"There is no sovereignty, then. No autonomy. No democracy. No self-government. Nothing but a crude, empty fraud, to bluff the people at home and abroad, and to serve as a pretext for heaping yet more hardships and injustices upon the African people." (Nelson Mandela, May 1959)
1993 witnessed the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa, vindicating names like Mandela, Tutu, Biko, and the millions of others who fought tirelessly in that struggle. Yet the same year saw a new beginning, a new life for an apartheid regime in Palestine, hailed and supported as a peace process - the Oslo Accords. Still reeling from the effects of that "historic handshake on the White House Lawn," the Palestinian people now have a new peace memorandum, appropriately named after a river, since it seeks to drown any remaining hopes of self-determination or sovereignty. As the terms and implementation of the Wye River Memorandum continue to stagnate under Israeli defiance (scheduled redeployment, "safe passage," freezes on settlement expansion) Palestinian cities and villages continue to be enclosed, becoming a series of noncontiguous "bantustans." The term bantustan refers to areas, which were given to people of color in South Africa by the ruling Afrikaner minority, in order to provide the indigenous population with "autonomous" areas of self-rule. However, both local South African black and Indian populations as well as the international community quickly rejected the proposal as an obvious attempt to institutionalize apartheid rule, allowing South African whites to retain economic, resource, and political domination, while dispossessing the local communities to barren, uninhabitable wastelands. Facts on the ground in Palestine and Israel suggest a disturbing similarity to this policy as Israel continues to enclose the indigenous Palestinian population through a matrix of settlements and bypass roads, which will ensure Palestinian dependency upon Israel in terms of economy, resource allocation, and mobility. The notion that a Palestinian state comprised of such cantons can hope to enjoy even a semblance of sovereignty is quite simply absurd.
In order to support the critical opinion that apartheid exists and is growing in Palestine, this report will illustrate the apparent parallels between South African apartheid rule and Israeli apartheid rule in terms of enclosure, abusive state practices, and in their governing ideologies. In both circumstances an exclusivist ideology based in nationalism and theology, regarding control of the land, led to the creation of institutions and policies, which sought to dispossess indigenous people from their native home. Subsequently, it was through these "manifest destinies" that a systematic ghettoization could "justifiabl" be legalized over those natives who remained. Further, recognizing the success of Christian and Muslim communities in South Africa, regarding international awareness building and anti-apartheid mobilization, this report will offer similar strategies for people of faith in Palestine and Israel.
Of course, comparisons are imperfect analytical tools especially when considering such markedly different historical and cultural backgrounds as in South Africa and Israel. Nevertheless, South African and Israeli rule do offer striking similarities in terms of the foundations and institutions of apartheid; parallels, which are exacerbated by a historic economic and military collaboration between the two countries. Also, in drawing these comparisons, it is the hope of many Palestinians struggling against oppressive structures that the victory achieved in South Africa will one day be won in Palestine, despite the failings of the ongoing "peace process."
The apartheid regime in South Africa (under the National Party from 1948-1993) first categorized (according to arbitrary standards) and then transferred the indigenous black populations into specified territories (called "bantustans") under the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951. Subsequently, in 1956, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act classified each specific ethnic group as national units, who would develop their respective homelands apart from the rest of South Africa. Once these "homelands" received their independence, Transkei in October 1976, Bophuthatswana in December 1977, Venda in September 1979, and Ciskei in December 1981, these residents lost their South African citizenship. In total the bantustan territories (10 "homelands" including the four previously noted "independent" territories) amounted to just 13 percent of the whole of South Africa. Thus, white South Africans, while only representing 16 percent of the total population maintained control over 87 percent of the richest, most arable land. Between 1960 and 1984, the South African Government forcibly relocated some 3.5 million blacks from "white areas" to these barren wastelands, known euphemistically as areas of "self-rule" (Cainkar, 1985).
