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By JOHN DUGARD
ajc.com
 Former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace
Not Apartheid," is igniting controversy for its allegation
that Israel practices a form of apartheid.
As a South African and former anti-apartheid advocate who
visits the Palestinian territories regularly to assess the
human rights situation for the U.N. Human Rights Council,
the comparison to South African apartheid is of special
interest to me.
On the face of it, the two regimes are very different.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial
discrimination that the white minority in South Africa
employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was
characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks,
the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black
areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of
restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority,
racial separation and white security.
The "pass system," which sought to prevent the free movement
of blacks and to restrict their entry to the cities, was
rigorously enforced. Blacks were forcibly "relocated," and
they were denied access to most public amenities and to many
forms of employment. The system was enforced by a brutal
security apparatus in which torture played a significant
role.
The Palestinian territories — East Jerusalem, the West Bank
and Gaza — have been under Israeli military occupation since
1967. Although military occupation is tolerated and
regulated by international law, it is considered an
undesirable regime that should be ended as soon as possible.
The United Nations for nearly 40 years has condemned
Israel's military occupation, together with colonialism and
apartheid, as contrary to the international public order.
In principle, the purpose of military occupation is
different from that of apartheid. It is not designed as a
long-term oppressive regime but as an interim measure that
maintains law and order in a territory following an armed
conflict and pending a peace settlement. But this is not the
nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Since 1967
Israel has imposed its control over the Palestinian
territories in the manner of a colonizing power, under the
guise of occupation. It has permanently seized the
territories' most desirable parts — the holy sites in East
Jerusalem, Hebron and Bethlehem and the fertile agricultural
lands along the western border and in the Jordan Valley —
and settled its own Jewish "colonists" throughout the land.
Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories has many
features of colonization. At the same time it has many of
the worst characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has
been fragmented into three areas — north (Jenin and Nablus),
center (Ramallah) and south (Hebron) — which increasingly
resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.
Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid
permit system enforced by some 520 checkpoints and
roadblocks resemble, but in severity go well beyond,
apartheid's "pass system." And the security apparatus is
reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than 10,000
Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of
torture and cruel treatment.
Many aspects of Israel's occupation surpass those of the
apartheid regime. Israel's large-scale destruction of
Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military
incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far
exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No
wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.
Following the worldwide anti-apartheid movement, one might
expect a similarly concerted international effort united in
opposition to Israel's abhorrent treatment of the
Palestinians. Instead one finds an international community
divided between the West and the rest of the world. The
Security Council is prevented from taking action because of
the U.S. veto and European Union abstinence. And the United
States and the European Union, acting in collusion with the
United Nations and the Russian Federation, have in effect
imposed economic sanctions on the Palestinian people for
having, by democratic means, elected a government deemed
unacceptable to Israel and the West. Forgotten is the
commitment to putting an end to occupation, colonization and
apartheid.
In these circumstances, the United States should not be
surprised if the rest of the world begins to lose faith in
its commitment to human rights. Some Americans — rightly —
complain that other countries are unconcerned about Sudan's
violence-torn Darfur region and similar situations in the
world. But while the United States itself maintains a double
standard with respect to Palestine it cannot expect
cooperation from others in the struggle for human rights.
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