Understanding Israeli Apartheid

 

Video and Edited Transcript 
Samer Abdelnour
Transcript No. 413 (14 August 2014) 

 

14 August 2014
The Palestine Center
Washington, DC

Yousef Munayyer: Getting to today’s program, a really important topic and it’s great to have a discussion on this in depth. The title of today’s event is “Understanding Israeli Apartheid.” Using the term “apartheid” when speaking of Israel evokes much debate and emotion. Proponents note that Israel is a state that afford a hierarchy of rights and privileges based on religion and ethnicity and uses violence and segregation to enforce these. On the other hand, detractors note a number of notable differences between South African apartheid and Israel today. Are comparisons between the apartheid regime of South Africa and Israel today justified and useful? How might we understand Israel as a system of organized exclusion?

So to kind of explore these questions, we’re very happy to have Samer Abdelnour with us. Samer is the Co-Founder of Al-Shabaka, which is the Palestinian Policy Network. He’s an Assistant Professor of Business-Society Management at the Rotterdam School of Management and co-founder of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network. His research crosses a number of broad fields including social enterprise, organizational theory, globalization and political sociology. With that, I’m very happy to have Samer here for a discussion on Israeli apartheid.

Samer Abdelnour: Thank you. Thanks Yousef for the great introduction and to Samirah for organizing the event and for everyone here today. During the presentation, I will refer to some ideas published from a policy brief with Al-Shabaka under the same title but of course, I’m going to expand given that the thinking has evolved since then.

In November 2007, a Haaretz interview quoted then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.” He continues with the following…”The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,” […] “because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.”

In these statements, Olmert makes clear that without a serious prospect to ensure Palestinian statehood, Israel risks being recognized both as an Apartheid State de factor. From an alternative perspective, we might say that without the distraction of a two-state peace process, the nature of Israel’s apartheid becomes starkly evident in a way that is indefensible and intolerable. In the past year we’ve witnessed what appears to be the collapse of the two-state process, Kerry’s admission that Israel is on the verge of becoming an Apartheid State, an announcement by 17 EU countries that discourage its citizens from relations with Israeli settlement activities, and after attempts by Fatah and Hamas to form a unity government, an intifada-era reassertion of Israeli military force across the West Bank and another unprecedented bombardment and massacre in Gaza. If Palestinians were to simply demand today a one-state solution would Olmert’s warning come to fruition? Has Israel become an apartheid state?

Now, proponents do note that “Israeli Apartheid” is an appropriate term to describe the racial violence and segregation that is enshrined in Israeli institutions and state practices. However, supporters of Israel wish to avoid the “apartheid” label, given that it represents institutionalized racism, segregation, inequality, and inequality and violence as embodied in South Africa.  As Phyllis Bennis correctly noted here very recently, according to the common and legal definitions, and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the accusation that Israel practices apartheid is very difficult to refute. However, given the similarities between South African apartheid policies and Israeli practices today, a lot of the tactics that activists have used are also similar. For example, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is one of the most significant tactics that Palestinians are advocating today, which again, is based on the South African model.

This presentation begins with the suggestion though that the South Africa analogy, while helpful in conveying what is happening in Palestine especially at a basic level, may hinder our understanding of Israeli apartheid. And why is that? This is because Israel today is a much more sophisticated and complex phenomenon than the South Africa apartheid analogy permits.

And how exactly does Israel differ? Well, one major difference which is well-noted is the role of indigenous labor. In South Africa, major industries were dependent on black labor. For example, in the mining industry as we’ve seen recently that labor force has the propensity to organize and resist state practices or corporate practices.

In contrast, since the Second Intifada, employment of Palestinians in settlements and in Israel has decreased. In Gaza, it’s gone from about fourteen percent to almost nothing.  And in the West Bank it’s gone from 26 percent to about thirteen percent in that time frame. Those are according to the IMF and World Bank figures. So Israel is less dependent on Palestinian labor, and though settlement construction remains an employer of Palestinians, because settlements do not constitute a key generator of revenues for Israel, in fact they’re heavily subsidized by the state, any form of Palestinian labor mobilization may not pose a major threat to Israel. This also holds for market-based action from the occupied territories, so while boycotts is a known international strategy, it’s difficult to ascertain whether a boycott in the West Bank, for example, would be anything more than symbolic given that Palestinians are captive markets for Israeli goods and also Palestinians are dependent on Israel for facilitating trade activities.

Now from the perspective of political processes and pressures, in South Africa there were many political dialogues and agreements that took place over many years as well as agreements that eventually concluded an end to apartheid. In the case of Palestine, the outcome of Oslo and the peace process has, as we’ve seen, the advancement of segregation and Palestinian dispossession. More seriously, the Palestinian Authority has become an important administrative player in apartheid, as indicated by the entrenchment of Israeli-Palestinian “security cooperation” and threats last year by Abbas that he would hand the “keys” of the West Bank back to Israel.