Although the Oslo Accords, signed by President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in March 1993, stipulate that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be viewed as contiguous territory, facts on the ground suggest that Israel is actively pursuing a policy of division. This strategy is being manifested primarily through the illegal expansion of settlements, which seeks: 1) to ensure continued Israeli territorial domination through population and housing development, and 2) the segregation of Israelis and Palestinians through a complex series of bypass roads. While the apartheid regime was not labeled as such by the State of Israel, governing Israeli policy is creating a bantustan system for Palestinian inhabitants, who continue to be quarantined in isolated cantons, continually encircled by Israeli settlements and bypass roads. The population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a combination of indigenous Palestinian inhabitants and Palestinian refugees (1.4 million) from the 1948 war, in which Israel forcibly expelled residents from their homes in what is now the State of Israel. This territory, constituting 23 percent of the total land of historic Palestine, comprises what Palestinians envision as their future state. However, will this be a sovereign state (like that of Israel) or more accurately, a fragmented chain of bantu homelands?
Since 1967, Israeli settlers have been actively encouraged and funded by consecutive governments (Likud and Labor) to pursue land aggrandizement and housing construction in what is considered by international law, occupied territory. According to LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (April 2000), "…over the past twelve months, the Israeli occupying forces have confiscated 40,178 dunums (1 dunum = 1/4 acre) of Palestinian land. 19,691 of these dunums were used for settlement expansion and the establishment of new settlements; 3,830 dunums were confiscated by the Israeli Civil Administration and 16,657 were confiscated to build new settler bypass roads." Although the Fourth Geneva Convention plainly states, "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies," the State of Israel, through economic enticement and nationalistic appeals, has encouraged settlement expansion on Palestinian land. Despite international perception the Barak administration is not halting settlement construction. According to Peace Now, "During its first five months in office, the Barak Administration issued tenders for building 3,200 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual rate under the Netanyahu government." Although Barak issued a preliminary freeze on these construction plans in December, he violated this pact by authorizing the construction of 174 units in the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim in April. These colonies and the bypass roads connecting them (in reference to settlers "bypassing" Palestinian populations) play a pivotal role in first dissecting and eventually surrounding Palestinian cities and villages.
Based on current settlement expansion plans, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron, the Gaza Strip, other Palestinian population centers and villages will be cut off from one another, becoming Palestinian versions of the South African bantustans. For example, ARIJ - Applied Research Institute Jerusalem points out that, "...the Har Homa (Jabal Abu Ghneim) settlement would draw the northern boundary of the Bethlehem area, the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements limits Bethlehem’s southern expanse. From the west, Bethlehem is surrounded by Bitar Ilite settlement as well as two by-pass roads, from the East by Taqoa settlement and a third by-pass road. The building of Har Homa and the fenced military by-pass road which will connect it with the neighboring Gilo settlement will deprive Bethlehem of the only land left for its future development."
Once enclosed, these bantustans do not allow for the natural growth of Palestinian communities, as Palestinians are not allowed to build within 500m of the roads or settlements. As this policy eliminates Palestinian territorial contiguity, enclaves of "self rule" must continue to rely on Israel for their respective economies, water (and other resource allocation), and their freedom of movement, as the State controls the entirety of the surrounding area.
As a result of bantustans occupying dry, infertile land, blacks within the bantu "homelands" were dependent upon neighboring white communities for employment in menial labor industries. Due to the lack of agricultural opportunity and unemployment within the bantustans, black laborers were forced to migrate to "squatter" camps located near white neighborhoods, where they could work in mines and homes, or on farms. However, the penetration of apartheid into the labor market resulted in disparate pay between black and white workers. Louise Cainkar notes that, "black workers are paid less than one-third of what whites are paid for doing the same job. Over 60 percent of urban black families earn less than the white government says is necessary to survive." The flow of cheap, black labor was ensured through de-development policies aimed at eliminating employment growth or workers’ rights within the bantustan economies. For example, independent black trade unions were illegalized in 1978 (with demonstrations often suppressed through force), resulting in a lack of protective labor laws concerning equal pay, working conditions, etc.
Similarly, in Palestine inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are dependent on the surrounding Israeli economy in terms of labor force and trade-generated income. While this reliance is due in part to limited opportunities for economic growth resulting from enclosure, it is also the consequence of purposeful Israeli policies designed to de-develop economies within the Occupied Territories (West Bank/Gaza Strip). According to B’Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "The basic components of this [Israeli economic] policy were: restriction on permits for industrial projects, creation of a 'captive market' for Israeli commodities through various trade barriers, and transforming the Palestinian labor into a cheap migrant workforce for the Israeli industrial and service sectors."
