quinta-feira, 23 de abril de 2009

Ministro palestino denuncia "racismo" da ocupação israelense

21/04/09


Genebra, 21 abr (EFE).- O ministro de Exteriores palestino, Riyad al-Maliki, denunciou hoje o "racismo" da ocupação israelense nos territórios da Cisjordânia e de Gaza e a violação da legalidade internacional.


Em seu discurso na Conferência Mundial sobre o Racismo da ONU, que acontece em Genebra, Maliki condenou Israel - a quem o tempo todo se referiu como "a potência ocupante" - continue erguendo "o muro da segregação racial que separa as famílias, que separa as crianças dos colégios e os doentes dos hospitais".


Além disso, lembrou que Israel continua ampliando a colonização dos territórios ocupados com assentamentos judaicos e mudando a personalidade árabe da parte oriental de Jerusalém, que os palestinos reivindicam como capital de seu futuro Estado, sempre em violação de todas as resoluções internacionais.


Também denunciou que os israelenses seguem "saqueando" a água da Cisjordânia para dirigi-la aos assentamentos judaicos às custas dos povos palestinos.

terça-feira, 21 de abril de 2009

Camisetas racistas - Israel Fashion Week

Professor árabe expulso de restaurante por causa de discussão sobre camiseta racista de atendente.

Por Yoav Stern.

Um árabe, professor de psicologia na Universidade de Haifa disse que foi expulso de um restaurante neste domingo após ter reclamado dae um garçom usando uma camiseta advogando o assassinato de crianças palestinas.

O dono do restaurante, também árabe, Khaled Hajaj, disse que não expulsou o professor Ramzi Suleiman, embora tenha dito que não se importasse que ele usasse seu dinheiro em outro restaurante.

"É ofensivo aos sentimentos de outros consumidores e aos meus sentimentos", disse o professor. "Eu não estou disposto a aceitar estas camisetas. (...)"

O atendente no restaurante de Haifa estava usando uma camiseta com o desenho de uma mira de rifle e as palavras, em hebraico: "Instituição para educação para crianças especiais".

O professor Suleiman solicitou que o atendente trocasse sua camiseta, dizendo que ela advogava o assassinato de crianças palestinas - como as camisetas impressas pelas Forças Armadas de Israel instigando violência contra palestinos, como denunciou o Haaretz há um mês atrás.

(...)


06/04/2009

Arab professor says booted from eatery over bartender's 'racist' T-shirt

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

An Arab psychology professor at the University of Haifa said Sunday he was booted out of a restaurant over the weekend after complaining that the bartender was wearing a shirt advocating killing Palestinian children. 

Restaurant owner Khaled Hajaj, who is also Arab, said he did not kick out Professor Ramzi Suleiman, though he did tell him he didn't care if Suleiman took his money to a different restaurant. 

"It hurts my feelings and the feelings of Arab customers," said Suleiman. "I'm not willing to accept such shirts. (...)" 
 
The bartender at the Haifa restaurant was wearing a shirt with a drawing of a rifle sight and the words, in Hebrew, "Institution for special-ed children." 

Suleiman demanded the bartender change his shirt, saying it advocated killing Palestinian children - similar to T-shirts printed for Israel Defense Forces soldiers that depict violence against Palestinians, as Haaretz reported last month. 

The IDF has condemned the T-shirts, which were ordered by troops and not by the army itself. The shirts include images including a child in rifle cross-hairs with the slogan, "The smaller they are, the harder it is." Another shows a pregnant woman in the cross-hairs and the words "1 Shot 2 Kills." 

(...)


Fonte: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1076663.html

segunda-feira, 20 de abril de 2009

Israel usa quatro vezes mais água do que a Palestina

O regime de uso de água usado por Israel e palestinos deve ser alterado, de acordo com relatório publicado pelo Banco Mundial hoje. (20/04/2009)

O relatório noticia que um israelense médio obtém quatro vezes mais água do que um palestino médio e alerta que o sistema de abastecimento da Autoridade Palestina está "próximo da catástrofe".

Conclui recomendando que o atual arranjo de distribuição de água, estabelecido como parte dos acordos de Oslo II, seja alterado para melhorar o sistema palestino. 

O relatório, solicitado pela Autoridade Palestina, é particularmente problemático para Israel devido à crise "da água" na região. O acordo entre os dois lados é assimétrico e exacerba a crise muito mais do que pensado para os palestinos.

Este é o primeiro documento apresentado pelo Banco Mundial sobre o tema do uso de recursos hídricos entre Israel e Palestina.

De acordo com o relatório, os entendimentos obtidos em Oslo fracassaram para atender as necessidades para população civil palestina.

A divisão desigual de recursos, como os impedimentos e controle sobre informação concernente à recursos hídricos, tem impedido os palestinos de desenvolver e obter fontes de água - um problema que é intensificado pela fraqueza das instituições governamentais da Palestina.

O relatório diz que isto leva a situação emergencial com graves ramificações, englobando aspectos econômicos, sociais e ecológicos. Crises humanitárias relacionadas à distribuição de água são frequentes na Cisjordânia e em Gaza.

O relatório atesta que os palestinos tem acesso à apenas um quinto do aquífero disponível, enquanto Israel usa todo o restante (80%). Israel acaba usando estes recursos hídricos sem a devida autorização de um comitê conjunto que foi estabelecido nos acordos de Oslo.

A super-exploração do aquífero cria perigos de salinidade, de acordo com o relatório.

