The former American President and the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jimmy Carter angered the U.S. Jewish Establishment for having dared to use the term "apartheid" while describing Israel's policies in the West Bank.
However, none of the critics of Carter’s new book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” was able to provide one convincing argument to justify such outcry, or reason to reject the fact that Israel bestows rights on Jewish settlers at lands they illegally confiscated from Palestinians, while it denies the same rights to the Palestinians, the indigenous residents and the true owners of the lands.
Israel’s simply refusing to accept reality. It rejects Carter’s Apartheid claim although it maintains two separate road networks in the occupied West Bank: one for the Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not apartheid?
Also Palestinians are denied the right to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank. And while their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked by Israeli army checkpoints, Jewish settlers are allowed to move freely in their own cars.
Is that not apartheid?
And most recent evidence is the Israeli government’s decision to approve plans making some site at Maskiot, which is a former military base, the first new Israeli settlement to be authorized in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1992.
True, the Maskiot settlement existed before as an army base, and Israel may claim it is only "firming up" an existing settlement, but the new pre-fabricated homes in Maskiot shed more light on the true policy of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It is probably the first new settlement to be created outside Jerusalem, with full government approval, since the Oslo agreements.
Although the new settlement violates two orders by the United states: Not to establish new settlements and not to settle evacuees from Gaza in them, it shouldn’t really be a surprise to those who have been following Israeli policies since Olmert became the Prime Minister. In February last year, while Olmert was still campaigning, he said that Israel would retain control of the Jordan Valley. His words however were misinterpreted by some as preparations to annex the Jordan Valley, while others understood that Olmert was planning to seize control over the routes leading to the Jordan valley. At that time reports emerged suggesting that Israel began tightening up checkpoint entries to the Jordan Valley, blocking entry of Palestinian Arabs who don’t live in the territories.
And Betselem, an Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, announced in February that Israel had "annexed" the Jordan Valley de facto.
In an article by Shulamit Aloni, the former Education Minister of Israel who has been awarded both the Israel Prize and the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Aloni criticised acts by the Israeli army who has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp, with the aim of keeping an eye on the Palestinians’ movement, making their lives more difficult and adding to their woes.
On events where the Jewish settlers, the occupiers and the usurpers of the Palestinian lands, celebrate their holidays, Israel imposes a total curfew to protect them.
And now Israelis are grabbing more lands to establish wonderful, wide, and well paved roads to be used only by Jews on the Palestinians’ stolen lands, where Palestinians themselves are not allowed to drive their own cars.
If any Palestinian driver dares pass on such roads, his vehicle gets immediately confiscated.
Aloni narrates that she witnessed a Palestinian driver while an Israeli soldier was taking down the details before confiscating his vehicle and sending him away.
She says when the Palestinian man asked the soldier why his vehicle was being taken from him, the soldier bluntly replied to the man telling him that “it's an order--this is a Jews-only road.”
However there’s no sign telling Palestinians that they shouldn’t use those roads so as to avoid having their cars confiscated.
The soldier told the man that “it is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?"
“Indeed Apartheid does exist here,” Aloni agreed, adding that the Israeli army is not "the most moral army in the world" as claimed.
Every town and every village in the territories has become a detention camp and Israeli soldiers have blocked almost each and every entry and exit, cutting it off from arterial traffic. Now Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the roads paved “for Jews only”, on their land.
A new Israeli order, expected to be implemented on 19 January, prohibits transporting Palestinians in an Israeli vehicle, unless having a permission that relates to both the driver and the Palestinian passenger.
Is that not Apartheid?
Isn’t depriving people of their human rights, including freedom of travel, considered a crime?
“We limit ourselves to denying the Palestinian people human rights. We rob them of their freedom, land and water, and we apply collective punishment to millions of people and even, in revenge-driven frenzy, destroy the electricity supply for one and half million civilians,” she said.
“Employees cannot be paid their salaries simply because Israel is holding 500 million shekels that belong to the Palestinians. And after all that we remain pure as the driven snow,” she added.
Original article posted here.
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