The Israeli Elections: A Decisive Vote for Apartheid

[Violet_Crumble]

by Omar Barghouti
April 03, 2006

Israel votes for disengagement and final borders" and "Israelis abandon the dream of Greater Israel" were the main themes in the spin that characterized mainstream, even some progressive, media coverage of the Israeli parliamentary elections which took place on March 28. In reality, the election results revealed that a consensus has emerged among Israeli Jews, not only against the basic requirements of justice and genuine peace, as that was always the case, but also in support of a more aggressive form of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and cementing Zionist apartheid.
In the 2006 Knesset elections, Israelis have indeed overwhelmingly voted for "disengagement," not from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), but only from the Palestinians -- whether in Israel, in the OPT or in exile. Palestinian lands are clearly precluded from this disengagement. An objective examination of the election results and the political platforms of the parties represented in the new Israeli parliament will show that the celebration of the "shift to peace and realism" by Western and Israeli media pundits alike is not only unwarranted but quite deceptive as well. If anything, an avid adoption of the right's agenda has taken place.

Before exposing the spin, readers must be cautioned that "right," "left" and "center" are relative terms; they have substantially different meaning in the Israeli political context than in any comparable parliamentary system, including the Palestinian Legislative Council. With the exception of the Palestinian dominated political parties, all Israeli parties represented in the seventeenth Knesset converge on the three fundamental No's of Zionism: No to the return of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted by Israel during the Nakba (catastrophe of dispossession and expulsion around 1948); No to a complete end of the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967; No to full equality -- in the law as well as in government policies -- between Israel's Jewish citizens and its Palestinian citizens, the remaining indigenous population of the land.

<snip>

Just recently, Meretz's leader, Yossi Beilin, wrote to Avigdor Lieberman -- seen by some analysts as the new leader of the "fascist" right in Israel -- admiring him for being "very intelligent, a successful politician, an excellent man of action, and a smart Jew," further praising him for "guiding us to a situation in which the Jewish people, too, will indeed finally have a Jewish state of its own." Lieberman has called for ethnically cleansing Israel of half a million of its Palestinian citizens by "adjusting its borders" to leave them out, denying them citizenship and any pertinent rights. It is worth noting that most of the land belonging to this target group has already been confiscated by the state over decades. Opportunistic politicking notwithstanding, Meretz was squarely rebuffed by Israeli voters, winning only 5 seats in last week's elections, compared to its already paltry 6 seats in the 2003 elections.

In sharp contrast to the steady fall of the "left,", Lieberman's ultra-right party, Israel Our Home, whose main constituency is among the Russian-speaking immigrants, won an astounding 11 seats on a platform which explicitly calls for denying Israeli citizens "the right to live in the state on the grounds of religion and race," as the Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar writes.<1> Although other extremist parties that sat in the Knesset, like Rehavam Ze'evi's Moledet, have in the past advocated a similarly fascist agenda, this is the first time in Israel's history that any such party is embraced as part of the mainstream. "Lieberman's acceptance into the heart of the consensus," cautions Eldar, "is evidence [] of the moral degradation of Jewish Israeli society."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10035

[Englander]

1. Is it Apartheid yet?

Since that's where the GoI is headed, that's abundantly clear.

[bemildred]

2. It is interesting to contrast this with Avnery's take.

I think for now I'm going with Avnery, mostly because this fellow seems far more emotional, which is admittedly a weak support for Avnery.