The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
11 Feb 2010
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warns of apartheid if Israel does not achieve peace with the Palestinians.
But Israeli analysts argue that a South African style apartheid state has already emerged due to Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories.
Veteran Israeli journalist, David Marchaelis says, "Ehud Barak wanted to scare the public and make the right wing Zionist Party think that they have to know that they are entering into a binational situation with no Jewish majority. The situation is already binational. There is an apartheid system functioning -- and it is happening now and everyone is in denial about it."
He continues, "The peace process is just a misnomer and the word 'occupation' is also misleading because it is a systematic control system."
Holding a similar view, Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem recently published an article in the Haaretz newspaper chronicling how Israel became a de facto binational regime. His article states, "The attempt to mark the settlements and the settlers, as the major impediment to peace is a convenient alibi, obfuscating the involvement of the entire Israeli body politic in maintaining and expanding the regime of coercion and discrimination in the occupied territories and benefiting from it.
According to Benvenisti the violent events of the second "Intifida" brought the Jewish Israeli public to a crossroads in relation to their neighbors and Israeli Jews turned their back on Palestinians erasing them from their consciences and imprisoning them behind impenetrable walls.
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