Também é afirmado que os palestinos cavam relativamente poços rasos e não podem atingir as fontes de água, em razão da prática israelense de cavar muito profundamente. 

De acordo com o Banco Mundial, Israel tem um sistema de distribuição e administração de água satisfatório, enquanto a Autoridade Palestina está lutando para manter um nível mínimo de infraestrutura com mínimos recursos financeiros. Em Gaza, o escasso investimento no sistema de água e esgotamento tem levado a ausência de controle da qualidade da água, impondo grande risco à saúde pública.

Fonte: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079405.html

World Bank: Israelis get four times more water than Palestinians

20/04/2009

World Bank: Israelis get four times more water than Palestinians

By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent


The water-supply regime used by Israel and the Palestinians must be changed, according to a World Bank report that is to be published today. 

The report notes that an average Israeli gets four times as much water as the average Palestinian, and warns that the Palestinian Authority water system is "nearing catastrophe." 

It concludes by recommending that the current water-distribution arrangement, mandated as part of the Oslo II accords, be changed to improve the Palestinian system. 

The report, requested by the PA, is likely to be particularly problematic for Israel due to the regional water crisis. The agreement between the two sides is asymmetrical and exacerbates the crisis greatly as far as the Palestinians are concerned.

This is the first such document presented by the World Bank on the subject of Israeli and Palestinian water use. 

According to the report, the understandings reached at Oslo fall far short of fulfilling the needs of Palestinian civilians. 

The unequal division of the resources, as well as constraints on information regarding the area's water supply, have impeded the Palestinians' ability to develop water sources - a problem that is intensified by the weakness of Palestinian government institutions. 

The report says this has lead to an emergency situation with grave ramifications vis-a-vis the economy, the society and the ecology of the PA. Water-related humanitarian crises are frequent in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. 

The report states that Palestinians have access to only one-fifth of the mountain aquifer supply, while Israel pumps out the rest, reaching its allocated quota without due authorization from the joint water committee set up in the Oslo accords. 

Over-pumping from the aquifer creates a danger of salinity, the report maintains. 

It also notes that Palestinians dig comparatively shallow wells and cannot reach water sources, because of Israel's much deeper drilling. 

According to the World Bank, Israel has a satisfactory water distribution and management system, while the PA is struggling to maintain a minimal infrastructure with minimal financial means. In Gaza, the meager investment in water and sanitation has lead to a lack of water-quality control, posing great risk to public health. 


sexta-feira, 10 de abril de 2009

Israel y el crimen de apartheid

No es una analogía


Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Beatriz Morales Bastos

En los últimos años una cantidad cada vez mayor de personas en todo el mundo ha empezado a adoptar y desarrollar un análisis de Israel como un régimen de apartheid [1]. Esto se puede ver en el hecho de que el movimiento global de apoyo a la lucha anti-colonial palestina está adoptando un carácter claramente en contra del apartheid, como evidenció el crecimiento de la Semana del Apartheid Israelí [2]. Además, gran parte del reciente apoyo diplomático a Israel ha adoptado la forma de denegar que la discriminación racial sea la causa raíz de la opresión de los palestinos, algo que ha llegado a unos nuevos niveles de absurdo en las respuestas occidentales a la Conferencia para la Revisión de Durban de abril de 2009 [3].

Muchos de los artículos procedentes de este análisis se centran en detallar niveles de similitud y diferencia con el Apartheid de Sudáfrica en vez de considerar el apartheid como un sistema que puede ser practicado por cualquier Estado. Esta fuerte insistencia en las comparaciones históricas es en cierto modo comprensible dado que el boicot, la desinversión y las sanciones [a Israel] (BDS) es el centro de la campaña que ha pedido la sociedad civil palestina en solidaridad con la lucha de liberación palestina y se basa en el modelo de la campaña que contribuyó a poner fin al Apartheid sudafricano. Sin embargo, un énfasis excesivo en las similitudes y diferencias confina el uso del término a unos límites estrechos. Con el creciente consenso de que el término “apartheid” es útil para describir el nivel y composición de los crímenes de Israel es importante profundizar nuestro conocimiento de la “etiqueta de apartheid”, tanto como un medio de informar al activismo en apoyo a la lucha anti-colonial palestina, como para usar de forma más eficaz las comparaciones con otras luchas.

 

 

La analogía con el Apartheid

 

Quizá sea comprensible que algunos defensores de los derechos palestinos consideren que la “etiqueta de Apartheid”, en su sentido comparativo, es una herramienta política útil. La lucha del pueblo sudafricano por la justicia y la igualdad alcanzó un cierto estatus sagrado en los ochenta y noventa cuando llegó a su apogeo la lucha contra el Apartheid. Son certeras tanto la reverencia con la que activistas y no activistas consideraron la rectitud de la lucha sudafricana como la ignominia del régimen colonial de Apartheid; los negros sudafricanos lucharon durante siglos, padecieron incontables penalidades incluyendo la cárcel y la muerte, y fueron tachados de terroristas mientras las potencias del mundo permanecían al lado del régimen racista de Apartheid. Permanecieron firmes en su lucha e hicieron que el coste del sistema de Apartheid aumentara hasta que el capital sudafricano consideró que ya no era rentable y las elites políticas blancas consideraron que era imposible de mantener. También se pueden destacar los aspectos ventajosos de la comparación señalando las profundas relaciones históricas entre la OLP y el Congreso Nacional Africano (ANC, en sus siglas en inglés), así como la descarada alianza entre Israel y el régimen sudafricano de Apartheid, que permaneció firme incluso en el momento culminante del boicot internacional contra Sudáfrica.

