Susie Jacobs on Israel=Apartheid

This article was first posted on the Engage website on 20 May 2005 at http://www.engageonline.org.uk/archives/index.php?id=12. On 13 October 2015, when we attempted to consult the article, this url no longer worked,  so we have reposted the article here.

 

Engage’s introduction: The boycott campaign has one central argument. It is that Zionism=Apartheid. We know what to do with an apartheid state. We boycott it.

We have argued on Engage that this is wrong twice. Firstly, Zionism is not identical to apartheid. And secondly, the cultural and academic boycott of South Africa was not an important element of the forces that brought down the apartheid state.

We have also argued that the Israel=Apartheid claim licences people to relate to Jews (the vast majority of Jews who decline to identify themselves as ‘anti-Zionist’) as though they were racists. Hence the purge of ‘Zionist’ academics in Poland in 1968. Hence the current proposal to boycott Israeli academics who do not characterise their state as being essentially ‘colonialist and racist’. Hence the treatment of Jewish student societies in universities as though they were racist societies.

The Israel = Apartheid claim is simplistic and unhelpful. While making any social comparison is legitimate, as the article argues, the equation is also a political claim that Israel should be isolated by the outside world, as was apartheid

Susie Jacobs, a sociology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, argues in this scholarly, rigorous and informed piece, that any comparison must be systematic and in context, not used as an easy ‘way out’ of thinking about the real difficulties and uncertaintites that exist in the current situation in Israel and Palestine.

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Israel=Apartheid? A comparison and critique

This intervention addresses the frequently-made charge that Israel is an apartheid state. The term ‘apartheid’ refers to the National Party-led state and society in South Africa between 1948 – 1994, based on the notion of separation of ‘racial’ groups.

The allegation that Israel is an apartheid state evokes the image of South Africa under apartheid as uniquely brutal, based on racial classification and subordination (see below). Moreover, apartheid South Africa is often seen as the illegitimate state par excellence: thus comparisons between Israel and South Africa evoke a sub-text of Israel’s illegitimacy. This is particularly significant in underpinning some (although we maintain, not all…) calls for boycotts of Israeli academia1 and political ties. The description of Israel as an ‘emerging apartheid’ gathered force in the run-up to the UN Anti-Racism conference in August/September, 2001 and was vehemently expressed at the NGO conference there. There, calls were for the launch of an “international anti-Israel apartheid movement” and for the international community “to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the case of South Africa, which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links….between all states and Israel” (WCAR NGO Forum Declaration 3/9/2001; cited in Pogrund, 2004)2

Benvenisti (2005) underlines how this discourse operates as a marker of political position: use of the terminology [of apartheid] has become a mark of leftist radicalism whereas denial of validity of the comparison is seen as ‘Zionist’. Benvenisti adds that it is difficult to find discussion of the feasibility of comparing the two social systems.

Apartheid or ‘separate development’ began in 1948 in South Africa, with the electoral victory of the National(ist) (and Afrikaaner-led) Party. Likewise, the state of Israel was established in 1948 after a UN vote, so that the year 1948 is sometimes in itself seen as a link. However, racial oppression and segregation did not begin in South Africa with apartheid: it established a more rigid and extreme form (see below) of the racialised segregation that already existed. African lands were expropriated by early on in the 20th Century (consolidated through the Native Lands Act 1913, and amended). The National Party (and its associated apartheid policies) itself represented a class coalition among Afrikaaner-speaking ‘whites’ against previous domination of the British/English language speaking whites.

This piece does not engage centrally with the implied charge that as an apartheid state, Israel has no right to exist. Rather, it takes the statement that Israel (and implicitly, Zionism) is equivalent to apartheid, at face value and compares a number of aspects of the two societies. Before embarking upon this relatively brief comparison, we would note that any comparison between two societies (Japan /India; Britain/Greece; Saudi Arabia/Morocco, Mexico/Venezuela), is likely to yield both a number of similarities and dissimilarities.

The Past

Historical factors in situations such as those of Israel/Palestine and South Africa are still very much ‘alive’ and carry much resonance. Here we discuss the classification of both as ‘settler societies’ (Stasiulis and Yuval Davis 1995), the question of colonialism and displacement of original populations and questions of historical ties to land and of reasons for settler migration, first examining similarities and then dissimilarities.

