Understanding Apartheid in Palestine

Apartheid
What is apartheid?

There are many misconceptions around apartheid.

“Apartheid is when there are different laws for different races”
“It’s when only one race can vote”
“Apartheid is unique to South Africa”

The term originally described a type of regime in South Africa, where a White settler minority created a system of racial domination. But the definition has since evolved…

Over the decades, the world codified apartheid as a crime that any country can commit. So to determine if there’s an apartheid regime, we don’t compare it to South Africa. We look at law.

Specifically, the 1998 Rome Statute and the 1973 Apartheid Convention.

What is apartheid?

“[Inhumane acts] committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression & domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups & committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

“Racial groups” in international law includes national, religious, ethnic & other groups.

Not all systemic discrimination is apartheid.

What makes an apartheid regime unique is that it intentionally revolves around domination & oppression of certain groups. This domination must be central to the regime, forming a part of its DNA and seen in every part of it, not just one area.

The crime of apartheid is unconditionally prohibited. No exceptions. It’s one of the most serious international crimes.

Which Inhumane Acts?

Denying a group’s right to life by:

• Murder
• Inflicting serious bodily or mental harm by infringing on their freedom or dignity, using torture, or degrading treatment or punishment
• Arbitrary arrest & imprisonment
• Extermination
• Enslavement/forced labor
• Forcible population transfer
• Sexual violence
• Persecution of a group
• Enforced disappearance
• Deliberately imposing conditions calculated to cause a group’s whole or partial physical destruction
• Measures preventing a group from participating in the country’s political, social, economic & cultural life; and deliberate conditions preventing the development of the group by denying them basic rights & freedoms like:
• The right to work, to form unions, to education, to leave & return to their country, to nationality, to free movement & residence, freedom of expression, & freedom of peaceful assembly & association.
• Racially dividing the population by creating separate reserves & ghettos, prohibiting mixed marriages, or confiscating property belonging to members of a group
• Depriving people of rights & freedoms for opposing apartheid

This is a list of unique acts found in both the Apartheid Convention & Rome Statute. It’s debated whether they’d all be relevant in prosecuting for Apartheid.

Apartheid doesn’t need all these acts. Even South Africa didn’t commit all these acts. If the other conditions are met, committing just one of these acts can amount to apartheid.

These can’t be isolated, one-time acts; they must be committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a group. It has to happen in the context of a regime of systematic oppression & domination by one group over another.

There must also be an intention behind the acts to maintain that regime – but it doesn’t have to be the only or even main intention.

Apartheid can be committed without racist ideology.

Dominating a group for economic, security, or political motives still amounts to apartheid.

So what do we prove to show there is apartheid? 3 steps.

• One or more inhumane acts carried out on a widespread basis
• Context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination
• An intention to maintain the system of domination by one group over another

That’s it. If you prove these, you prove apartheid is being committed.

Discussions of apartheid must be based on this definition. Nothing else matters. Not who is or isn’t a citizen, not who can or can’t run in elections, not policies compare to South African apartheid.

Citizenship and voting rights can be useful to examine only insofar that they reflect the principle at the heart of apartheid: domination.

Apartheid in Palestine presents an opportunity to better understand how systematic oppression manifests in political systems across the world…

But for Palestinians & Jews, understanding apartheid is the necessary first step to dismantle the systems that have long fragmented us, and create new ones based on shared values:

Freedom, Justice, Equality.