 

Un mayor ímpetu para restringir la “etiqueta de apartheid” a una comparación con Sudáfrica es que lo que tienen en común y las similitudes entre las luchas de liberación de Sudáfrica y Palestina son bastante patentes. Ambos procesos implican un proceso de colonialismo por parte de colonos que implica el desplazamiento forzado de la población originaria de sus tierras ancestrales y su concentración en distritos segregados y reservas, la división de la población negra en diferentes grupos con diferentes derechos, unas estrictas restricciones a la movilidad que asfixiaron a los colonizados y el uso de una brutal fuerza militar para reprimir cualquier resistencia real o potencial contra el crimen racista colonial. Ambos regímenes disfrutaron de una impunidad fruto del total apoyo estadounidense y europeo. Además de estas similitudes, hay gran cantidad de detalles asombrosos comunes a ambos casos: ambos regímenes se establecieron el mismo año (1948) tras décadas de dominio británico, el control de aproximadamente el 87% de la tierra estaba fuera del alcance de la mayoría la población colonizada sin un permiso especial, etc. Aunque aquí hablamos en pasado, esto todavía se aplica a la Palestina de hoy.

 

Mientras ha ido ganando terreno la etiqueta de apartheid israelí, algunos han adoptado el enfoque de describir las diferencias entre ambos regímenes, aunque por diferentes propósitos. En general, Israel no ha legislado los detalles menores del apartheid (la segregación de espacios como cuartos de baño y playas), aunque la legislación israelí forma la base de la sistemática discriminación racial contra los palestinos. Los 1.200.000 ciudadanos palestinos de Israel (aproximadamente el 20% de los ciudadanos de Israel) tienen, de hecho, derecho a votar y participar en las elecciones israelíes, mientras que la mayor parte de la comunidad negra sudafricana no lo tenía. El principio central de la versión sudafricana del apartheid era facilitar la explotación de la mayor cantidad posible de trabajadores negros, mientras que la versión israelí, aunque explota a los trabajadores palestinos prioriza el desplazamiento forzado de cuantos palestinos sea posible más allá de las fronteras del Estado con el objetivo de erradicar la presencia palestina dentro de la Palestina histórica. Los sudafricanos que visitan Palestina han comentado acerca de esto que el uso por parte de Israel de la fuerza es mas brutal del que ellos fueron testigo en el momento de apogeo del Apartheid y, así, varios comentaristas han adoptado la postura de que las prácticas de Israel son peores que el Apartheid, la postura de que la etiqueta de apartheid no es suficiente.

 

 

Israel y el crimen de Apartheid

 

En términos legales, describir a Israel como un Estado de apartheid no se centra en la diferencia y similitud con las políticas y prácticas del régimen de Apartheid sudafricano, y ahí donde Israel es un Estado de apartheid sólo en la medida en que las similitudes son mayores que las diferencias. En 1973 la Asamblea General de la ONU adoptó la Convención Internacional para la Supresión y Castigo del Crimen de Apartheid (resolución 3068 de la Asamblea General [XXVIII] [4], que entró en vigor el 18 de julio de 1976, año del levantamiento de Soweto en Sudáfrica y Día de la Tierra en Palestina) con una definición universal de apartheid no limitada a las fronteras de Sudáfrica. El hecho de que el apartheid es definido como un crimen según el Estatuto de Roma del Tribunal Penal Internacional [5], que entró en vigor en 2002, mucho después de que el régimen de Apartheid fuera derrotado en Sudáfrica, atestigua la universalidad del crimen.

 

Mientras que la formulación de la definición del crimen de apartheid varía según los instrumentos legales, la esencia es la misma: un régimen comete apartheid cuando institucionaliza la discriminación para crear y mantener la dominación de un grupo “racial” sobre otro. Karine Mac Allister, entre otros, ha proporcionado un contundente análisis legal para la aplicabilidad del crimen de apartheid al régimen israelí [6]. El punto principal es que, al igual que el genocidio y la esclavitud, el apartheid es un crimen que puede cometer cualquier Estado, e instituciones, organizaciones y/o individuos que actúan en nombre del Estado que lo comete o que apoyan su comisión deben afrontar un juicio en cualquier Estado signatario de la Convención o en el Tribunal Penal Internacional. Por consiguiente, es una falacia basar la etiqueta de apartheid israelí en comparaciones con las políticas del régimen de Apartheid de Sudáfrica, con las consiguientes descripciones de Israel como “similar al Apartheid” y caracterizaciones de un análisis del apartheid de Israel como una “analogía del Apartheid”

 

El reconocimiento por parte de la comunidad internacional de estos crímenes universales a menudo es el resultado de un caso particular, tan atroz que obliga a poner en marcha el oxidado mecanismo de toma de decisión internacional. El Comercio de Esclavos Transatlántico es un ejemplo en el que la esclavización masiva de pueblos del continente africano para trabajar como propiedad privada de los colonos europeos formó una parte importante del marco en el que reflexionaron y actuaron quienes elaboraron los borradores de la Convención Suplementaria de Naciones Unidas para la Abolición de la Esclavitud, de 1956. Un ejemplo todavía más claro es la Convención de Genocidio (que se adoptó en 1948 y entró en vigor en 1951) tras el Holocausto nazi en el que millones de judíos, comunistas, gitanos y discapacitados fueron sistemáticamente asesinados con la intención de acabar con su existencia. No describimos la moderna esclavitud como “similar a la esclavitud” ni examinamos los asesinatos masivos de ruandeses en su mayoría tutsis como una “analogía del genocidio” ruandés.