Similarities:

First – and perhaps foremost – both Israel and South Africa can be classified as ‘settler states’: in which a non-indigenous group (or: a long-displaced diasporic group) settled on lands of an (or, another) indigenous group or people. However, many other settler societies do exist, including e.g. the USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand among others including a number that have existed historically. The establishment of settler societies is nearly always linked to a process of colonisation. In the case of South Africa, this was initially by Dutch settlers (later, called Afrikaaners) and then by the British. Palestine was also of course a British protectorate under the Mandate but no largescale British settlement took place; rather, settlement was mainly by Jewish people after the Balfour Declaration from the 1920s –1930s and then after the Holocaust.

Nearly all colonial settlement, particularly where the numbers of settler colonists are substantial, entails the violent expropriation of land and displacement of ‘original’ (or, already existing) populations. This is the case in South African history, which also entailed the enslavement of Khoi-san and other peoples by Dutch settlers. In the case of Palestine/Israel, Jewish settlers endeavoured – with some success – to buy land from Palestinian leaders and landowners. However, the majority of land in Israel, including behind the 1967 ‘green lines’ was expropriated from Palestinian villagers and urban dwellers. The establishment of Israel also gave rise to a largescale and unresolved refugee population.

We argue that in a number of respects, Israel’s (and many Israelis’) actions can be understood as those of a ‘normal’ colonial power, with all the suppression and brutality that colonialism usually entails. This is the case regardless of the national/ethnic ‘origin’ of the colonialism in question, whether it be e.g. British, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, Belgian, Chinese – or indeed, Roman. To move to the ground of ethics and political morality that underpins the Israel/Zionism = apartheid argument: Israel – and many Israelis – are indeed culpable in that they have settled on Palestinian land, but not in any special manner that was not also true of most other colonialisms.

Differences:

There also exist significant differences between Israel and apartheid South Africa. In this section we examine the issues of (historical/ethnic) connections to the land and of reasons for migration/settlement. Jews are of course one of the diasporic peoples par excellence, having been expelled from Palestine after the destruction of Jerusalem under Roman rule. It is generally accepted that Jewish people, like Palestinians, have long historical connection to the eastern Mediterranean area around Palestine/Israel and surrounding areas. Some Jews envisage this in religious terms (ie Israel as the promised land); others, simply in terms of past origin/historical connection and of collective memory. In contrast, neither the Afrikaaners/Dutch, British or other European settlers (e.g. Greeks, Germans and also Jews) had any ‘claim’ to historical connection with southern Africa. Nonetheless, most European-origin people have now lived in South Africa for several generations – sometimes settlement dates back centuries.

The matter of historical or ethnic connection is often deployed as a legitimising claim to land and/or to residence. We do not wish to enter this debate, which is a very broad one, although in general feel that ‘civic ‘ claims (that is, based on residence: Antony Smith’s term) rather than ethnic claims are preferable in most circumstances. However, I would point out that mention of ethnic ties/claims must be deployed even-handedly: either such ties must be accepted or rejected for all peoples, including Palestinians and Jews.

The reasons for (most) Jewish migration to Palestine of course differ from those of (most) European migrants to South Africa, who had a greater degree of choice in migration. The great majority of Jewish migration in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries was not to Palestine but to the USA and to other countries such as Britain, South Africa and elsewhere; although economic motivations played a part in some cases, most migrated to flee discrimination, persecution and repeated pogroms and expulsions in Europe dating back many centuries. (Indeed, England was the first kingdom to expel Jews en masse, in 1290….) Some of these migrants went to Palestine, and of these, some were motivated either by religious ideas or by nationalist/Zionist motives to ‘return’ (to make aliyah) to a homeland. Violent persecution of Jews was far more common in Europe than in the Muslim lands of North Africa and east Asia. In Arab and Muslim states, Jews, like Christians and Zoroastrians, were given second-class legal status with some rights in return for payment of a poll tax; they also wore distinctive clothing, lived in segregated quarters and had to show public subservience to Muslims (Lerner, 2003; www.answers.com/topic/immigration to Israel from arab lands).