However, Israeli policy towards the West Bank and Gaza Strip fluctuates between the monopolization of Palestinian trade commerce/labor force and the restriction of both components through military closure. On one hand, Palestinian day laborers are forced to work within the State of Israel, primarily in an underpaid, construction capacity (53.7 percent in 1999). Forced migration of workers occurs as a direct result of a de-developed industrial sector, as Israel continues to restrict the transfer of industrial supplies and Palestinian products into Israel and between the West Bank/Gaza Strip. Yet on the other hand, Israel imposes general closures at which time Palestinian laborers are prevented from reaching their jobs within Israel, during which time, "unemployment in the WBGS (West Bank/Gaza Strip) soars to 50-70%" (PASSIA, 2000).
With regards to trade-generated income, Palestinian companies are dependent upon the surrounding State of Israel, due to territorial control through borders, airspace, and seaports. As PASSIA notes, "The Palestinian export sector still suffers from… a weak export capacity due to an underdeveloped industrial base; the restriction on the use of the airport and the lack of a seaport; and the Israeli closure and permits policy, which continues to contradict the 1994 Paris Protocol on Economic Relations." Although the Gaza Strip, which borders the Mediterranean Sea (with seaport potential) and possessing an airport, is supposed to (in part) comprise a future Palestinian State, the State of Israel retains final authority in granting goods transfer. Consequently, Palestinian industries exported 94.2 percent of their goods to Israel, 5 percent to Arab countries, and 0.8 percent to the EU and other countries during the past year (PASSIA, 2000). Thus, the Palestinian population within the Bantustans (West Bank and Gaza Strip) is almost completely dependent upon Israel, which dictates the transfer of goods or labor at its discretion through its surrounding border control.
Due to the relocation of blacks to 13 percent of the most uninhabitable lands in South Africa, most of the indigenous population who formerly lived as farmers was forced to purchase necessary foodstuffs (which cheap, black labor raised) from white businesses. Further, due to limited water resources and rampant poverty in the Bantustans (results of intentional territorial allotment for the black "homelands" and economic dependence), inhabitants were unable to research and implement adequate water supply initiatives. Consequently, drinking supplies, adequate sewage systems, and irrigation for crops in these barren areas were almost nonexistent. Bantustan officials, appointed by the white government to administer these areas, held only a supervisory role, unable to initiate programs for sustainable water development.
As the State of Israel continues to forcibly control water supplies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, indigenous Palestinians are allowed only a bare minimum of water resources for their daily lives. In comparative terms Israel utilizes over 85 percent of available water (220 liters per capita per day), while Palestinians are allocated a mere 15 percent (39-50 liters per capita per day) (Miftah, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy). Further, although the Palestinian Authority fully controls 18.2% of the West Bank and 60% of the Gaza Strip, they are prohibited from developing their own supplies despite the fact most of the aquifers lie within these "autonomous" areas. According to Miftah, "It [Palestinian Authority] does not have the power to dig new wells or to utilize the existing aquifers, has no control over the Israeli water system that passes through its territories, and is not authorized to develop additional water sources."
Even though the Palestinian economy is driven by agricultural-generated income farmers rarely have sufficient water to tend their crops. ARIJ notes that, only three [of 23 licensed wells since 1967] were authorized for agricultural use by the Israeli military. In terms of domestic consumption, water supplies for families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are limited through insufficient monthly allocations and exorbitant rates, administered by the Israeli water company Mekorot. According to ARIJ, "Whereas settlers pay $0.40 for domestic consumption and a highly subsidized rate of $0.16 for agricultural use, Palestinians pay a standard rate of $1.20 for their piped water." Thus, settlers are given preferential treatment through disparate rates and allotments, water that is often used for swimming pools and manicured lawns within illegal Israeli settlements.
