Security Fence Goes Further Than Apartheid

Munir Chafic     Al-Hayat     2003/08/4

A number of Palestinian intellectuals insist on drawing a comparison between the apartheid (racial discrimination) system that prevailed in South Africa and the Jewish Zionist entity in Palestine. In fact, they view the security fence, which the Jewish state is building to separate the West Bank from the territories it seeks to claim, and by expanding Jerusalem and the settlements, as embodying the apartheid system. Like a snake, this fence has started winding around a number of settlements, as well as Palestinian towns and villages, separating what settlements it can to join them to its state, while isolating several Palestinian cities and villages from each other, by seizing thousands of acres of arable land in view of also adding them at a later stage.  

The official reason given for this wall is to ensure "security" against attacks inside Israel, including inside settlements. But this is only one of the major reasons why this wall is being built. Other reasons include taking hold of the Western water basin that lies just below the villages it separated. The water motive, in the Israeli strategy, is just as important as stealing land and evicting the Palestinian inhabitants. This has always been a key element in Israel's strategy and tactical military operations, including the colonies in the past and the settlements today.

This is why Israel's apartheid-like racial discrimination does not constitute the core element of the Zionist strategy. The Zionist racism is not restricted to apartheid as in segregation; instead, it involves stripping the Palestinians from their land and evicting them outside the country, if possible. It is a discrimination of stealing land with all that lies under and above it, including built cities and villages once all the original residents have been evicted, as it happened in 1948/49 in accordance with the strategy of the Jewish agency and the Haganah. Consequently, the comparison between the apartheid system in South Africa and Namibia releases the Zionist discrimination from its most horrifying aspects. But the latter is qualitatively different from apartheid in the realm of discrimination itself. Nothing is worse than Zionist racism except the racism of the White Americans, who stole the land and evicted the inhabitants, whereas Zionist racism contributed to stealing the land and confiscating towns and properties, but differed in that it resorted to forced eviction instead of mass extermination - naturally accompanied by a limited number of massacres (compared to the American case), and aimed at "racial" cleansing through deportation, instead of extermination. 

Every kind of racism has an element of discrimination, but not every discrimination is apartheid. That is why there are certain similarities between the Zionist Israeli discrimination and the apartheid system in different parts of the world here and there. But even if this is partially true, it shouldn't be viewed as the main element of the whole picture, because in that case, this image would be embellished it restricted to apartheid, and consequently stripped of its own, specific ugliness.

One could understand the good-willed motive driving these people who insist on the comparison with apartheid, namely to clarify the picture in the Western mind, which is already strongly opposed to the South African apartheid. This explains why the Israelis and Zionists are so annoyed with this comparison, as they staunchly reject any description of their practices as racist. But the truth should not be subject to propaganda considerations, even if these are basically true and fair, because by exaggerating parts of the truth to make it become a whole, this would facilitate the deconstruction of the arguments by welcoming contradictions of many facts even if they are even more racist.

Going back to the fence, the problem does not lie in the racist separation, but rather in the theft of the land and underground water supplies, and the catastrophe that this represents to the farmers, and in the borders it sets, and which separate the West Bank territories from 40 or 45% to 55 or 60%. This is Sharon's plan in the negotiations for the so-called Roadmap. It should be noted that there are a number of settlements that were left outside the fence, on the side that is supposed to be left to the Palestinians. Water experts believe that the reason these settlements were left out is because "their land" does not have any water resources, while negotiations "experts" maintain that this policy allows the Israelis to leave a gap that can be used in many different ways in the future. As for those who don't think right, they believe that this fence project will be followed by other subsidiary walls that would go beyond the Jordanian borders. 

On the other hand, the project of this wall, which was suggested 15 years ago, could carry another dimension, and that is the retreat of the occupation forces to behind the wall, in case a peace settlement does not fulfill its conditions, forcing it into unilateral withdrawal. In this case, it would have decided what it wants to take or leave from the towns and villages, and impose some kind of truce as in South Lebanon, which it will protect through guns, threats and international pressure. The Israelis would also leave the Palestinians whatever they lose when they leave, and let the Palestinians establish a state on that rest. But this option is contingent on making the occupation very costly, and leaving no hope for stifling the Intifada or the resistance of the Palestinian people, not to mention the lack of opportunities to expand settlements and decreasing possibilities for transfer.

The author is a Palestinian writer.