Israel Apartheid State: Hardrain & Traps on the battlefield
Often lauded as the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel nevertheless appears to have difficulty applying its high human rights standards to non-Jews. One might plausibly argue that these standards are, out of necessity, suspended in areas under military occupation were it not for the fact that the Jewish settler population in the territories benefits from the same rights and privileges accorded their counterparts within Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
One might also argue that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are equal participants in the country’s democratic social institutions were it not for certain serious problems such as the fact that nearly 70,000 Arab Israelis live in legal limbo: the more than 100 villages they live in within Israel are unrecognized by the government. As a result these residents pay taxes to the government but are “not eligible for government services….”
“Consequently, such villages have none of the infrastructure, such as electricity, water, and sewers, provided to recognized communities. The lack of basic services has caused difficulties for the villagers in regard to their education, health care, and employment opportunities. New building in the unrecognized villages is considered illegal and subject to demolition.”
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2000 [CRHP 2000]: Israel, US State Department, February 2001.
(The Israeli government has yet to resolve the legal status of these villages and their inhabitants.)
In addition, the report continues, Palestinian citizens of Israel are continually subjected to discrimination in education, housing, and employment and are underrepresented in most of the professions and in government. Arab land ownership remains problematic owing to policies prohibiting the transfer of land to non-Jews.
In 1996 Arab Israelis challenged a state policy known as the “Master Plan for the Northern Areas of Israel” which “listed as priority goals increasing the Galilee’s Jewish population and blocking the territorial contiguity of Arab villages and towns” on the basis that it discriminated against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The government continues to use this document as the basis for its planning in the Galilee.
This is but a small sample of the abuses listed against Arab Israeli citizens. The report documenting Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories is still more extensive and not limited to Israeli security forces such as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). The settler population, whose presence in the territories contravenes international law, serves as a daily provocation to Palestinians living under the occupation. “Israeli settlers harass, attack, and occasionally kill Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” the report informs us.
“There were credible reports that settlers injured a number of Palestinians during the ‘al-Aqsa Intifada,’ usually by stoning their vehicles, which at times caused fatal accidents, shooting them, or hitting them with moving vehicles. Human rights groups received several dozen reports during the year that Israeli settlers in the West Bank beat Palestinians and destroyed the property of Palestinians living or farming near Israeli settlements. For example, according to Palestinian eyewitnesses, a group of Israeli settlers beat a 75-year-old Palestinian woman in April (i.e., 5 months before the uprising began). …Settlers also attacked and damaged crops, olive trees, greenhouses, and agricultural equipment, causing extensive economic damage to Palestinian-owned agricultural land. The settlers did not act under government orders in the attacks; however, the Israeli Government did not prosecute the settlers for their acts of violence. In general settlers rarely serve prison sentences if convicted of a crime against a Palestinian. According to human rights organizations, settlers sometimes attacked Palestinian ambulances and impeded the provision of medical services to injured Palestinians.”
- CRHRP-2000: Occupied Territories,
US State Department, February 2001.
An extract from “Don’t Mention It” by - Jennifer Loewenstein (Media Monitors)
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