 

Dos puntos del análisis legal de Mac Allister sobre el apartheid israelí merecen ser reiterados porque a menudo se confunden o malinterpretan, incluso por parte de abogados palestinos de derechos humanos. En primer lugar, los crímenes y violaciones de Israel no se limitan al crimen de apartheid, sino que el régimen de Israel sobre el pueblo palestino combina de una manera única apartheid, ocupación militar y colonización. Merece la pena señalar que la relación entre estos tres componentes requiere una investigación más profunda. También es digno de señalar el manifiesto estratégico del Comité Nacional de la Campaña Palestina de BDS, “Unidos contra el apartheid, el colonialismo y la ocupación: dignidad y justicia para el pueblo palestino” [7] en el que se subrayan y, en cierto modo, detallan los diferentes aspectos de la comisión por parte de Israel del crimen de apartheid y se empieza a trazar la interacción entre el apartheid, el colonialismo y la ocupación israelíes desde la perspectiva de la sociedad civil palestina.

 

El segundo punto que vale la pena reiterar es que el régimen de apartheid de Israel no se limita a Cisjordania y Gaza. De hecho, el corazón del régimen de apartheid de Israel se guía por la legislación discriminatoria en los ámbitos de la nacionalidad, la ciudadanía y la propiedad de la tierra, y se empleó fundamentalmente para oprimir y desposeer tanto a aquellos palestinos que fueron desplazados por la fuerza en la Nakba de 1948 (refugiados y desplazados internos) como a la minoría que consiguió permanecer dentro de la “línea verde” y que más tarde se convirtieron en ciudadanos israelíes [8]. El régimen de apartheid de Israel se extendió a Cisjordania y Gaza tras la ocupación de 1967 con el propósito de colonización y de ejercer control militar sobre los palestinos que quedaron bajo la ocupación. Volviendo a utilizar el ejemplo de Sudáfrica, el crimen de apartheid no se limitó a los Bantustanes, todo el régimen estaba implicado y no sólo una u otra de sus manifestaciones racistas.

 

El análisis de Israel como un Estado de apartheid ha demostrado ser muy importante en varios sentidos. Primero, destaca correctamente la discriminación racial como causa raíz de la opresión israelí de los palestinos. Segundo, uno de los principales efectos del apartheid israelí es que ha separado (conceptual, legal y físicamente) a los palestinos en diferentes grupos (refugiados, Cisjordania, Gaza, dentro de la “línea verde”, etc., con muchas otras divisiones dentro de cada uno), lo que ha tenido como resultado la fragmentación del movimiento de liberación palestino, incluyendo el movimiento de solidaridad. El análisis del apartheid nos permite proporcionar un marco legal y conceptual según el cual podemos entender, transmitir y actuar en apoyo al pueblo palestino y su lucha como un todo unido. Tercero, y con un significado particular para el movimiento de solidaridad, este marco legal y conceptual adopta el papel preceptivo que apuntala el creciente movimiento global de boicot, desinversión y sanciones (BDS) contra Israel hasta que éste acate el derecho internacional.

 

 

Colonialismo y el papel de la comparación

 

He argumentado que la cuestión de si es aplicable el apartheid no se puede determinar por medio de la comparación con Sudáfrica, sino por medio del análisis legal. Sin embargo, esto no significa que el estudio comparativo no sea útil. De hecho, para aquellos que están implicados en la lucha la comparación es esencial para el proceso de aprendizaje de lecciones históricas. Una importancia fundamental de la comparación proviene del hecho de que la lucha sudafricana contra el apartheid fue, como lo sigue siendo para los pueblos originarios de Palestina y de las Américas, una lucha contra el colonialismo.

 

Centrarse en la dimensión colonial del apartheid israelí y del proyecto sionista nos permite centrarnos en cuestiones realmente importantes, como la adquisición de la tierra, la ingeniería demográfica y los métodos de control politico y económico ejercidos por un grupo racial sobre otro. La comparación con otras luchas contra el colonialismo nos proporciona el recurso principal para entender esta dimensión colonial de la opresión israelí y para obtener algunas de las lecciones que se necesitan para luchar contra ella.

 

Una de las muchas lecciones de la lucha contra el Apartheid en Sudáfrica proceden del hecho de que los dirigentes del ANC fueron presionados para que transigieran en sus demandas económicas, como la restitución de la tierra. Solo una ínfima proporción de tierra controlada por los blancos en Sudáfrica se redistribuyó a los negros después de 1994. Así, aunque la lucha del pueblo sudafricano derrotó el sistema apartheid político, la lucha contra el apartheid económico continúa en diferentes formas incluyendo los movimientos actuales contra la pobreza y de los sin tierra. Como palestinos y aquellos que luchan con ellos para reconstruir una estrategia y un consenso político sobre cómo superar los retos del periodo post-Oslo, la centralidad de la exigencia de la restitución de la tierra debería destacarse como parte de la exigencia del retorno de los refugiados.