From the 1930s onwards, the main impetus for Jewish migration and the establishment of Israel as a majority Jewish state was the Nazi persecution and then Holocaust, during which most Jewish migration from Nazi occupied lands to the USA, Britain and elsewhere was deliberately blocked. Some violent uprisings against Jewish migrants to Palestine took place during the 1920s and 1930s and Arab nationalists – allied with the Axis and against British colonialism – attempted to block Jewish migration despite the mass murders of the Holocaust (Lerner, 2003). These processes are often ignored (or worse, denied in Holocaust belittling), or else Jewish migration is portrayed as part of a ‘normal’ colonial process – and it is true that this took place under British colonial rule. Palestinian refusal to allow Jewish settlement even in this situation of desperation is often portrayed (if it is mentioned at all) as part of an ‘understandable’ reaction against migration and colonisation (see e.g. Rose 2004). Such reactions by Palestinians – especially in the context of an already oppressive British mandate – may indeed be partly understandable, particularly given Jewish claims on land after the Balfour Declaration and given that land was often purchased from absentee Palestinian landlords. However, it is worth considering whether it is inconsistent to ‘understand’ some nationalist reactions against migration but to condemn others – e.g. contemporary reactions of some ‘white’ populations in Britain – against refugees and asylum seekers from e.g. the Sudan, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Romania, Zimbabwe or Afghanistan.

Structural bases of states

Examining the structural and legal bases of apartheid, a number of similarities with the Israeli state emerge, as well as some divergences. Zionism (or most versions of it) aimed to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine, although other venues (e.g. Argentina, Uganda) had been considered; the main rationale was that as a people who had long endured persecution, expulsions and pogroms in different societies, and one which had faced near-extermination during the Holocaust, Jews had legitimate claim to a ‘safe haven’ which would have to take the form of a Jewish majority state. Thus the ‘right of return’ to Palestine formed one of the bases of the foundation of the state of Israel: ie that any halachically Jewish person – or indeed any person labelled as Jewish by ‘their’ state 3 had automatic citizenship in Israel. Although the nearly 20% non-Jewish Israeli minority are full citizens (but see below for substantive inequalities), this provision nevertheless establishes an ethnic basis to citizenship and to the state more generally. The basis of the apartheid state was a racialised or ‘ethnic’ classification of groups: however, this did not operate in the same way as in Israel (see below).

The apartheid state in South Africa resulting from the National Party victory is usually seen to be the result of a successful class coalition of white Afrikaaners. Despite this, apartheid classifications (see below) claimed that ‘Europeans’ constituted one `ethnic group’ while black African populations were divided into different groups or tribes (e.g. Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, Tswana, etc.). This sleight-of- hand procedure rendered Europeans the largest ‘ethnic group’. Despite this, splits between Afrikaaner and English-speaking whites remained significant, along with subsidiary national/ethnic divisions among European-origin groups.

As noted, Israel was established as a Jewish state by a United Nations vote; ‘Jewish’ being understood as either an ethnic or religious identity, or both. It is reasonable to argue that the Israeli state was also established on the basis of a class coalition among Jews, in a situation in which class and other divisions among Jewish communities had been softened in the wake the loss of 70% of the European Jewish population. Nonetheless, linguistic/racialised-ethnic splits among Jews remained (and remain): most notably, between Ashkenazi, African and Sephardi Jews (Mizrahim), although other national, religious and linguistic divisions among Jews remain important, along with other social divisions.

Under apartheid, the most flamboyant attempt to divest much of the black African population of its citizenship was the establishment of ‘Homelands’ for separate tribal/`ethnic’ groups from the late 1950s. The areas termed Homelands had previously been Reserves and then Bantustans. In terms of British colonial practice of indirect rule, this granted a degree of African autonomy in such areas, e.g. in matters of land tenure and marriage law and practice. The Homelands policy set up chiefs as ‘rulers’ of the territories, the fiction being that they were (or would become) independent states.4 Most black Africans were then to carry passports of their ‘own’ Homeland – e.g. the Transkei, Venda, KwaZulu, Bophutatswana, etc.) and would not be considered citizens of the RSA. In practice, the Homelands were not economically viable: the best agricultural land had long been expropriated by white farmers, most industry was located in South African towns and cities and the Homelands did of course not include the country’s valuable mines. In any case, Homelands often consisted of non-contiguous parcels of land since Homeland boundaries respected the integrity of white-owned farms rather than incorporating them.

Discussions of possible parallels between apartheid and ‘Israel’ becomes quite muddied at this point, as it is often unclear whether the charge of apartheid (ie being an apartheid-like society) is being applied to Israel ‘proper’ (within its pre-1967 boundaries) or to the Occupied Territories and Sharon’s vision of a ‘greater’ Israel.

