Report from the Land of Apartheid

Two Weeks in the Occupied Territories

By STANLEY HELLER
CounterPunch

".......This is just one of many outrages. Conditions for Palestinians are deplorable all across the apartheid state, from the 130,000 living as Israeli citizens in "unrecognized" villages, to the thousands living in Israel or the West Bank in homes slated for demolition, to the people living in Jerusalem "suburbs" who never have their garbage picked up, to families who are cut off from relatives by the Apartheid Wall, to the people in the richest Arab towns closing up their businesses because of Palestinians can't travel and buy goods, to families living in the H2 section of Hebron who are seeing their homes taken over by religious fanatics.

I've been here for nearly two weeks. Coming in was a breeze for me, a Jew in his late 50's......

Things are not that nice in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers stage constant raids. The night before we went to Jenin they captured a resident. People in Nablus say there's a raid every day. A few nights night ago six Palestinians were killed, including three by missiles in Gaza. One man supposedly attacked soldiers at a Bethlehem checkpoint. He was hit by gun butts and then shot to death.......

The Veils of Apartheid

I met with Uri Davis in Jerusalem. He's an Israeli, one of a handful who lives in Palestinian communities. He has maintained for decades that Israel is an apartheid society. He says, however, there's a major difference from the old South Africa. Under South African apartheid a visitor would immediately see signs for Africans, whites and coloreds. In Israel it's much more veiled. For instance take land. By and large land in Israel is controlled by the state and is not owned by individuals. Jews are granted long term leases to land, but through a maze of laws and bureaucracy Arab Israeli citizens can't lease it.....

Another aspect of the apartheid is "unrecognized villages". In 1947-1948 thousands of the Palestinians expelled from their towns and villages fled to rural areas that were still in Israel. The government dreamed up a delightful category for them, "present absentees" and took all their land and bank accounts. 130,000 of their descendants live in villages that the Israeli government will not recognize. These are all Israeli citizens, but they live in towns without services, no water and no electricity......

Because of a dreadful agreement between Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government Hebron was divided into two parts H1 and H2. H1 is all Palestinian and is under the Palestinian Authority. H2 is about a quarter of the whole city and is home to Jewish settlements at war with their Palestinian neighbors.......

We took a walk through several blocks that had once held Arab shops which were now all closed. Each building was alike, a concrete rectangle with a large folding metal doors in front. Each door was decorated with a six pointed Jewish star. The settlers have desecrated the Jewish star, making the holy symbol into a graffitti of fear, much like a swastika.......

The Wall

Palestinian removal is a goal sought everywhere from the Jordan to the Mediterranean by Israel's apartheid government. What it can't empty right away it surrounds and walls in. The Apartheid Wall is everywhere in the West Bank, supremely ugly and gobbling up thousands of acres of land. When you walk through the Bethlehem checkpoint to Jerusalem upon the wall you see a huge banner with a cheerful slogan "Peace be Upon You". As they say it gives hypocrisy a bad name.......

One last bit of cruelty connected with the wall. We were interviewing one man who told us that the soldiers demanded they dig up the village graveyard and move the bodies because the graves were "too near the wall". They could do nothing to stop the order so they dug up the bodies....."