Oren Ben-Dor in Counterpunch:
It is true that some Israeli left wingers refer to the post-1967 occupation as an apartheid regime. There are good reasons for such comparison with the old South African system. In the Occupied Territories, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary military regulations, while Israeli settlers are governed by Israeli law. It is no accident that the barrier being built by Israel in the West Bank is called by Israelis the “gader hafrada”. Like the Afrikaans word “apartheid”, the Hebrew word “hafrada” means “separation”. The Israeli barrier separates Jewish settlements from Palestinian villages, usually also separating those villages from their farmland.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid, of which the occupation is but a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in terms of their stake in the political community.
More here.