 

Una segunda lección fundamental viene en respuesta al paradigma que actualmente guía a las principales versiones de cómo lograr la difícil de alcanzar “paz en Oriente Medio”, que es la idea de la partición generalmente denominada “solución” de los dos Estados. En los años setenta Sudáfrica intentó tratar su “problema demográfico” (el hecho de que la vasta mayoría de su población fuera negra pero no tuviera derecho a votar). El régimen de Apartheid reconstruyó Sudáfrica como una democracia formal reinventando las reservas establecidas por los británicos (los Bantustanes) como Estados independientes [9]. Se asignó cada uno de estos diez homelands a una identidad étnica decidida Pretoria y los sudafricanos originarios que no encajaban en una de estas identidades étnicas fueron obligados a encajar para convertirse en nacionales de uno de los homelands. Con esta medida miembros de la población originaria fueron reclasificados como nacionales de uno u otro homeland y entre 1976 y 1981 el régimen trató de hacer pasar los homelands por Estados independientes: Transkei en 1976, Bophuthatswana en 1977, Venda en 1979 y Ciskei en 1981.

 

A cada uno de estos Bantustanes se le dio una bandera y un gobierno formado por intermediarios indígenas que estaban en nómina de Pretoria, además de todo lo que acompaña a un gobierno soberano, incluyendo la responsabilidad de los servicios municipales y una fuerza de policía para proteger el régimen de Apartheid, pero sin una soberanía real. La idea era que haciendo que se reconocieran internacionalmente como Estados cada uno de estos homelands, el régimen de Apartheid transformaría Sudáfrica de un país con un 10% de minoría blanca en otro con una mayoría blanca del 100%. Puesto que era un régimen democrático dentro de los confines de la comunidad dominante, no habría nada que reprochar a la naturaleza democrática del Estado. Pero nadie cayó en el engaño. El ANC lanzó una potente campaña para contrarrestar cualquier reconocimiento internacional de los Bantustanes como Estados independientes y la trama fracasó miserablemente a nivel internacional, con la notable, aunque quizá no sorprendente excepción de que la única “embajada” de Bophuthatswana se abrió en Tel Aviv.

 

Israel ha utilizado estrategias similares en Palestina. Por ejemplo, Israel reconoció 18 tribus beduinas palestinas y nombró a un jeque leal para cada una en el [desierto del] Naqab durante los años cincuenta como un medio de controlar a estos palestinos sureños, y obligaron a quienes no pertenecían a una de estas tribus a afiliarse a una para conseguir la ciudadanía israelí [10]. A finales de los setenta el régimen israelí trató de inventar organismos de gobierno palestinos para los territorios ocupados en 1967 en la forma de “federaciones de pueblos” ideadas para que evolucionaran a similares gobiernos no soberanos, una especie de ayuntamientos glorificados. Como en el caso de los Homelands del Apartheid el plan fracasó miserablemente, tanto porque la OLP se había erigido ella misma en único representante del pueblo palestino como porque los palestinos comprendieron perfectamente la trama y se opusieron a ella con todos los medios de los que disponían. La principal lección para Israel fue que la OLP o bien tenía que ser destruida completamente o tendría que ser convertida en el intermediario indígena del apartheid israelí. Durante los años ochenta y principios de los noventa Israel emprendió una campaña masiva para destruir a la OLP. A principios de los noventa y con la desaparición de los principales respaldos de la OLP, como la Unión Soviética e Iraq, Israel sacó provecho de la oportunidad y trabajó para transformar a la OLP de un movimiento de liberación nacional a un proyecto de “construcción del Estado” que se lanzó con la firma de los Acuerdos de Oslo, siete meses antes de las primeras elecciones libres en Sudáfrica.

 

La campaña por el establecimiento y reconocimiento internacional de un Estado palestino independiente dentro del Bantustán palestino no es diferente de la campaña del régimen de Apartheid de Sudáfrica para lograr el reconocimiento internacional de Transkei o Ciskei. Ésta es la parte esencial de la idea de la “solución de los dos Estados”. La diferencia principal y crucial es que en el actual caso de Palestina quienes también están presionando son la superpotencia mundial y sus aliados en Europa y en el mundo árabe, armados además con la aceptación activa de los intermediarios indígenas de Palestina.

 

 

*Hazem Jamjoum es director de al-Majdal, la revista trimestral en inglés del Centro de Recursos Badil para la Residencia y los Derechos de los Refugiados Palestinos (http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.htm) en Belén, Palestina.

Notas:

1 Utilizo la “A” mayúscula en Apartheid para indicar el régimen de superioridad racial institucionaliza implementado en Sudáfrica entre 1948 y1994, y la “a” minúscula para indicar el crimen de apartheid generalmente aplicable.

2 Véase www.apartheidweek.org.

3 Véase Amira Howeidi, "Israel's right not to be criticised", Al-Ahram Weekly, 19-25 de marzo de 2009: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/939/re2.htm. Véase también la respuesta de la sociedad civil palestina en http://israelreview.bdsmovement.net

4 Texto completo de la Convención: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/11.htm

5 Texto completo del Estatuto: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm

6 Véase Karine Mac Allister, "Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel", al-Majdal #38, (verano de 2008):

http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm

7 Éste es el manifiesto estratégico de la sociedad civil palestina para la Conferencia para la Revisión de Durban en Ginebra, y se puede descargar en: http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf [Traducción al castellano, http://www.nodo50.org/csca/agenda08/palestina/pdf/BNC-PAPERforDurbanReview-SPANISH.pdf].

8 Para una discusión sobre cómo la legislación de apartheid de Israel sigue afectando a los refugiados y a los ciudadanos palestinos de Israel respecto al control de la tierra, véase Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, London: Zed Books, 2003.

9 El control británico en Sudáfrica estableció en 1913 y 1936 reservas sobre aproximadamente el 87% de la tierra de Sudáfrica con el propósito de segregar a la población negra de los colonos.