In the case of South Africa the international community eventually came to exert extreme pressure to end apartheid, which included the passing of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 by the U.S. Congress. In the case of Israel however, while EU countries are moving forward with settlement-related sanctions, the majority of trade with Israel will remain active, not to mention the immense military support provided by the U.S. Importantly, South African apartheid existed and was also dissolved within the framework of a one-state solution. In Palestine, the international community appears ready to support “statehood” on the blueprint of the 1967 borders, so a two-state solution without any serious contestation of the occupation or settlement expansion, and without inclusion of Hamas in the peace process. It’s a significant difference that is not often alluded to.
Another one is homeland. Under apartheid in South Africa, Bantustans were established as a means to register and confine the work and activities of people to “homeland” areas. Now, regardless of the similarities in terms of space, Palestinians today are actively denied homeland. This is exemplified by the unwillingness of Israel to define its borders or accept the 1967 framework, not to mention continued settlement expansion, Israeli military control of Area C in the West Bank and Gaza’s buffer zones.

The next and last item is military brutality. And the violence and segregation directed against Palestinians during the first and second intifadas certainly compared with the brutality of the South African apartheid regime. However, if we look back at the 2008-2009 bombardment of Gaza and in 2012, and what we’ve witnessed now in Gaza, this immense level of destruction directed at a population already crippled by occupation and siege is perhaps unprecedented. And there are calls for greater violence. In 2012 Gilad Sharon stated that “Israel should flatten Gaza like Hiroshima,” and this was reiterated just days ago by Avi Dichter, former Israeli Minister of Internal Security and Shin Bet director.

Now given these differences with South Africa, how might we understand Israeli apartheid? I believe that in Israel today, apartheid thrives through a very sophisticated bureaucratic, market, and military institutions far superior to those of apartheid-era South Africa. Now rather than focus on the legal definition of apartheid, or solely on how the system serves to segregate and marginalize, I propose an analytical framework based on three interrelated dimensions: these are the physical, ideology and architecture.

The physical faces of apartheid are those interface elements that for the most part are readily observable, in the sense they’re the low-hanging fruit when we look at what’s happening today. They enact the violence that governs the lived experience of Palestinians under military occupation. We know much about these because they horrify us, they capture our attention, they can be counted and classified, and are shared widely through social media.

So what are these? They come in the form of violence, destruction, and physical division: concrete and metal. Checkpoints, prisons, settlements, settler roads, walls, “security zones,” tanks, tractors, bulldozers, drones and bombs. The physical manifestations of apartheid classify and categorize. They are permits and applications, ID cards, databases, surveillance systems, evacuation orders, legal notices and so on. Though understanding the physical elements of apartheid is extremely useful, it is also important to investigate the ideology and architecture that produces and sustains these.

Now, when outlining the ideology dimension, I am primarily concerned with ideology as a taken-for-granted worldview, not necessarily how politicians may use ideologically-motivated rhetoric to gain the acceptance of their constituents, et cetera. The ideologies of apartheid fall under many labels, and there are many “-isms” that we use to describe these: racism, colonialism, Christian Zionism, Zionism, religious fundamentalism, neo-liberalism, et cetera. Ideologies are powerful in that they shape worldviews and influence political and social action. However, unlike the physical dimension of apartheid, ideology is difficult to measure because in part because features of multiple ideologies readily intertwine. Israeli settlers, for example, embrace elements of Zionism, elements of settler colonization, racism, religious fundamentalism, et cetera. It’s very difficult for us sometimes to separate these out.

What are the central effects of ideology in relation to apartheid definition? For one, Ideology propagates and maintains fear. As Yoav Shamir’s film Defamation suggests, fear is a significant means for exploiting the perceived vulnerability of Israelis. Fear works to justify racial violence and segregation in all forms. And as a result, for many Israelis violence is necessitated by the existential “threat” that Palestinians pose. So embedded is this fear, that expressions of Palestinian agency are even construed as a threat to Israel.

Thus, an industry of fear thus underpins Israel’s fixation with its own “security” and also provides the justification for the insecurity of the Palestinians. A pregnant woman is a demographic threat. Criticisms of Israel, including campaigns including BDS campaigns or Israeli Apartheid Week, are a threat to legitimacy. Even Palestinian cultivation of za’atar was once considered an ecological threat or the keeping of cows for the production of milk a threat to Israeli national security during the intifada years.

