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Academic and campaigner Uri Davis applies his analysis of the Israeli state, in terms of its similarity to apartheid South Africa, to one of the recent unofficial negotiations over the future of Palestine and Israel.
Apartheid Israel: a critical reading of the Geneva Accords
Uri Davis
In the face of the lack of progress in any official "peace process" in Israel/Palestine, there have recently been some unofficial proposals prepared - by peace campaigners or byless entrenched politicians on each side. The highest profile of these initiatives, the Geneva Accords, came from a group including former Israeliand Palestinian Authority ministers last November.
The aim was to provide a tangible demonstration that, contrary to Israeliclaims, a partnership for Israeli-Palestinian peace remains possible. The Accordsclaimed it was possible to end the conflict on the basis of Palestinian recognition ofthe right of the Jewish people to their state--with expanded borders to bringillegal settlements currently in the occupied territories under Israeli sovereignty.
As I argue here, these Accords transparently fail to deal with issues crucial tothe question of Palestine, and therefore are unable to deliver their promise.
The Jewish state
Israel was established as a "Jewish State" by UN General Assembly (UNGA) Reso-lution 181 of November 1947. This also specified that Israel should share the ter-ritory of former British Mandate Palestine with an "Arab State"; that Jerusalemshould be a separate international entity under UN administration; and that allthree entities should form an economic union.
This legitimisation of the idea of a "Jewish State" is conditional on it being abi-national state which adheres to a democratic constitution, and conforms tothe standards of international law and to UN resolutions on the question of Pales-tine. These resolutions include the stipulation that refugees wishing to return totheir homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do soat the earliest possible date; and that Israel's acts to unify Jerusalem as its "cap-ital" were invalid.
The idea of the "Jewish State" in UN resolutions is diametrically opposed theidea of the "Jewish State" in the political Zionist sense of the term. The Zionistidea is of a sovereign state, established and consolidated in Palestine, whichattempts to guarantee, both in law (eg the Absentees Property Law of 1950) andin practice (eg the mass expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians under the coverof the 1948-9 war), a demographic majority of "Jewish tribes" (or "ethnic Jews") inthe territories under its control. In other words, an apartheid state.The UN idea of a "Jewish state" was a bi-national state, namely, a state that isessentially democratic with some Jewish "decorations"--eg the official day of restbeing Saturday, rather than Friday or Sunday--but definitely not a fundamen-talist apartheid state.
Failure of Geneva
The Geneva Accords aim to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a"just, lasting and comprehensive peace and achieving historic reconciliation".The intention is to succeed where the Taba Summit of 2001 between the IsraeliGovernment and the PLO failed.
However, the primary failure of theAccords is to address the issue at the heart of the conflict, namely, the "ethniccleansing" of the indigenous Palestinians. The expulsion was subsequently under-pinned by apartheid legislation in the pre-1967 State of Israel and by the appli-cation of the British Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 in the territoriesoccupied in 1967.
The Geneva Accords fail to secure theremoval of apartheid legislation from the Israeli statute books. Besides the Absen-tees Property Law mentioned earlier, key laws in this context are the World ZionistOrganization/Jewish Agency Status Law of 1952 and the Jewish National FundLaw of 1953.
The Accords also fail to address the cir-cumstances of the one million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (20 per cent of thetotal population of the pre-1967 Israel). While all Palestinian Arab citizens of Israelsuffer the effects of Israeli apartheid legislation, some two hundred thousand amongthem suffer additional disabilities by virtue of being internally displaced persons. Theyare citizens of the State of Israel, yet, insofar as their pre-1948 property rights are con-cerned, their status is identical to that of the 1948 Palestine refugees.These fundamental omissions are likely to bring about the demise of the GenevaAccords, in a similar way as the Oslo Accords collapsed because a "peaceprocess" and "interim arrangements" were used to avoid confronting the issues at thecore of the Palestine question.
A reasonable course of action
The late Aba Eban, first Embassador of the State of Israel to the UN and subse-quently Foreign Minister, played a key role in perpetrating the shameless liealleging that the exodus of the indigenous Palestinian Arab people in 1948-49was voluntary--a lie exposed in 1961 by the Irish diplomat Erskine Childers.However, Eban is reputed also to have observed that people and governmentstend to consider the reasonable course of action only after they have tried every-thing else and failed.
Over many decades, the internationalcommunity has attempted various courses of action, mostly unreasonable in that theyhave largely attempted to exempt the State of Israel from compliance with the terms ofthe UN Charter, UN resolutions, and established standards of international law.Having tried everything else and failed, the international community may nowwish to consider the reasonable course of action, namely, a solution that conforms tothe terms of all UN resolutions on the question of Palestine - including the rightof return of all the Palestinian refugees.
Uri Davis, though registered as a "Jew" on his Israeli ID card, is an atheist, and hence reluctant to define himself as a "Jew" (except in the tribal sense of the term). He suggests he is referred to as "an anti-Zionist Palestinian Hebrew, born in Jerusalem in 1943, and a dual citizen of the State of Israel and the UK". Uri Davis's latest book will be reviewed in the next issue of Peace News.
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