10 Para ampliar este punto, véase Hazem Jamjoum, "al-Naqab: The Ongoing Displacement of Palestine's Southern Bedouin", al-Majdal #39-40, (otoño 2008 / invierno 2009):http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/autumn-winter/articles03.htm

Enlace con el original: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20993

Israel and the crime of apartheid

Israel And The Crime Of Apartheid

By Hazem Jamjoum

05 April, 2009 
The Electronic Intifada

In recent years, increasing numbers of individuals around the world have begun adopting and developing an analysis of Israel as an apartheid regime. This can be seen in the ways that the global movement in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle is taking on a pointedly anti-apartheid character, as evidenced by the growth of Israeli Apartheid Week ( http://apartheidweek.org/). Further, much of the recent international diplomatic support for Israel has increasingly taken on the form of denying that racial discrimination is a root cause of the oppression of Palestinians. This has taken on new levels of absurdity in Western responses to the April 2009 Durban Review Conference, a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in which Palestinians were identified as victims of racism (the US, Israel, Canada and Italy have already announced that they will not participate because of the potential for criticism of Israel).

Many of the writings stemming from this analysis work to detail levels of similarity and difference with apartheid South Africa, rather than looking at apartheid as a system that can be practiced by any state. To some extent, this strong emphasis on historical comparisons is understandable given that boycott, divestment and sanctions is the central campaign called for by Palestinian civil society for solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, and is modeled on the one that helped end South African apartheid. However, an over-emphasis on similarities and differences confines the use of the term to narrow limits. With the expanding agreement that the term "apartheid" is useful in describing the level and layout of Israel's crimes, it is important that our understanding of the "apartheid label" be deepened, both as a means of informing activism in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, and in order to most effectively make use of comparisons with other struggles.

The apartheid analogy

It is perhaps understandable that some advocates of Palestinian rights look at the "apartheid label," in its comparative sense, as a politically useful tool. The struggle of the South African people for justice and equality reached a certain sacred status in the 1980s and '90s when the anti-apartheid struggle reached its zenith. The reverence with which activists and non-activists alike look to the righteousness of the South African struggle, and the ignominy of the colonial apartheid regime, are well placed. Black South Africans fought against both Dutch and British colonization for centuries, endured countless hardships including imprisonment and death, and were labeled terrorists as the powers of the world stood by the racist apartheid regime. They remained steadfast in their struggle, raising the cost of maintaining the apartheid system until South African capital found it no longer profitable and white political elites found it impossible to maintain. The comparison is further enhanced due to the relationship between the respective Palestinian and South African liberation movements, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the African National Congress, as well as the unabashed alliance between Israel and the South African apartheid regime, which remained strong even at the height of the international boycott against South Africa.

A further impetus for confining the "apartheid label" to a comparison with South Africa is that the commonalities and similarities between the liberation struggles of South Africa and Palestine are quite stark. Both cases involved a process of settler-colonialism involving the forced displacement of the indigenous population from most of their ancestral lands and concentrating them in townships and reservations, dividing the colonized community into different groups with differing rights, strict mobility restrictions that suffocated the colonized, and the use of brutal military force to repress any actual or potential resistance against the racist colonial regime.

Both regimes have enjoyed the impunity that results from full US and European support. Accompanying these and countless other similarities are a host of uncanny details common to both cases: both regimes were formally established in the same year -- 1948 -- following decades of British rule; approximately 87 percent of the land was off limits to most of the colonized population without special permission, and so on. While we speak here in the past tense for South Africa, this still applies to present-day Palestine.

As the Israeli apartheid label has gained ground, some have adopted the approach of describing the differences between the two regimes, albeit for various purposes. In general, Israel has not legislated petty apartheid -- the segregation of spaces such as bathrooms and beaches -- as was the case in South Africa. However, Israeli laws form the basis of systematic racial discrimination against Palestinians. The 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel (approximately 20 percent of Israel's citizens) do indeed have the right to vote and run in Israeli elections while the Black community in South Africa, for the most part, did not. The South African version of apartheid's central tenet was to facilitate the exploitation of as many Black laborers as possible, whereas the Israeli version, although exploiting Palestinian workers, prioritizes the forced displacement of as many Palestinians as possible beyond the borders of the state with the aim of eradicating Palestinian presence within historic Palestine. South African visitors to Palestine have often commented on the fact that Israeli use of force is more brutal than that witnessed in the heyday of apartheid, thus leading several commentators to adopt the position that Israel's practices are worse than apartheid and that the apartheid label does not go far enough.

Israel and the crime of apartheid

In terms of law, describing Israel as an apartheid state does not revolve around levels of difference and similarity with the policies and practices of the South African apartheid regime, and where Israel is an apartheid state only insofar as similarities outweigh differences. In 1973, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (General Assembly resolution 3068 entered into force on 18 July 1976 -- the year of the Soweto uprising in South Africa and the Land Day uprising in Palestine). The resolution set forth that the definition of the crime of apartheid was not limited to the borders of South Africa. The fact that apartheid is defined as a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force in 2002 -- long after the apartheid regime was defeated in South Africa -- attests to the universality of the crime.

