in civil rights in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly such a practice, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in our law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.”
The citizenship law’s extension comes on the back of a 2007 report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council that described Israel as an apartheid state. Its release caused great controversy as its author, John Dugard, was both a South African lawyer and the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The report stated that “It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel’s laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination”. The report highlighted the way that the house and building demolitions, checkpoints, closed zones, Israeli “settler-only” roads and limited access to basic necessities in the occupied Palestinian territories has destroyed the “right to life” for Palestinians.
The extension to the latest round of apartheid laws has been followed by the US Congress approving a US$170 million extension in military aid to Israel, with $30 billion to be given over the next decade. It was a decision condemned by a July 2 Palestine Monitor report, which argues that in continuing to fund Israel, the US is violating its own international aid laws, which state “No assistance [ought to be given] to countries that violate human rights”.
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Join the Struggle against Israeli Apartheid
Following the age-old premise of struggling locally to effect change globally, activists fighting for justice for the Palestinian people are taking big steps forward in a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeted against the criminal Israeli state.
The reasons for this seem clear enough. The title of a March 9 report jointly released by eight NGOs, including Oxfam, Care and Amnesty International, says it all: The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion. The report reveals, that due to Israel’s economic siege, 80% of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents have to live on US$1.20 a day or less, while 80% only survive because of humanitarian aid.
The report states: “The situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967.” The most recent figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that half of West Bank Palestinian households were living in poverty.
The causes of this poverty are also clear enough. A July 2007 OCHA report, Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank, notes “that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure”, including settlements, checkpoints and the 703-kilometre apartheid wall. The report detailed how Israeli “roads linking settlements to Israel, in conjunction with an extensive system of checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities from each other”. It noted that “the consequences of settlements and related infrastructure on Palestinian life are severe, and if current trends continue, socioeconomic conditions in the West Bank are likely to worsen. “Despite the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) being illegal under international law, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank settlements has continued to grow steadily by around 5.5% each year.
In 2007, approximately 450,000 settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, alongside 2.4 million Palestinians.” A March 2006 position paper by the Stockholm-based international Christian charity organisation Diakonia notes: “The system with separate rights and services for Jewish settlers and Arabic Palestinians has similarities with those of the old apartheid South Africa.
The ID-system, constant control of movement for the Palestinian population, unequal services and separate roads and transport system are other similarities.” In an interview with the March 9 British Guardian, South African archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”. In a January 28 media release, Amnesty International described the conditions facing the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation as “virtual imprisonment”.
Despite the fact that Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is so well-document, well-funded pro-Israeli groups in many countries, particularly those with pro-Israeli governments like Australia, have had considerable success in convincing people that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, who are under attack or, that they are as bad as each other. They know that if they can at least neutralise support for the Palestinians’ struggle against the Israeli occupation, they will have won a significant victory.
One such organisation is the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, which publishes the Australia Israel Review. The AIJAC likes to present itself, to the media and the general public, as the representative voice of Australian Jews. But it is a right-wing pro-Israel propaganda and lobby organisation.
The challenge for those who support justice for the Palestinian people is to find ways in which the true stories from Palestine can reach the widest audience and to convince more people to take protest action against Israel’s apartheid system. With this in mind, the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid was started in June 2005 by 175 NGOs in occupied Palestine.
The BDS campaign gives activists in every part of the world the chance to indirectly put pressure on Israel by calling on the governments and corporations of their countries to boycott Israel, disinvest from Israel and impose sanctions on Israel as long as it does not end its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantle the apartheid wall. Boycott campaigns, on the scale needed to isolate Israel, can only start to create change when they are able to link up with a mass movement.
It is only then that they can bring the power of large numbers of mobilised people to bear on the politicians who support and the corporations that profit from the Palestinians’ oppression. The BDS campaign seeks to do this by aiming to draw into activity as many people as possible, wherever they are.
The campaign also concentrates on the local institutions that are complicit in Israeli apartheid, helping to expose the wider problems of our own societies. In Australia, we have already seen protest actions against the likes of Starbucks, Connex and Caterpillar.
We have also seen various rallies and speak-outs in support of Palestine and against Israeli aggression. But we must not stop there. The growing movement for BDS has already started to rattle Israel, with the Israeli government appointing a task force to watch over BDS activities.
