Blogger: Salma Abudagga (Liberal Arts)
Amnesty International has recently called on the International Criminal Criminal Court to consider how Israel’s policies that systematically treat Palestinians “as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights” violate International Law. Amnesty calls on action from the international community after paralleling and amounting Israel's policies of “segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control” to apartheid.
The UN Apartheid Convention defines apartheid as “when serious human right violations are committed with the purpose of establishing and maintaining a system of domination of one racial group over another and systematically oppressing them. This is done through the allocation of a “citizen” and” non-citizen” status. Israeli prime minister Netenyahu claims– “Israel is not a state of all its citizen, but rather the nation state of jewish people and only them” and implements policies accordingly,
Palestinians suffer injustice and inequality in all three parts of occupied Palestine– Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
The Gaza Strip, home to 2 million Palestinians, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and is often referred to as an “open air prison”. Under air, land, and sea blockades imposed by Israel and Egypt, Gaza is isolated from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) and controlled by Israel. In a report that considers Israeli apartheid in Gaza, Al Mazen compares the city to South African Bantustans, allocated territories for Black inhabitants of South Africa in pursuit of exclusion and segregation through major administrative devices under the apartheid system.
The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under illegal israeli occupation and military rule since 1967, and is home to between 2.1-3 million Palestinian Arabs and about 430,000 Israeli Jews who live in settlements.
Imposition of Apartheid Through the ID System: Your ID Determines Your Rights
The hierarchical 5-tier ID system implemented by the Israeli government works to privilege Jewish Israelis and systemically subjugate and discriminate against Palestinians.
While Jewish Israelis all hold the same ID, Palestinians living within the occupied territories are assigned with one of four depending on their place of origin, all which determines the levels of rights you enjoy and the extent to which you can move freely. These include and affect access to living, services, and participation within the legal system.
Those with a green ID that holds an address within the Gaza Strip systemically face the most discrimination and are essentially isolated in an enclave controlled by Israel. Since 2007, Palestinians with this ID type are barred from all the other OPT. They cannot vote in Israeli parliament, but they are under de facto israeli sovereign control since Gaza went under siege.
Those with a green ID that holds an address within the West Bank can only access 40% of the land, are barred from the rest, and are similarly excluded from voting in israeli parliament. The system of apartheid and its manifestations of inequality is most prevalent in the West Bank through the juxtapusitions of lifestyles for those living within the same land.
Those that hold this ID are treated differently to Jewish Israelis living within the West Bank in illegal settlements. Permanent military checkpoints, gates, roadblocks, barriers, restricted roads, and a physical wall are all used by Israel to limit Palestinian movement and interfere with daily life. Going to school, going to work, visiting a holy site– all these become restricted and monitored activities. These policies are implemented despite Israel’s obligation by international law to allow and facilitate free movement for Palestinians.
In exploring unjust geographies, Soja describes the events in the OPT as an example of spatial injustice that:
“have become an unusually fertile and ideologically charged mileu for creative research on oppressive geographies and the production of spatial injustice”.
-Edward Soja, 2010, pg. 41
Spatial strategies like territorial dispossession and military occupation reinforce control and oppression. In Palestine, this looks like “micro-geographies of power, surveillance, and control and the overt construction of walls and guarded settlements”, as Soja suggests. This creates layers of injustices that work to control the Palestinian population and economically advantage those privileged with a “citizen” status under the apartheid system.
Segregation is also institutionalized in the transport and infrastructure systems, with buses that run only for those with Israeli IDs, which can access a different system of roads restricted to Palestinians. According to Israeli Human Rights Watch,”there were 67 kilometers of roads in the West Bank that Israel classified for the sole, or practically sole, use of Israelis, first and foremost of settlers”.
This segregation of a simple public amenity– the bus– is symbolic of the oppression under the broader system of segregation and parallels the struggles protested by Rosa Parks and many like her under the Jim Crow system in the United States.