While the wording of the definition of the crime of apartheid varies between legal instruments, the substance is the same: a regime commits apartheid when it institutionalizes discrimination to create and maintain the domination of one "racial" group over another. Karine Mac Allister, among others, has provided a cogent legal analysis of the applicability of the crime of apartheid to the Israeli regime (see "Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel," al-Majdal #38, Summer 2008). The main point is that like genocide and slavery, apartheid is a crime that any state can commit, and institutions, organizations and/or individuals acting on behalf of the state that commit it or support its commission are to face trial in any state that is a signatory to the Convention, or in the International Criminal Court. It is therefore a fallacy to ground the Israeli apartheid label on comparisons of the policies of the South African apartheid regime, with the resulting descriptions of Israel as being "apartheid-like" and characterizations of an apartheid analysis of Israel as an "apartheid analogy."

Recognition by the international community of such universal crimes is often the result of a particular case, so heinous that it forces the rusty wheels of international decision-making into motion. The Transatlantic Slave Trade is an example where the mass enslavement of peoples from the African continent to work as the privately owned property of European settlers formed an important part of the framework in which the drafters of the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery thought and acted. An even clearer example is the Genocide Convention (adopted in 1948, entered into force in 1951) in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust in which millions of Jews, communists, Roma and disabled were systematically murdered with the intention to end their existence. We do not describe modern day enslavement as "slavery-like," nor do we examine the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of mainly Tutsi Rwandans through a Rwandan "genocide analogy."

Two points made by Mac Allister in her legal analysis of Israeli apartheid deserve to be reiterated because they are often confused or misconstrued even by advocates of Palestinian human rights. First, Israel's crimes and violations are not limited to the crime of apartheid. Rather, Israel's regime over the Palestinian people combines apartheid, military occupation and colonization in a unique manner. It deserves notice that the relationship between these three components requires further research and investigation. Also noteworthy is the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign National Committee's "United Against Apartheid, Colonialism and Occupation: Dignity & Justice for the Palestinian People" position paper, which outlines and, to some extent, details the various aspects of Israel's commission of the crime of apartheid, and begins to trace the interaction between Israeli apartheid, colonialism and occupation from the perspective of Palestinian civil society. [1]

The second point worth reiterating is that Israel's regime of apartheid is not limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, the core of Israel's apartheid regime is guided by discriminatory legislation in the fields of nationality, citizenship and land ownership. This discriminatory legislation was primarily employed to oppress and dispossess those Palestinians (refugees and internally displaced) who were forced from their land and property during the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, as well as the minority who managed to remain within the 1949 armistice line (referred to as the "green line"), who later became Israeli citizens. Israel's apartheid regime was extended into the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the 1967 occupation of those territories for the purpose of colonization and military control over the Palestinians who came under occupation. Using again the example of South Africa, the crime of apartheid was not limited to the Bantustans -- the whole regime was implicated and not one or another of its racist manifestations.

The analysis of Israel as an apartheid state has proven to be very important in several respects. First, it correctly highlights racial discrimination as a root cause of Israel's oppression of Palestinians. Second, one of the main effects of Israeli apartheid is that it has separated Palestinians -- conceptually, legally and physically -- into different groupings (refugees, West Bank, Gaza, within the "green line" and a host of other divisions within each), resulting in the fragmentation of the Palestinian liberation movement, including the solidarity movement. The apartheid analysis enables us to provide a legal and conceptual framework under which we can understand, convey and take action in support of the Palestinian people and their struggle as a unified whole. Third, and of particular significance to the solidarity movement, this legal and conceptual framework takes on the prescriptive role underpinning the growing global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law.

Colonialism and the role of comparison

I have argued that the question of whether apartheid applies cannot be determined by means of comparison with South Africa, but rather by legal analysis. This, however, does not mean that comparative study is not useful. Comparison is in fact essential to the process of learning historical lessons for those involved in struggle. A central point of comparison with South Africa is the fact that it was, and for the indigenous people of Palestine and the Americas, continues to be a struggle against colonialism.

Focusing on the colonial dimension of Israeli apartheid and the Zionist project enables us to maintain our focus on the issues that really matter, such as land acquisition, demographic engineering and methods of political and economic control exercised by one racial group over another. Comparison with other anti-colonial struggles provides the main resource for understanding this colonial dimension of Israeli oppression, and for deriving some of the lessons needed to fight it.

One of the key lessons for Palestinians from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa was the pressure placed on the African National Congress leadership to compromise on its economic demands such as land restitution. Only a tiny proportion of white-controlled land in South Africa was redistributed to Blacks after 1994. As such, while the struggle of the South African people defeated the system of political apartheid, the struggle against economic apartheid continues in various forms including anti-poverty and landless peoples' movements today. The centrality of the demand for land restitution should be highlighted as part of the demand for refugee return as Palestinians and those struggling with them work to reconstruct a political strategy and consensus on how to overcome the political challenges that have emerged since the launching of the peace process and the transformation of the Palestinian liberation movement leadership into a non-sovereign authority dependent on Israel for its international legitimacy and financial solvency.

A second key lesson is in response to the paradigm currently guiding most mainstream accounts of how to achieve the elusive "peace in the Middle East," which is the idea of partition often referred to as the "two-state solution." In the 1970s, South Africa tried to deal with its "demographic problem" -- the fact that the vast majority of its population was Black but did not have the right to vote. The apartheid regime reconstructed South Africa as a formal democracy by reinventing the British-established reservations (the Bantustans) as independent states (British rule in South Africa established reserves in 1913 and 1936 on approximately 87 percent of the land of South Africa for the purpose of segregating the Black population from the settlers). These 10 "homelands" were each assigned to an ethnicity decided by Pretoria, and indigenous South Africans who did not fit into one of the ethnicities were forced to make themselves fit in order to become nationals of one of the homelands. Through this measure, members of the indigenous population were reclassified as nationals of a homeland, and between 1976 and 1981 the regime tried to pass the homelands off as independent states: Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981.

