Anatomy of Israeli apartheid, part 2

[IndianaGreen]

Part 1 is posted on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x331192

Anatomy of Israeli apartheid, part 2

August 27, 2010 11:56 am CDT

Israel/Palestine and the Apartheid Analogy
Source: MRZine
27.08.10

Critics, Apologists and Strategic Lessons (Part 2)

by Ran Greenstein

I. Apartheid of a Special Type

In the previous section I made a distinction between historical apartheid (unique to South Africa) and apartheid in its generic form -- a structured system of political exclusion and social marginalization on the basis of origins (including but not restricted to race). I concluded that Israel is different from historical apartheid, but it displays characteristics that allow us to define it as a form of generic apartheid. There is a family resemblance between the two regimes. This applies to Israel in an extended sense, covering 'Israel proper' in its pre-1967 boundaries, 'Greater Israel' with the occupied Palestinian territories, and 'Greater Palestine' with the 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

By de-linking historical apartheid from its generic form we no longer need to retain a focus on South African racial policies and practices. And yet, I argue in this section, it would be useful to keep a focus on comparing apartheid South Africa and Israel, in order to highlight crucial features of the Israeli system. The comparison would allow us to analyze Israeli-Palestinian relations, evaluate possible alternatives to the status quo, and devise strategies of political struggle and transformation based (among other things) on South African experiences. We must keep in mind here that the point of a comparative analysis is not to provide a list of similarities and differences for its own sake, but to use one case in order to reflect critically on the other and thus learn more about both.

Back in the early 1960s, the South African Communist Party coined the term 'colonialism of a special type' to refer to a system that combined the colonial legacies of racial discrimination, political exclusion and socio-economic inequalities, with political independence from the British Empire. It used this novel concept to devise a strategy for political change that treated local whites as potential allies rather than as colonial invaders to be removed from the territory. Making analytical sense of apartheid in South Africa was relatively straightforward since it was an integrated system of legal-political control. Although different laws applied to different groups of people, the source of authority was clear. Making sense of generic apartheid in the case of Israel is more complicated. The degree of legal-political differentiation is greater, as it includes an array of formal and informal military regulations in the occupied territories and policies delegating powers and resources to non-state institutions (the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and so on), who act on behalf of the state but in a more opaque manner, not open to public scrutiny. That much of the relevant legal apparatus applies beyond Israeli boundaries (to Jews, all of whom are regarded as potential citizens, and to Palestinians, all of whom are regarded as prohibited persons), adds another dimension to the analysis. For this reason, we may talk about 'apartheid of a special type' -- a unique system that combines democratic norms, military occupation, and exclusion/inclusion of extra-territorial populations. There is no easy way of capturing this diversity with a single overarching concept.

http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2010/08/27/anatomy-israeli-apartheid-part

[Igel]

1. Interesting articles.

Apartheid is something of a political hapax legomenon. Generalizing from a single token tends to be a problematic activity. Rather like constructing a line that passes through a single point and then claiming that it's the only possible line.

Then again, if you let apartheid be just a single example of a more general phenomena--which is precisely what it is--then you lose what's distinctive about it. At the same time it gets harder to draw the line that you want to draw, given that it has to pass through at least two known points.