apartheid and palestine

Gaza is again out of the headlines. However, the struggles in Palestine continue, regardless of corporate media’s silence.

Days after the “end” of the invasion of Gaza, Israel seized 425 acres of the West Bank of Palestine to expand Israeli settlements. Then, on March 2, Israel’s Construction and Housing Ministry’s plans to double the size of settlements in the West Bank, by appropriating more Palestinian land and demolishing Palestinian homes, became public; construction has already begun.

There are over 200 Israeli settlements with 400,000 settlers throughout the occupied West Bank. The settlements are clearly and overtly illegal under international law, and blatantly aimed at making Palestinian independence impossible. The current expansions intensify Israel’s practice of creating isolated pockets of Palestinian communities. The wall Israel is building far into Palestinian territory and Israeli-only roads that dissect the West Bank further separate and cut-off Palestinian communities from one another. The wall, roads, and settlements—tools of colonization—function to create what many identify as Bantustans. This term, which originated in apartheid South Africa, refers to forcibly segregated, unconnected enclaves of subjugated people.

This historical apartheid parallel is why the Congress of South African Trade Unions, representing 1.2 million workers, has called for a boycott of Israeli goods until the situation is justly addressed. Likewise, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union has announced it will stand in solidarity with Palestinians. These dockworkers, many having experienced apartheid in their own lives, took action on February 8, refusing to offload a ship carrying Israeli goods. During apartheid South Africa, this tactic was part of the success of the anti-apartheid movement. In 1963, Danish dockworkers refused to unload a ship carrying South African goods. Workers repeated this action when the ship tried offloading in Sweden. Eventually, British and American dockworkers adopted the tactic, adding to an increasingly powerful movement.

It will take more than courageous South African dockworkers to end the occupation of Palestine. The occupation is alive and well-funded, beyond the use of settlements to destroy prospects for Palestinian autonomy. Gaza is still, after almost two years, under siege. All borders are blockaded; food is scarce; hospitals, schools, water and sewage systems are destroyed. 11,000 Palestinians, hundreds of them children, are in Israeli prisons. The West Bank is still under direct military occupation. Settlements, Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, sniper towers, Israeli military bases, and tanks cover the landscape. Between February 26 and March 4, in events that occur with stark regularity, two Palestinians were killed; another died of an earlier gunshot to the head; 12 were wounded, several by Israeli missiles—including five children and a journalist; and 31 were abducted by the Israeli military. Nonviolent resistance to the occupation continues, as it always has. Last month in Jayyous, a farming village that’s had 75% of its agricultural land stolen by the wall, a Palestinian was shot by Israeli military during a nonviolent protest. In similar protests against the wall in Jayyous, the Israeli military killed two children in December and shot a Swedish activist in January.

Reciting this litany of murders doesn’t adequately explain the devastation of the occupation, nor does it bring about its end. However, as with South Africa, an international movement using diverse tactics in solidarity with liberation movements in Palestine can end this system of death and oppression.