Each of these Bantustans was given a flag and a government made up of indigenous intermediaries on the Pretoria payroll, and all the trappings of a sovereign government including responsibility over municipal services and a police force to protect the apartheid regime, but without actual sovereignty. The idea was that by getting international recognition for each of these homelands as states, the apartheid regime would transform South Africa from a country with a 10 percent white minority, to one with a 100 percent white majority. Since it was a democratic regime within the confines of the dominant community, the state's democratic nature would be beyond reproach. No one was fooled. The African National Congress launched a powerful campaign to counter any international recognition of the Bantustans as independent states, and the plot failed miserably at the international level -- with the notable, but perhaps unsurprising, exception that a lone "embassy" for Bophuthatswana was opened in Tel Aviv.

Israel has employed similar strategies in Palestine. For example, Israel recognized 18 Palestinian Bedouin tribes and appointed a loyal sheikh for each in the Naqab (Negev) desert during the 1950s as a means of controlling these southern Palestinians, forcing those who did not belong to one of the tribes to affiliate to one in order to get Israeli citizenship (seeHazem Jamjoum, "al-Naqab: The Ongoing Displacement of Palestine's Southern Bedouin," al-Majdal #39-40, Autumn 2008/Winter 2009). In the late 1970s, the Israeli regime tried to invent Palestinian governing bodies for the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the form of "village leagues" intended to evolve into similar non-sovereign governments -- glorified municipalities of a sort. As with apartheid's Homelands, the scheme failed miserably, both because the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had established itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and because Palestinians largely understood the plot and opposed it with all means at their disposal. The main lesson for Israel was that the PLO would have to either be completely destroyed or would have to be transformed into Israeli apartheid's indigenous intermediary. Israel launched a massive campaign to destroy the PLO throughout the 1980s and early '90s. With the demise of the PLO's main backers in the Soviet bloc at the end of the Cold War and its strained relations with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the first Gulf War, Israel capitalized on the opportunity, and worked to transform the PLO from a liberation movement to a "state-building" project that was launched by the signing of the Oslo Accords, seven months before South Africa's first free election.

The push for the establishment and international recognition of an independent Palestinian state within the Palestinian Bantustan is no different from the South African apartheid regime's campaign to gain international recognition of Transkei or Ciskei. This is the core of the "two-state solution" idea. The major and crucial difference is that in the current Palestinian case, it is the world's superpower and its adjutants in Europe and the Arab world pushing as well, and armed with the active acceptance of Palestine's indigenous intermediaries.

Hazem Jamjoum is the editor of al-Majdal, the English language quarterly magazine of the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Endnotes
[1] This is the Palestinian civil society position paper for the April 2009 Durban Review Conference in Geneva, and can be downloaded at: http://bdsmovement.net/files/
English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf
 (accessed 29 March 2009).


Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/jamjoum050409.htm

quinta-feira, 9 de abril de 2009

Líder republicano da Irlanda do Norte, Gerry Adams, chama Gaza de "uma prisão a céu aberto"

09/04/2009
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077437.html

Por Haaretz Service

O líder do Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams na quinta-feira, denunciou o bloqueio israelense em Gaza por ter tornado a região costeira de Gaza em "uma prisão a céus abertos", anunciou a imprensa.

"Isto é uma total negação dos direitos do povo da Palestina. Isto é uma prisão a céu aberto", citou o jornal inglês The Guardian, durante a visita do presidente do Sinn Fein durante uma visita ao território administrado pelo Hamas. "O povo não pode viajar, não podem sair daqui e não podem entrar."

Israel e Egito impuseram um bloqueio em Gaza após o Hamas vencer seu rival, o secular Fatah em um sangrento golpe em 2007. (Nota do Tradutor: O bloqueio se iniciou um ano antes, após o Hamas vencer democraticamente as eleições para o Parlamento palestino).

Durante a visita, Adams se reuniu com o líder da administração do Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. 

De acordo com a agência de notícias palestina, Ma'an, Haniyeh disse ao líder republicano da Irlanda do Norte que Israel não atingiu nada na recente ofensiva em Gaza senão "matar inocentes - homens, mulheres, crianças e policiais."

Adams, chamou por negociações diretas entre Israel e palestinos para prevenir uma repetição da operação Chumbo Derretido (Operation Cast Lead). 

"A obrigação é que isto que aconteceu não se repita novamente", a Agência de Imprensa Francesa (AFP) citou Adams.

Report: Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams calls Gaza 'an open-air prison'

09/04/2009
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077437.html

By Haaretz Service

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Thursday denounced the Israel-led blockade on Gaza as has having made the coastal strip into an "open-air prison," news outlets reported. 

"This is a total denial of the rights of the people of Palestine. This is an open-air prison," The Guardian quoted the Sinn Fein president as saying during a visit to the Hamas-ruled territory. "People can't travel out of here, they can't travel in." 

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas ousted its secular rival Fatah in a bloody 2007 coup. 


During the visit, Adams met with the Palestinian Islamist group's Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh. 

According to the Palestinian news agency Ma'an, Haniyeh told the Northern Irish republican leader that Israel achieved nothing in its recent offensive against Hamas apart from "killing innocent men, women, children and police officers." 

Adams, for his part, called for direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to prevent a repeat of Operation Cast Lead. 

"The obligation is that what happened here doesn't happen again," AFP quoted Adams as saying.