From a dream to disillusionment

In the early 1980s as part of a sojourn overseas I travelled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. I had been inspired to do so by reading accounts of the Jews seeking to obtain a homeland as a haven from persecution. As background I had read the standard histories of the post World War Two period and the biographies of prominent Israeli’s such as Golda Meir, Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan. I was also inspired to try the collective lifestyle of kibbutz living.

Arriving in late 1981 I spent 6 months in the north of Israel on a kibbutz near the Lebanese border and travelled throughout the county. The longer I stayed the more my unease grew about what I was experiencing. The treatment of the Palestinian population exhibited similarities with the treatment of the black population by the white government of South Africa. Given what I knew at the time it did seem that these laws were applied a little more discreetly than in South Africa. However in the past decade or so these discriminatory practices have become much more blatant. 
Israel’s policies of apartheid policies are demonstrated in a number of ways. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, (2003) does not enable the acquisition of Israeli citizenship or residency by a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip through marriage. Palestinian cars have different car registration plates than do the cars of Israelis, in order to allow them to be identified more readily. There also considerable differences in the political rights, voting and representation of the Palestinian population, the existence of differentiated national identification cards, difference in land tenure laws and access to infrastructure, transport, travel, and movement between Israelis and Palestinians.
The open nature of the apartheid practiced by Israelis is no better exemplified than by the building of the Wall in the occupied West bank. Building on the wall began in the early 2000s and once completed, it will run for approximately 650km inside the West Bank.  When completed the wall will de facto annex around 47% of the West bank. So far the fence construction has already uprooted an estimated 1,023,203 Palestinian olive and citrus trees, and demolished 75 acres of greenhouses and 23 miles of  irrigation pipes. It now rests on 15,000 dunums ( 1 dunum – 1000sq m) of confiscated land, and its projection guarantees the confiscation of a further 120-150,000 dunums. The construction of the wall was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Hague in 2004 who demanded that it be dismantled and the compensation should be paid for the damage resulting from its construction.
The linkages between Israeli policy towards Palestians and the apartheid practice of South Africa have also been made by those who were best placed to do so and when ANC activists visited Hebron in July 2008 they noted “that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa” ( Independent, 11 July 2008).

Gerald C