Apartheid Israel

"In 1975, the General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 declaring, “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Other organizations followed suit: The Conference of the International Women’s Year declared that international peace required the end of colonialism, occupation, apartheid and Zionism. The Organization of African Unity stated that South Africa, Rhodesia and Israel shared a common imperialist history. Israel found itself in a diplomatic bind similar to South Africa’s, though not as severe; just as the United States, Britain and France had blocked a move to expel South Africa from the UN entirely, so it was often the US veto alone that saved Israel from Security Council sanction. Resolution 3379 was revoked only in 1991, as a condition of Israel’s participation in the Madrid talks, and under pressure from Washington. The apartheid analogy resurfaced with renewed relevance in the mid-1990s, when white rule in South Africa had ended. The PLO had long since accepted the idea of two states rather than one secular state, and Arafat had become president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a non-sovereign entity with administrative powers in Gaza and patches of the West Bank, but nothing close to independence. There were striking similarities between Area A, as the districts of PA administration were known under the Oslo agreements, and bantustans: The cantons were non-contiguous, separated from each other by Israeli settlements and military bases and ubiquitous checkpoints, and travel between them or into Israel was severely restricted. Israel began building a network of roads connecting settlements in the Occupied Territories to West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and “bypassing” Palestinian population centers. These measures were adopted even as the PA, Israel and their international sponsors spoke of a comprehensive peace leading to Palestinian statehood. In reality, as Leila Farsakh writes, the Oslo process “paved the way for the ‘bantustanization of the area.’”[2]" (thanks Marcy)