The curse of apartheid
Efforts to pull a United Nations report calling Israel an apartheid state reveal a deeper issue
The United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres has formally requested that the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) remove a report from its website accusing Israel of being an “apartheid regime”. In response to Mr Guterres, UN under-secretary general and executive secretary for the ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, announced her resignation from the organisation. She noted that “powerful member states” pressed Mr Guterres with “vicious attacks and threats” forcing him to push for the report’s withdrawal.
There are several threads to the discussion about Israel and apartheid. The report’s findings are by no means groundbreaking. Its authors argue that Palestinians are subject to “strategic fragmentation” created and imposed by Israel through the application of different sets of laws administered on a racial basis. As such, Israel “has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole”.
Close observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will confirm the truth in these allegations. Even Israeli settlers and senior Israeli politicians will agree that Israel administers a separate and unequal system of governance over the land it controls. So what is all the fuss about the apartheid label?
The answer is simple. Israel is worried that it will place a stigma on the country that it will be unable to change. Tel Aviv prefers to market itself as a liberal and enlightened country caught in an impossible situation, just as Apartheid South Africa tried to paint itself as facing an unusual set of circumstances.
Israel understands all too well that once the apartheid label sticks, isolation will follow. Calls for boycotts will intensify, Israelis will face travel restrictions, businesses will lose contracts and the society will become a pariah. That is the power of language. For this reason, Israel and its allies are trying to crush any attempt to paint the country in such unfavourable terms. But these attempts might be too little too late, as Tel Aviv’s hysterical actions only serve to intensify the debate about apartheid.