Pro-Israel groups around the world have employed many people to counter the impact of the campaign. But we know from the experience of the boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa that these struggles are not won overnight. They are also not won without huge amounts of international support and a mass movement. Imperialist governments like those of Australia, Britain and the US, and their big-business masters openly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa until international opposition to apartheid became a mass movement.
This is why the protest actions promoted by Palestinian solidarity activists, in Australia and around the world, are so important. It is also why your involvement is so important. If you feel passionately about human rights and want to fight the scourge of injustice, you shouldn’t just talk about it, you should get active and join us!
The reasons for this seem clear enough. The title of a March 9 report jointly released by eight NGOs, including Oxfam, Care and Amnesty International, says it all: The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion. The report reveals, that due to Israel’s economic siege, 80% of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents have to live on US$1.20 a day or less, while 80% only survive because of humanitarian aid.
The report states: “The situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967.” The most recent figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that half of West Bank Palestinian households were living in poverty.
The causes of this poverty are also clear enough. A July 2007 OCHA report, Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank, notes “that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure”, including settlements, checkpoints and the 703-kilometre apartheid wall. The report detailed how Israeli “roads linking settlements to Israel, in conjunction with an extensive system of checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities from each other”. It noted that “the consequences of settlements and related infrastructure on Palestinian life are severe, and if current trends continue, socioeconomic conditions in the West Bank are likely to worsen. “Despite the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) being illegal under international law, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank settlements has continued to grow steadily by around 5.5% each year.
In 2007, approximately 450,000 settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, alongside 2.4 million Palestinians.” A March 2006 position paper by the Stockholm-based international Christian charity organisation Diakonia notes: “The system with separate rights and services for Jewish settlers and Arabic Palestinians has similarities with those of the old apartheid South Africa.
The ID-system, constant control of movement for the Palestinian population, unequal services and separate roads and transport system are other similarities.” In an interview with the March 9 British Guardian, South African archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”. In a January 28 media release, Amnesty International described the conditions facing the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation as “virtual imprisonment”.
Despite the fact that Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is so well-document, well-funded pro-Israeli groups in many countries, particularly those with pro-Israeli governments like Australia, have had considerable success in convincing people that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, who are under attack or, that they are as bad as each other. They know that if they can at least neutralise support for the Palestinians’ struggle against the Israeli occupation, they will have won a significant victory.
One such organisation is the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, which publishes the Australia Israel Review. The AIJAC likes to present itself, to the media and the general public, as the representative voice of Australian Jews. But it is a right-wing pro-Israel propaganda and lobby organisation.
The challenge for those who support justice for the Palestinian people is to find ways in which the true stories from Palestine can reach the widest audience and to convince more people to take protest action against Israel’s apartheid system. With this in mind, the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid was started in June 2005 by 175 NGOs in occupied Palestine.
The BDS campaign gives activists in every part of the world the chance to indirectly put pressure on Israel by calling on the governments and corporations of their countries to boycott Israel, disinvest from Israel and impose sanctions on Israel as long as it does not end its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantle the apartheid wall. Boycott campaigns, on the scale needed to isolate Israel, can only start to create change when they are able to link up with a mass movement.
It is only then that they can bring the power of large numbers of mobilised people to bear on the politicians who support and the corporations that profit from the Palestinians’ oppression. The BDS campaign seeks to do this by aiming to draw into activity as many people as possible, wherever they are.
The campaign also concentrates on the local institutions that are complicit in Israeli apartheid, helping to expose the wider problems of our own societies. In Australia, we have already seen protest actions against the likes of Starbucks, Connex and Caterpillar.
We have also seen various rallies and speak-outs in support of Palestine and against Israeli aggression. But we must not stop there. The growing movement for BDS has already started to rattle Israel, with the Israeli government appointing a task force to watch over BDS activities.
Pro-Israel groups around the world have employed many people to counter the impact of the campaign. But we know from the experience of the boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa that these struggles are not won overnight. They are also not won without huge amounts of international support and a mass movement. Imperialist governments like those of Australia, Britain and the US, and their big-business masters openly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa until international opposition to apartheid became a mass movement.
This is why the protest actions promoted by Palestinian solidarity activists, in Australia and around the world, are so important. It is also why your involvement is so important. If you feel passionately about human rights and want to fight the scourge of injustice, you shouldn’t just talk about it, you should get active and join us!
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