The South African apartheid government dictated black mobility through strict controls on movement and residence outside the bantustan areas. Employing a program of forcible relocation, black families were transferred into specific bantu "homelands" based on their ethnic classification. According to sociologist Louise Cainkar, "If communities resist a government-planned removal, even though they legally own the land on which they live, they are taken from their home-often at gunpoint-and their homes, churches and schools are bulldozed to the ground by the government. Entire families are taken to the designated bantustan and dumped there on small plots of land with only a tin toilet to mark their address." Once transferred to the bantustan, blacks must obtain permission to travel from the government, which is almost categorically denied unless the applicant is supplying cheap labor to white communities. The South African government monitored black movement through a computer network, which required any black person over the age of 16 to carry a "passbook" (Cainkar, 1985). [The use of passbooks by the South African and Israeli governments will be discussed in a future report concerning abusive state practices.] Therefore, black South Africans were completely dependent upon the governing white minority for permission to move within their native country.
As in South African bantustans, the surrounding authority dictates indigenous Palestinians’ travel. Due to a lack of territorial contiguity resulting from encircling settlements and bypass roads, Palestinians are subjected to arbitrary closures, restricting their freedom of movement among allegedly "autonomous" areas. As the State of Israel maintains military control between Palestinian zones of self-rule, it is able to declare varying degrees of closure through "security" checkpoints, limiting or eliminating access to jobs, places of worship, or medical facilities within Israel or in other cantons of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The checkpoints, which can be arbitrarily erected at Israeli discretion within the occupied territories, employ invasive and humiliating searches in determining which Palestinians may proceed. For example, traversing the Erez Checkpoint in the Gaza Strip often involves 3-4 hours of delay for Palestinians wishing to worship, work, or visit family members inside of Israel, as they are separated from other travelers into a 600m cattle-style passageway; of course settlers, VIP, and tourists pass expediently through the main facility. According to B’Tselem, three types of Israeli closure policy are implemented based on "security" demands: general, comprehensive and internal. Whereas, general closure was initiated following the Oslo Accords (and is valid through present day), comprehensive closure is employed as a means of collective punishment (for Palestinian acts of violence), before Jewish holidays, or in anticipation of Palestinian political anniversaries. Internal closure involves the sealing off of cities or villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in order to prohibit movement by Palestinian inhabitants (B’Tselem). Following the massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by a Jewish setter, Hebron was internally closed off, with Palestinian residents placed under a 24-hour curfew.
Perhaps the most tragic result of military closure is the denial of emergency medical care to Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to a B’Tselem report, "at least 26 Palestinians died after a delay in receiving medical treatment due to closure or curfew [from February 1996] until the end of January 2000." This figure includes 7 Palestinian infants (who were born in a car/or at home), 2 Palestinian women (giving birth), and others who died due to a closure-based delay. The State of Israel is in direct violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of movement. Thus, as a result of Bantustan-type isolation (through closure, settlements, and bypass roads), Palestinians effectively remain prisoners in their own land, unable to exercise their freedom of movement, except at the discretion of the surrounding State of Israel.
The implementation of an apartheid regime in Palestine/Israel is wholly unacceptable. Where are the voices in the international community that did not rest until the South African government gave the indigenous people justice? Where are the celebrities, the governments of the world, the international media that, inspired by the indigenous anti-apartheid movement, made the ruling South African regime accountable to international law? Is our global consciousness selective? The Palestinian people, like black South Africans, will continue to live under a state of occupation, as opposed to a state of autonomy, until these institutions find their voices again. (Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center calls upon members of the local Palestinian and Israeli populations as well as the international community to recognize the existing system for what it is, apartheid, and in making this realization to bring about its immediate end. Give the Palestinian people their justice.
This article focusing on the implementation of bantustans in South Africa and Palestine was published in the Summer 2000 edition (issue 19) of Sabeel's newsletter, Cornerstone. It is the first in a series of reports by Sam Jones comparing South African apartheid rule and Israeli apartheid rule in terms of oppressive policies, governing ideologies, and historic cooperation. These reports along with potential methods of liberation will be regularly added to the Sabeel website. Sam Jones served as a Peace/Justice Intern with Sabeel Center from September 1999 to July 2000. He returns to Washington D.C. where he will pursue a Masters degree at American University. Our prayers and love are with him as God leads him on his new journey.
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
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