Apartheid? No worse
Why Palestine is more than a discussion of Apartheid. It is a complex system of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and complete erasure of the Palestinian people.
Tensions in Palestine have grown with the daily arrests and murders of Palestinians as a direct result of settler violence and IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) military invasions. On Tuesday March 3rd, the IOF launched an invasion into Jenin where 7 civilians were murdered and many more injured. This followed the invasions of Nablus and Huwara earlier the previous week which have left tens dead and hundreds injured. In response, Palestinian resistance groups, and many across Palestine, are challenging the Israeli belief that Palestinian land is up for the taking or that the lives of our people are worthless. Palestinians are tired of catastrophe.
I was always confused by the word "catastrophe." It rendered the perpetrator anonymous, and it exempted the Palestinians from bearing any weight of their oppression. Like many Palestinians of my generation, we grew up everywhere besides Palestine: physically, spiritually, and emotionally disconnected from where we know we belonged.
I did not grasp the true meaning of the word until I went back to Palestine this past summer. In the alleys and passageways, on the cobblestone path soaked in ashes of burning villages, I discovered Catastrophe. Thousands of people found themselves setting up temporary housing, but temporary became permanent, and people found themselves setting up a nation built on memories and hope. They are waiting in suspended time, refusing to accept that the world will not recognize their tragedy.
Part of this tragedy stems from the fact that both the world, and Israel, cannot recognize the simple fact that Israel’s violence against the Palestinian population goes far beyond Apartheid. It has been 75 years since the Nakba – Catastrophe – the beginning of the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral homes leading to what is the world’s largest refugee crisis. In 1948, the colonial movement, with the help of the already settled British, entered Palestine, and ethnically cleansed 750,000+ Palestinians from their homes and committed numerous genocides on villages across the state.
Palestinian citizens of Israel have some rights, but more like third class citizens with over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens. However, the true horror takes place in the West Bank and the rest of historic Palestine. In South African Apartheid, they did not attempt to erase the indigenous population, instead, they created a political system of second-class citizens that both integrated and segregated its native population. The Apartheid system relied on the native population for its operation to function: the native population was their workforce, their agricultural labor, and their knowledge which was necessary to the state.
Apartheid, defined by the United Nations, is the intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another through systematic oppression. Apartheid in South Africa was inherently violent, its segregation of the native population has created lasting generational trauma; however, this violence did not extend to damage the landscape nor kill off the native groups.
On the other hand, Israel makes no secret its efforts to completely erase the Palestinian population, ethnically cleansing the land of its people and establishing new settlements. Comparing Israel’s violence to South Africa diminishes the severity of cruelty inflicted upon the Palestinians. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the Palestinian city of Huwara to be “wiped out” after a state-sponsored pogrom last week. While some try to paint this as an anomaly, it is indicative of Israel’s history as a nation and its continued expansion of the colonial state – one built on the blood of Palestinians. The situation in Gaza is horror beyond reprieve.
What would you call fighter jets releasing parades of bombs over millions of innocent civilians, hospitals, and schools? Is it “Israeli defense” to keep a million children in the world’s largest open-air prison? To torture, starve, and abuse children in military detention? Israeli leaders describe their continued assaults on the Gazan populations as “mowing the lawn” – no recognition for the humanity of Palestinians is shown.
It had been five years since I was last in Palestine, and since then illegal settlements I once saw as sporadic homes have now become full cities – enclosing Palestinians from all sides, effectively annexing us from our land – the Nakba continues, and more families enter a state of being refugees. The Palestinian landscape is stolen, the trees burned, and the water confiscated while families are forced to watch and pay for their homes to be demolished. As a child, I remember the water was cut off to our city for two weeks, all we had was the reserves in water tanks atop the buildings, which settlers shot at while protected by IDF soldiers.
For Palestinians in diaspora, like myself, we experience a different side of settler colonialism: forced to watch the countries we are now in show unequivocal support for the murder of our people. Furthermore, the efforts of the colonial state are to make it hell not only for the people in Palestine, but for those of us who try and make the pilgrimage home.
Palestine is the world's largest refugee crisis. We are treated as an inferior race and denied every basic human right. Yet, I see no corporate or social sanctions on the colonial regime. I see the absence of the robust language used to describe Israel's crimes against humanity. I see that we are expected to die silently. Palestinians see that our dignity, freedom, and heritage are being erased without discussing our existence. This is NOT Apartheid. We are here, and we are not going anywhere.