There are indeed a number of parallels to with this situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories. In particular, illegal Jewish settlements cross-cut Palestinian land and much land is fragmented and non-contiguous (e.g. in South Hebron). The Israeli state seeks to undermine the economic viability of Palestinian territory through a variety of measures and practices (Halper, 2003): e.g. restrictions on Palestinians’ rights to work in Israel; restrictions on transport, checkpoints; incursions into Palestinian territory, destruction of agricultural land, appropriation of water resources…..

Another similarity between the two systems concerns the Pass system (a system of racialised IDs utilised in South Africa). The Pass system meant that Africans, as well as Coloureds (mixed-race people) and Asians had to carry passes when outside their ‘designated’ areas of work or residence. The Pass Laws constituted a major means of social and political control especially over the African population and were bitterly resisted. In Israel/the Occupied Territories, there are no formal pass laws. However, the checkpoint system to which Palestinians are subject could be said to operate similarly. Between the Green Line and the Wall (the ‘seam’ zone), Palestinians require special permits to live in their own homes, farm their own land and to make family visits. Entry to the seam zones is controlled by the IDF but frequently the zone is not opened at the scheduled times, preventing access of children to schools, worker-peasants to farmland and the ill, to hospital (Dugard, 2004).

Other similarities can be drawn between apartheid South Africa and the contemporary state of Israel, excluding the West Bank and Gaza. One relates to residential segregation in the two societies. In South Africa, segregation of different racialised/ethnic groups had existed prior to 1948, but this was enacted in a much more rigid fashion by the Group Areas Act of 1950 which provided that all groups including Coloured and Asian people had to live in their own ‘designated’ areas.

In Israel, segregation of ethnic groups (ie Jews and Palestinians) is not enshrined in law 5 for the most part. However, segregation is nonetheless enacted through the planning system and through a number of measures that directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian Arabs. Direct expropriation of Palestinian land, as is well-publicised, has gone on historically and is still taking place; less well-known is historical pressure on Arab citizens to sell land. A variety of other measures also affect where people live and the services they receive. To take two examples: the Agricultural Settlement (Restrictions on Use of Agricultural Land and Water 1967) prevents Jewish leaseholders of state lands from subleasing them to Palestinians). ‘Zoning’ (or planning: the division of the country into different national development areas) is also important in supporting and enforcing ethnic segregation. Planning permission is difficult to obtain in Arab areas and ‘illegal’ or informal building is harshly punished, unlike in Jewish areas. Palestinian towns are also funded less favourably than are Jewish areas. (See Kuper, www.jfjfp.org/factsheets/arabsinisrael.htm for more information on the latter points.)

More generally, several organisations which are Jewish and which require Jewish beneficiaries (the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund and the World Zionist Organisation) have partial responsibility for government functions, particularly with regard to land and housing; the involvement of such organisations greatly hinders any breaking down of residential segregation. Few instances of Jews and Palestinians living side by side even in urban areas exist. Indeed, 93% of land within Israel proper is reserved for Jewish-only occupation. A recent Supreme Court decision giving the (Arab) Kadan family the right to buy land in Kartzir is a positive sign, however to date remains unenforced (Association for Civil Rights in Israel/ACRI, 19/5/04).

That South Africa under apartheid was a society based on substantive inequalities between racialised and ethnic groups is obvious. These inequalities persist into the 1990s and early 21st Century, although neo-liberal policies have also seen the growth of intra-ethnic class inequalities. However, racial divisions are still high salient, with whites/’Europeans’ as a group have first-world living standards, Asians and then Coloured occupying (on average) median socio-economic positions and the majority black African population being considerably less well off, and often living in chronic poverty (see e.g. May 2000).

In Israel ‘proper’, Jews usually enjoy much higher living standards than do Israeli Arabs, who also face discrimination in a number of ways. Israel is hardly unique in that racism exists within it, but anti-Arab racism is common and there is no formal judicial policy relating to the issue of equality for the Arab minority (Pogrund, 2004, citing Hassan Jabareen). In terms of more measurable indices, a much high percentage of Palestinians than Jews (of whatever ‘race’ or national background) live in poverty. Schools and other services for Israeli Arabs are less well-funded and have inferior provision to most schools and services in Jewish areas. The civil service in Israel is particularly discriminatory towards Arab citizens, and all ministries contain very small proportions of Arab Israeli personnel despite the weight of this minority in the population, with only 5% of people in the civil service being Arab despite a 2000 law requiring the government to increase the proportion of Arabs in the civil service via affirmative action (Pogrund 2004). ( This situation is similar to that in Northern Ireland where the civil service until recently has been heavily dominated by Protestants; under apartheid, positions in the state and civil service constituted a means of social mobility for Afrikaaners.)