Ideology also enables millions of people to accept myth and hypocrisy as truth. For example, widely propagated claims suggest that Palestinians might drive “Israelis into the sea” if they had the chance. However, no Palestinian is actually ever known to have done so. Rather, during the Nakba upwards of 25 percent of Palestinians were forced to leave Palestine by boat.
Ideology also denies. As we have seen for generations and in recent weeks in Gaza, ideology permits the victims of occupation and massacre to be painted as the aggressors, and aggressors, the victims. There are many examples of this, such as the rhetoric that proposes “Arabs,” and not the creation of Israel itself, as being the root cause of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Ideology also dehumanizes. Claims that Palestinian mothers have little concern for the lives of their children, or Palestinians are raised in a culture of hate are examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric that render Palestinians inhuman and thus unworthy of freedom, citizenship, self-determination.

Ideology blinds and the way ideology can blind was revealed very strongly during the 2011 Tel Aviv protests, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis demanded domestic justice and equality while wholly ignoring the most discriminated in Israel: Palestinian Bedouins, Palestinians under occupation and African migrants and refugees. Ideologies enable the manifestation of a mundane “everyday” apartheid that permits a majority of Israelis to live prosperous lives relatively ignorant of the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Israelis to go to work, shop, take care of their families and enjoy the luxuries of the first world without sensing they might be nested in the architecture of apartheid. So poorly understood, this mundane aspect of apartheid is highly significant to the maintenance of segregation and control of Palestinians.

Now what is architecture? Architecture in this framework refers to the regulatory, economic and institutional systems associated with apartheid. The architecture of apartheid is extremely elusive. It cuts across multiple sectors and the connections often remain unclear, especially given the extreme level of integration and dependencies between Palestinians and Israelis.
For example, though the physical dimension of apartheid conveys separation and oppression, the architecture that produces and maintains these may actually reveal the opposite. The use of the Israeli shekel and dependency on Israeli goods and services in the occupied territories are just two of examples.

Another major example are the settlements, which when we understand from the perspective of the physical (settler roads, checkpoints, monstrous buildings colonizing Palestinian hilltops) as well as ideology (Zionist settler-colonization), from this perspective they appear to be negotiable, movable, modular, et cetera. And many groups such as Peace Now actually suggest they’re not a significant obstacle to peace.

However, to understand settlements through the lens of architecture requires an exploration into the lives of ten percent of Israeli Jewish population who are settlers. Billions in annual subsidies that the Israeli government provides to settlements, their relationship to Israeli institutions and military, international ties, the employment of Palestinians and the economic and legal structures that make them an indistinguishable part of Israel today. Moreover, the vagueness inherent in apartheid’s architecture raises very difficult questions. For example, if an Israeli bank is involved in transferring funds or providing services within a settlement, are all account holders or even transactions of that given bank complicit in apartheid?
Even more complex to understand are those “mundane” or “everyday” elements of apartheid’s architecture, including the unassuming role of Israeli citizens. Rashid Khalidi refers to this as “the hundreds of thousands in government and in the private sector whose livelihoods and bureaucratic interests are linked to the maintenance of control over the Palestinians.” Similarly, Amira Hass wrote in Haaretz how “hundreds of thousands of perfectly normal Israelis who are not violent at home are partners in the mission of administering, demarcating, restricting and taming the other society while cumulatively damaging its rights, welfare and well-being.” And on this topic we actually know very little.

Architecture is key. In order to understand Israeli apartheid, we require a comprehensive mapping of apartheid’s architecture, which would involve articulating the relationships among Israeli institutions, corporations, civil society, markets, particularly as they relate to the physical elements of apartheid, and also to the role of ideology in their maintenance and expansion. Though considerable research has been done on the subject – especially with regards to BDS, when seen from the perspective of the physical, ideology and architecture, apartheid is far more complex than highly publicized BDS cases such as SodaStream might suggest.

So how do we then think about how to challenge apartheid if we look at it from this tri-part dimensions of ideology, architecture and the physical?

I’d like to present what are some relevant considerations that are happening today, I think important movements and items. The first is the case of Africans in Israel. I’m talking here about non-Jewish African migrants and refugees. The violence unleashed on non-Jewish African migrants and refugees in Israel, I believe, is a potentially significant front for the struggle against Israeli apartheid, as it exposes the racism embedded within segments of the Israeli society and its institutions. It also raises important questions regarding the status and rights of refugees in Israel in general and the ability for Israel to function as a modern nation-state. How this case is resolved may set actually an important precedence for Palestinian refugees in the future. I think it’s a case we don’t spend enough time as policymakers and activists thinking about.

The next is the role of faith-based activism. Here I think of the important work done by groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace. The increasing numbers of Israelis and Jews who are distancing themselves from Israeli state policies and propaganda is extremely encouraging and very important, one that Olmert warned about. How is it that some Israelis, even those who have served in the IDF, or were devout Zionists at one point can shift their ideological position from one that supports Israel with conviction to a pro-human rights platform or otherwise? Unfortunately, rather than seek to understand these cognitive shifts away from Zionism, the majority of attention has focused on the processes of indoctrination such as education systems, military training, and Birthright.

