- In recent years,
some of Israel's more extreme opponents have accused it
of establishing an apartheid system in the West Bank.
The word "apartheid" literally means "apart-hood",
and refers to an official government policy
of discrimination against its citizens
based on race or ethnicity.
The charge against Israel is false,
a comparison to South Africa,
whose government administered an official apartheid state
from 1948 until 1994,
which legally discriminated against its own black citizens.
Jewish and Palestinian co-existence is a complex issue.
Different perspectives on history, religion, culture,
politics and security need to be taken into account
before it can be fully understood.
With all these layers,
how has propaganda,
from those looking to delegitimize Israel
as an apartheid state,
become part of the conversation?
- If you're gonna say that there's apartheid happening
in another part of the world,
that same emotion of this evil has to be overcome,
it's stirred up amongst a lot of people.
And then, so you say that the Palestinian people
are being subjected to the same evils as South Africans,
people are gonna get very upset and very angry.
And unfortunately the emotions
and that the word apartheid emotes in my opinion
have been effectively,
if I can compliment the people actually,
have been very effectively used as a smoke screen
to hide the truth of what's going on in the West Bank,
both with regards to the realities on the ground,
and actually with regards to the responsibilities
that the Palestinian authority has
in relation to the oppression of the Palestinian people.
- Apartheid laws
made it illegal for blacks to marry, live in the same areas
or conduct business with whites.
Black South Africans were barred from certain professions
and educational opportunities,
could not participate in government,
and had to carry documentation.
Compare that with the state of Israel,
whose one million Arab citizens
are represented in all branches of government,
a government founded on the promise
to uphold the full social and political equality
of all its citizens
without distinction of race, creed or sex.
For Arabs living in the West Bank,
at times, Israeli force may be seen as oppressive
in context of Israel trying to defend its citizens
from terror attacks,
but it's a security dynamic
that has nothing to do with the definition of apartheid
as institutionalized racism.
Apartheid's comparison to Israel
stems from a difficult reality.
Arabs living in some parts of the West Bank
are governed by an Israeli military administration
and subject to different laws in Israeli citizens.
But when you unpack the circumstances
surrounding this reality,
that's where the comparison ends.
Israel's presence in the West Bank is a security measure
that started in 1967 after the Six Day War,
when an urgent need for self-defense arose
after waves of Arab terrorism from the region
created an ongoing existential threat to Israeli citizens.
Arab terrorism against Jews had been a reality since 1920,
but until the Six Day War,
Jordan's occupation of the West Bank
made Israeli security there impossible.
After 1967,
the scale and frequency of attacks continued to grow.
In an attempt to end a Palestinian uprising,
known as the First Intifada,
the Oslo Accords,
a set of agreements made from 1993 to 1995
between Israel
and the Palestinian Liberation Organization
gave Palestinian Arabs control
over a significant portion of the West Bank
under a newly formed Palestinian government,
the Palestinian Authority.
While there was renewed hope among Israelis and Arabs
that the accords would usher in a definitive peace process,
the negotiations fell apart,
and instead triggered the deadliest wave of terror
Israel had ever seen,
known as the Second Intifada, in 2000.
Faced with incessant terrorism
that killed over 1,000 Israelis from 2000 to 2005 alone,
Israel's leaders decided to build a barrier wall
along the West Bank border or Green Line,
during the Second Intifada that reduced attacks by 84%.
Israelis call the barrier a "security fence"
or "separation wall,"
while some Palestinians call it
a "wall of apartheid."
The apartheid label doesn't apply to Israel,
also because the relationship
of black South Africans to their government
was fundamentally different than the relationship
Palestinian Arabs have with Israel's government.
Blacks in South Africa demanded equal treatment as citizens
in their own country.
As a result of the Oslo Accords,
Palestinians largely govern themselves,
and vote to elect leaders
of the Palestinian Authority government.
Israeli laws don't actually apply to much of the West Bank,
except for certain areas with greater security risks
or higher Jewish populations.
- If you look at what's happening in the West Bank,
you have areas A, B and C,
a complex arrangement that actually was established,
not by Israel itself
coming down and saying Palestinian people,
this is how we're gonna do things.
There was an agreement that came to create this,
an agreement between the Palestinian leadership
and the Israeli leadership,
and also an agreement that was recognized
on the international platform,
and we know that via the Oslo Accords.
And in the Oslo Accords,
we have the separation of areas, A, B and C.
People oftentimes only talk about area C,
which is where you have both the security
as well as the administration being done by Israel,
they forget about areas A and B,
which together comprise 90% of the Palestinian people.
- Israel's accusers
appropriate the term apartheid in describing these areas,
where two separate systems of law,
civilian and military apply differently to Israeli citizens
and Palestinian Arabs living side by side.
- It's important for us to actually understand
why apartheid was instituted in South Africa.
And one of the founding reasons
was the fact that black South Africans,
we weren't deemed to be as equal as white people
from a superiority perspective.
So if I am to play with it,
when God created South Africans and when God created man,
He spent a lot more time with white people
than He did with black people.
- As apartheid is defined by racial injustice,
its claim on Israel that baffles most Israelis,
is fed by a misconception that the country is an outpost
of white European Jews,
who support discriminatory policies
against an indigenous minority, Arabs,
but in fact, more than half of Israel's Jews
are from a Middle Eastern and North African background,
known as Mizrahim.
Coupled with its Arab citizens,
Israel's culture and skin color,
is far more Middle Eastern than European.
In our final episode,
we'll take a closer look at the diversity of race,
and wide array of ethnic groups, nationalities,
religious communities, political freedoms
and social viewpoints
that combine to form the salad bowl of Israeli society.