Within the Occupied Territories, Palestinians live in appalling conditions of increasing poverty, constraint and distress. These as well as severe and violent oppression by the Israeli state help to incline some to strategies of violence. Anti-Jewish racism, whether or not this was ‘traditional’, now also plays a part in such reactions.

Lastly, and relatedly, both apartheid South Africa and Israel were /are highly militarised societies. Of course, many other societies are as well, and this is often forgotten in the equation of Israel = apartheid. However, it remains the case that militarisation is/was an important, even dominating, feature of society and one that affects the fabric of social life more generally. Israel is not the only country guilty of human rights abuses, and these occur in some of its fiercest critics; however, this fact does not ‘absolve’ the Israeli state of such charges. There exists much evidence of brutal interrogation methods, including of juveniles. Targetted assassinations and widespread punitive house demolitions are other examples. Israel does have legitimate and serious security concerns, but actions such as these fail to observe the provisions of distinction (between civilian and military) and of proportionality of response (Dugard, 2004) in international humanitarian law.

Differences:

Despite these important similarities, significant differences in societal/state structure exist. The first and most obvious is that the apartheid state was one of the few examples of societies – perhaps apart from Nazi Germany -in which racialised classification of all the population was enshrined in law (e,g. in the Population Registration Act 1950) and was obsessively adhered to. Apartheid legislation covered a whole range of matters: marriage and sexual relations; residence; rights to work; voting rights (and after the Homelands policy, citizenship rights); schools and medical facilities and a range of petty forms of segregation (e.g. park benches; beaches). 6

Huge discrimination against Israeli Arabs (and Palestinians) does take place in Israel, as noted. The main areas in which discrimination are systematically enacted in law, however, are through differential citizenship laws which allow Jews the right of return but which make it much more difficult for Arab and Bedouin–origin people to acquire citizenship, even if they marry Israeli citizens. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have voting rights and rights to state services. From the 1990s, Israeli Arabs have been covered by national health insurance laws and discrepancies between life expectancy for Israeli Jewish and Arab women and men declined to 1.2 years (Rubinstein, 2003).

Lastly, apartheid was premised not only on cheap black /Coloured labour but on a migrant labour system that went hand in hand with the Homelands policy and the Group Areas Act. The migrant labour system meant that black African people had to travel to work in factories in urban areas and that black males working in mines were not expected to settle with their families but to live in barracks.

The original labour Zionist vision was of a self-contained Jewish society in which all Jews laboured: thus Jewish labour was preferred to Arab/Palestinian, unlike in most colonial situations. This of course contained its own problems and contradictions, most notably that the Palestinian population already inhabited the land and that even without the violent expropriation of land that in fact occurred, serious economic pressures on Palestinians would inevitably have resulted from the ‘implantation’ of (what from a Palestinian viewpoint is) a Jewish settler society in Israel. Migrant labour exists in Israel, but is not pervasively used. Since the last intifada, the labour of other groups of migrants and workers within Israel has often been substituted for that of Palestinians.

The point here is that the systems in apartheid South Africa and in Israel are not congruent in this respect. Israeli society is not fundamentally premised on the use of migrant labour as was apartheid South Africa.

Conclusion:

The above review has attempted to compare some features of society in apartheid South Africa and in the Israeli state. Several points emerge:

o The equation of apartheid = Israel is simplistic. At another level, it is simply uninformative for anyone seriously interested in the workings of these societies.

o However, there do exist a number of similarities between the two: both involve settlement and as such display colonial features – despite the very different reasons behind such settlement.

o Other similarities include the existence of forms of racism; residential and other segregation; informal discrimination; the high degree of militarisation of both societies; the serious restrictions placed on Palestinians and also on Israeli Arabs. One of the most emotive parallels is that both the ‘bantustan’ or Homeland land allocated to black African people and the territory allotted to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is highly fragmented and parcellised and does form a basis for a viable, independent state.

o To restate a point made at the beginning of this piece, the equation of Israel = apartheid is often used as an (effective) rhetoric to evoke the spectre of Israel’s `illegitimacy’. It also demarcates political positions in dichotomous ways (e.g.’leftist-radical vs. Zionist/[reactionary]’) which are a good deal less than helpful.

o Noting this use of rhetoric, however, is not to detract from the point that much of the treatment of Palestinians, and particularly the failure to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, does deserve condemnation. The equation of Zionism = apartheid has most force with regard to the situation in the Occupied Territories.

o Israeli society within the pre-1967 boundaries does not have the shape of a ‘normal’ – or normally imperfect – social democracy unless one examines only intra-Jewish relations (that is, Israel is reasonably ‘social democratic’ among Jews but not in its treatment either of Israeli Arabs or Bedouins).