The aparthied system also imposes segregation through the implementation of two separate legal systems for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living within the same space. The assignment of such a “citizen” and “non-citizen status” of apartheid systems is evident through the ways in which individuals are governed–
Jewish Israelis living in illegal settlements in the West Bank are governed by Israeli civil law, with the full rights this accords them, while Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank are governed by Israeli military law. To grasp the inequality, consider this: An Israeli soldier gets 45 days community service for shooting a Palestinian protester in Gaza. Meanwhile, a Palestinian child can be sentenced for years in prison for simply throwing a rock.
The Israeli military court has a 99.7% conviction rate, where an arresting soldier’s testimony is enough to send a Palestinian child to prison– also a violation of international law under Article 76 of the fourth Geneva Convention.
Those with a blue ID that hold an address within East Jerusalem are able to travel to other occupied areas and Israel but are still barred from Israeli parliament. This deprivation of political rights parallels the isolation of Blacks from political involvement and the denial of voting rights in apartheid South Africa. Palestinians with this ID are granted a residency status which can be revoked by the Israeli government if certain conditions are met– such as living outside of Jerusalem.
Lastly, another blue ID is held by Palestinian citizens of Israel– those who remained despite the ethnic cleansing of 1948. The citizen status, while granting voting and land accessibility rights that most Palestinians are stripped of, does not grant Palestinians the same rights as their Jewish counterparts. Barred from living in 68% of Israeli towns, those with this ID are not free of legal and de facto discrimination.
Medical Apartheid: COVID-19 Vaccinations
The inequality has been visible during the COVID-19 pandemic– and the rights violated during it. Under the fourth Geneva Convention, as an occupying power, Israel must ensure “adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics”. But time and time again, Israel fails to fulfill this obligation.
The COVID-19 vaccination inequality is a perfect example of this. While Israel has maintained one of the highest vaccination rates throughout the pandemic, Palestinians living within OPT have to ration a limited amount. According to Medics without Borders, you are “60 times more likely to have a vaccination in Israel than in Palestine”.
Al Jazeera refers to COVID-19 vaccinations as “proof of Israel’s medical apartheid”. While Israelis enjoy the privilege of vaccination and health protection, Palestinians bear the weight of disease only a few kilometers away.
References:
American Friends Service Committee (2013). Restricted Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. [online] American Friends Service Committee. Available at: https://www.afsc.org/resource/restricted-movement-occupied-palestinian-territory [Accessed 15 Mar. 2022].
Amnesty International. (2022). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity. [online] Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].
Buttu, D. (2021). COVID-19 vaccinations are proof of Israel’s medical apartheid. [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/23/covid-19-vaccinations-are-proof-of-israels-medical-apartheid [Accessed 18 Mar. 2022].
Doctors Without Borders (2020). Palestine: “Vaccine inequality is unjust and cruel.” [online] Msf.org.uk. Available at: https://msf.org.uk/article/palestine-vaccine-inequality-unjust-and-cruel [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].Doctors Without Borders (2020). Palestine: “Vaccine inequality is unjust and cruel.” [online] Msf.org.uk. Available at: https://msf.org.uk/article/palestine-vaccine-inequality-unjust-and-cruel [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].
Mezan, A. (2021). The Gaza Bantustan — Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip - occupied Palestinian territory. [online] ReliefWeb. Available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-bantustan-israeli-apartheid-gaza-strip [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].
News, B. (2020). Explainer: Israel, annexation and the West Bank. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-52756427 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2022].
Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Un.org. (2022). Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. [online] Available at: https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].
YONAH JEREMY BOB (2020). IDF paratrooper gets community service for killing Palestinian. [online] The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Available at: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/idf-paratrooper-gets-community-service-for-killing-palestinian-631566 [Accessed 17 Mar. 2022
Visualising Palestine (2014). Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System. [online] Visualizingpalestine.org. Available at: https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/identity-crisis-the-israeli-id-system?blm_aid=22687 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2022].