Apartheid och kolonialism, en genomgång

Likheterna mellan Apartheid i Sydafrika och dagens raspolitik i Israel är många och ganska uppenbara. Likafullt bidrar fortsatt vetenskaplig analys av dessa likheter – och skillnaderna – till att fördjupa vår förståelse. Ett stort arbete på detta tema har gjorts av ett internationellt forskningsteam, på uppdrag av Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. Det är 15 månader av intensiv forskning som resulterat i en 300-sidig rapport. Rapporten bär titeln Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law, och har en juridisk, folkrättslig fokus.

Efter en genomgång av Israels politik på de ockuperade områdena, slår rapporten fast att staten Israel gör sig konkret skyldig till såväl kolonialism som Apartheid, såsom det är definierat i internationella konventioner.

När det gäller likheterna med Apartheidpolitiken i Sydafrika görs följande sammanfattning:

The Executive Summary of the report says that the three pillars of apartheid in South Africa are all practiced by Israel in the OPT [Ockuperade palestinska områden]. In South Africa, the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third pillar was "a matrix of draconian ‘security' laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination."

The Report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same three 'pillars' of apartheid:

The first pillar "derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews".

The second pillar is reflected in "Israel's 'grand' policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by Israel's extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians".

The third pillar is "Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group."

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