It is not an illegitimate exercise per se to compare apartheid and Israel or to make any other social comparisons. Such a comparison yields a number of similarities between the societies: although any comparison is likely to highlight similarities, there are perhaps more here than would give comfort to those proclaiming Israel to be a (or the) bastion of democracy in its ‘internal’ aspects.

o However, comparisons should be made seriously and this requires attention to context as well as to detail. The easy elision between Israeli and apartheid South African society is inadequate. Apartheid was a great deal more than ‘normal’ segregation: it was a society (or an attempt to create one) almost wholly based on racialised critieria. In making this comparison, one is trapped between measured analysis and the use of rhetoric which skims over substantive differences. Critiques of Israel are necessary but they are not best – or always honestly – made through facile comparisons or dichotomies. Dichotomous thought may lend a feeling of certainty in a violent, fraught, and highly unstable situation (e.g. Israel, Palestine and the Occupied Territories) in which competing claims (and accusations) exist. In deciding whether Israel = apartheid, we should be aware of the role psychic dimensions such as these play.

Susie Jacobs
Sociology
Manchester Metropolitan University

*Thanks to Richard Kuper, Jo Bird and to Graham Trickey for their helpful comments on this piece. Responsibility for the opinions expressed is of course, my own.

Notes:

1 I argue for an academic boycott of Bar Ilan University on the basis of its links with the College of Judea and Samaria in the Occupied Territories. However, clear conditions for revoking any boycott should be set to distinguish this from an aim of isolating Israel. In general, positive links with Palestinian HEd and other institutions are likely to be more effective than severing of links.

2 Aziz Pahad, the Deputy Foreign Minister of South Africa, later spoke of the ‘disgraceful events’ surrounding the NGO conference and stated that the event was partially turned into an anti-Semitic episode (Pogrund, 2004).

3 Israel admits some groups of non-halachic Jews: e.g. USSR citizens/Russians with Jewish fathers. These had ‘Zhid’ [Jew] stamped in their passports. Such people were labelled by the state as Jewish by the, therefore became so in social terms. Another large group of Russians have no or far more tenuous Jewish connections.

4 Israel was one of the few countries to recognise the `Homelands’: this was highly dishonourable but does not in itself mean that apartheid and Israeli society are ‘the same’.

5 The Law of Citizenship and Entry into Israel (2003) was an amendment preventing the naturalisation of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens. Previously all foreign-born spouses of Israeli citizens had a long naturalisation process and were vetted for security reasons; however the current provision is directly discriminatory.

6 In contrast, Jim Crow/segregation in the Southern states of the USA was enacted through state and/or local ordinances, not national law.

Sources cited:

ACRI/Association for Civil Rights in Israelhttp://www.acri.org.il/english-acri/ “Ka’adan family allowed to build home in Jewish residential community”
downloaded 18th May 2005

http://www.africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsalaws.htm, downloaded 15th May 2005

http://www.answers.com/topic/immigration-to-israel-from arab-lands, downloaded 15th May 2005

Benvenisti, Meron (2005) “Apartheid Misses the Point” Ha’aretz, 19th May

Dugard, John (2004) “The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” UN African Meeting in Support of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People”

Halper, Jeff and Jon Elmer (2003) “Israel and the Empire: Jeff Halper Interview” www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/ (downloaded 18/5/05)

Kuper, Richard www.jfjfp.org/factsheets/arabsinisrael.htm, downloaded 13 May 2005

Lerner, Michael (2003) Healing Israel/Palestine, San Francisco, Tikkun Books

May, Julian (ed) (2000) Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: Meeting the Challenge, Cape Town, David Philips

Pogrund, Benjamin (2004) “Is Israel the new Apartheid?” www.jfjfp.org.uk

Rose, John (2004) Myths of Zionism, London, Pluto

Rubinstein, Amnon (2003) “An Antidote to Discrimination” Ha’aretz 6th April

Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis (eds) (1995) Unsettling Settler Societies, London, Sage