Christian activism is also integral to challenging Christian Zionism, and for educating Christian communities, particularly here in the U.S, about the history of Christianity in Palestine, the circumstances of Palestinian Christians, relations between faiths in the Eastern traditions but most importantly the need to adopt a proactive human rights platform for thinking about Palestine-Israel. I note the work of Sabeel and also the recent Presbyterian divestment action. Now these may not rock Israel economically, but are powerful in raising questions, debate and challenging Christian Zionist worldviews that blindly support the state of Israel. On a related note, it is unfortunate that Arab Orthodox and Catholic churches in the West have yet to meaningfully enter into this debate and I hope that will change in the near future.

Subsidies. Without a doubt, U.S. subsidies to Israel permit apartheid to thrive. U.S. military aid to Israel, as countless analysts have noted is the most significant subsidy, to the tune of $3.5 billion dollars annually. Without such support Israel could not have developed into what it has become today. Such subsidies permit Israel to channel resources into military occupation, control and the bombardment of Palestinians.

But subsidies also come in many forms. For example, reports suggest that upwards of 5,000 Israeli soldiers have dual nationality, a third of these being American citizens. The State of Israel also offers official government subsidies to 91 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Various estimates suggest these amount to between $1 and $2 billion dollars annually. In addition, over $8 billion in international aid has been distributed to the Palestinian Authority post-Oslo and estimates suggest that upwards of 30 percent of this contributes directly to Israeli economic growth. So unless donors and aid are able to directly challenge the occupation, aid also supports the status quo.

Next, I’d like to talk about two industries and I’ll be finishing with these points. The first is the Israeli military industry. By 2012, Israel had become one of the largest arms exporters in the world, with exports topping $7 billion dollars, which is a twenty percent increase over 2011 figures. So today Israel is ranked eleventh globally in arms exports, is a major arms importer and as a result, is the sixth largest in terms of military industry. As a result, military industries are economically and politically strategic for Israel and also a major employer of Israelis.

An article in the Haaretz published a few days ago was titled, “For Israeli arms makers, Gaza war is a cash cow.” This notes that growth is intimately connected with the “field-testing” of new weapons and weapons systems, as well as the privatization of Israeli military industries. This was also suggested by the documentary The Lab which finds a correlation between Israeli military campaigns and weapons sales. This actually suggests that Israel will depend on repeated military campaigns for economic growth, arms innovation and also employment generation.

Now can this be challenged? Major protests in the UK recently have prompted the UK government to suggest that it would freeze a dozen weapons export licenses and also review military contracts with Israel. Of course, if U.S. military aid to Israel were to stop today outright, Israel would have to reconsider how it distributes its military resources. However, I suggest that given how integral military industries are to the architecture of Israeli apartheid, the Israeli military-industrial complex may actually thrive independent of U.S. subsidies.

The next is oil and gas. There is oil in the occupied Golan, and gas off the coast of Gaza. And already, there are reports exploration is taking place in the occupied Golan and that Israel is looking to harness Gaza’s gas resources. If Israel was capable of exploiting these resources today, I believe it would cement the occupation and siege and retain the status quo. It may however lead to increased employment for Palestinian labor, especially in occupied Gaza, which would deepen dependencies on Israel but also lead to further economic de-development as detailed in the work of Sara Roy. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. There are examples in the world where the discovery of such resources and the desire to exploit them have motivated major efforts for resolving violence and promoting statehood. Here I think of the peace agreement between Sudan and Southern Sudan, and later the independence of Southern Sudan, which is strongly based on the sharing of oil revenues. For this reason, I believe oil and gas should be central to any negotiation pertaining to the self-determination of Palestinians. And policymakers and activists really need to work a little bit harder on bringing that at the fore of their work.

I’d like to note that the organization of segregation and violence in Israel today is, as I’ve suggested, far more sophisticated than that experienced by South Africa. In fact South African anti-apartheid icons have themselves regularly noted this, including Desmond Tutu. So effectively challenging organized segregation and violence in Israel requires a much more sophisticated understanding of the links between the physical, architecture and ideological elements of apartheid. And I hope what I’ve presented today provides some interesting food for thought on the topic. Thank you very much.


 

Samer Abdelnour is an Assistant Professor of Business-Society Management at the Rotterdam School of Management and co-founder of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network. His research crosses a number of broad fields including social enterprise, organizational theory, globalization and political sociology. Contextually, he has been conducting field research on fuel-efficient stoves and the humanitarian response in Darfur, post-war reintegration of ex-combatants in the Blue Nile, and collective enterprise approaches for marginalized peoples under conflict and discrimination in Darfur. He is completing a PhD at the London School of Economics.This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.