Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
by Karine Mac Allister
© 1998-2008 badil.org
Part 2:
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
Defining Racial Groups
Central to the definition of apartheid is the institutionalized - "legalized" - domination of one racial group over another. An examination of whether the policies and practices of the government of Israel amount to apartheid first requires a definition what is intended by the term 'racial group' and who are the racial groups in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Can we say that Palestinians and Jews are racial groups, and if so, who is included in these groups? Are all the Palestinians and Jews members of a racial group or only a limited number of them?
The concepts of 'race' and 'racial' have evolved from a biologically-driven definition to one that "stand[s] for historically specific forms of cultural connectedness and solidarity."21 "Race serves to naturalize the groupings that it identifies in its own name."22 "While the reality of 'race' is indeed neither natural and biological, nor psychological... it does nevertheless exist" because "it does kill people" and "continues to provide the backbone of some ferocious systems of domination."23 According to Colette Guillaumin, race is a "legal, political and historical reality which plays a real and constraining role in a number of societies" which explains why "any appeal to race... is a political move."24
The term ‘ethnic group' has been defined by Max Weber as "those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists."25 In some instances, 'ethnic group' has replaced or been used interchangeably with 'racial group' although this practice is not accepted by all.26 In practice, however, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination uses ‘racial group' or 'ethnic group' interchangeably. Hence the definitions of and differences between a racial and ethnic group are malleable and have blurred. For the purpose of this article, they are used interchangeably based on the assumption that both concepts are constructed identities developed as a result of perceived common cultural, national, religious, descent or biological traits.
The definition of a 'racial' or 'ethnic' group primarily results from individual self-identification, which requires voluntary and conscious choice. Indeed, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is of the opinion that "the ways in which individuals are identified as being members of a particular racial or ethnic groups... shall, if no justification exists to the contrary, be based upon self-identification by the individual concerned."27
The victims of apartheid, in the Israeli case, are the Palestinian people, namely persons belonging to the Palestinian nation. For Palestinians, the test is whether they identify themselves as Palestinian nationals. If they do, and regardless of their geographic location or legal status, they constitute one 'racial' or 'ethnic' group because of their shared identity, which for instance includes a common culture, history and origin. Whether Palestinians are citizens of Israel, refugees and/or protected persons in the OPT is irrelevant, as long as they identify themselves as Palestinians. Hence, Palestinians are an ethno-national group based on their voluntary self-identification as Palestinian nationals.
Administering Apartheid
In addition to one's self-identification, identification with a 'racial' or 'ethnic' group can result from the projected perceptions of 'the other' such as the state or another 'racial' or 'ethnic' group. By projecting or imposing its perceptions of 'the other,' the individual, state or other racial group constructs its identity, and with it the identity of 'the other.' As Richard Jenkins explains, "identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and reciprocally, other people's understanding of themselves and of others (which include us)."28 In that sense, group or collective identity is not a unilateral process because "all identities (individual and collective) are constituted by the process of internal-external dialectic of identification." 29 In the context of an apartheid regime, this identification of 'the other' takes on an added bureaucratic form to facilitate the administration of discriminatory legislation, policy and practice.
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians are also racialized through the construction and projection of racial Palestinianization by Zionist Jewish Israelis through the state of Israel. Palestinians are "treated as a racial group, not simply in the manner of a racial group, but as a despised and demonic racial group."30 In contrast, Jewish "Israelis occupy the structural position of whiteness in the racial hierarchy of the Middle East."31 On the legal and administrative level, the definition of who is a Palestinian national is for instance imposed through Israeli control of the population registry in Israel and the OPT. This control allows Israel to define who is a Palestinian - namely, a 'non-Jew,' (i.e., Arab), 'absentee' or 'present-absentee.' In Israel, the state has maintained a registry of Palestinians by incorporating the differentiation between ‘Jews' and ‘Arabs' into the bureaucracy governing its citizens, a differentiation that was clearly marked on the Identity Cards issued by the state to its citizens until 2002.32 The change came not as a result of a desire to end systematic discrimination against Palestinian citizens, but because of disagreements within the Jewish religious establishment of who constitutes a Jew.33 As a result, citizens' 'nationality' was no longer marked on state-issued ID cards, but Palestinians are still identified as 'Arab' on their birth certificates as well as in the records of the Israeli Ministry of Interior. More simply put, "Israel does not have one single universal citizenship for all of its citizens."34 In the OPT (except Jerusalem35), the military 'civil' administration controls the population registry and ultimately, whether the Palestinian Authority can issue Palestinian ID cards to residents of the OPT. Hence, through laws, practices and policies the state of Israel has established a hierarchy of statuses affecting all Palestinian nationals.
In the case of the dominant group and perpetrators of apartheid, the test is based on whether people identify themselves as Jewish citizens of Israel and Zionists. Jews are all considered Israeli nationals under the peculiar extraterritorial definition of nationality as defined and applied by the state of Israel, although there is significant social and economic discrimination against non-European Jewish Israelis that is beyond the scope of this article. Not all Jews, however, have exercised their privilege and acquired Israeli citizenship. Hence, not all people of Jewish faith can be considered part of one racial or ethnic group in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that the state of Israel projects itself as the representative of Jews around the world. Hence, only those who have voluntarily become Israeli citizens and adhere to Israel's political ideology, Zionism, constitute the relevant 'racial' or 'ethnic' group in this context. Political Zionism - "the transformation of Palestine, in whole or in part, into the Jewish Land of Israel (Eretz Israel), through the dispossession and mass transfer of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab population out of Palestine, and the establishment, through the Jewish colonization of Palestine, of a sovereign Jewish state" - is the heart of the legal, political and historical reality of the state of Israel,36 a state controlled by Zionist Jewish Israelis. Hence, the common element of this ethno-national group is self-identification as Jewish Israeli and Zionist.
While Jewish Israeli society can be considered complicit in the commission of the crime of apartheid through funding the state apparatus with their tax moneys, service in the Israeli military and other institutions involved in the commission of the crime, and otherwise, Jewish Israelis who have opposed Zionism and recognize Palestinian rights cannot be held to the same level of accountability. Furthermore, including Zionist political ideology in our analysis of the perpetrators of apartheid enables us to distinguish the increased responsibility of those who have consciously chosen to implement their right to Israeli citizenship through Israel's Law of Return as well as those who have actively sought to perpetuate the commission of apartheid through work and membership in institutions complicit in this commission, particularly in the fields of governmental and military decision-making. A framework incorporating supporters of Zionism as guilty parties in the crime of apartheid also enables us to hold international actors who have supported the Zionist project, such as Christian Zionist groups, accountable for encouraging and cooperating with the racial group that has implemented the policies and practices constituting the crime of apartheid.
Hence, for the purpose of the applicability of the crime of apartheid to the state of Israel, the two relevant 'racial or ethnic' groups are Palestinian nationals and Zionist Jewish Israelis.
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
The Crime of Apartheid under International Law
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
Apartheid across the Green Line and Boundaries
Conclusion
Apartheid Notes