Apartheid accusations: impediment to peace

by leila beckwith, joseph manson, Judea pearl, and bertram raven

Those who seek to delegitimize Zionism and Israel promote the fiction that Israel is an apartheid state. Typical of this is English Professor Saree Makdisi's deceptive claim in a Feb. 21 UCLA Today op-ed: "Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land while denying the same rights to indigenous Palestinians."

This perverted statement implies that only Arabs are indigenous to the Biblical land, denies the historical connection of Jews to that land and gratuitously declares the land to be exclusively Palestinian. Yet history teaches us that Jews inhabited and ruled the land more than 1,600 years before Mohammed was born and have lived there continuously over more than 3 millennia.

Who cannot be sympathetic toward Palestinians who want to live peaceful lives? But a society that defines itself on the ruins of another cannot be surprised when it meets with resistance and unhappy consequences.

Whereas Jews have accepted Palestinian Arabs as equally indigenous, entitled to a separate sovereignty, Palestinian Arabs and their Arab neighbors have rejected any two-state solution offered since 1920, including the Peel's Commission 1937 recommendation, the United Nations 1947 decision and the Camp David 2000 offer. All three were accepted by the Jews.

Makdisi conspicuously omits the fact that Israel rules over the West Bank only because it was forced to enter that area in a defensive war against Jordan in 1967. The "special rights" in the West Bank that Makdisi alludes to are determined not by religion, ethnicity or race, but by security considerations. Two separate road networks in the West Bank were built after the Oslo accords, when Palestinians were granted autonomy. Since the 2000 Palestinian Intifada, the separation protects peaceful drivers from murder and mayhem. The distinction is not between "Jewish settlers" and "Palestinian natives," as Makdisi states, but between those who respect human lives and those likely to endanger lives. Muslim, Christian and Jewish drivers have equal transportation rights when traveling with Israeli license plates. So do those Palestinians living in the West Bank who have obtained security clearance.

Israeli army checkpoints serve the same security purpose, since the majority of Palestinians, as shown in recent polls, refuse to denounce terrorism and their government pursues violence, including suicide bombing against civilians. Prior to the Intifada, few checkpoints†existed.

Is this anything remotely resembling apartheid? Hardly. Apartheid in South Africa disenfranchised blacks. Yet Arabs in Israel enjoy a free press, have Arab political parties, elect Arabs to the Knesset and have an Arab minister in the government. Apartheid in South Africa imposed racial segregation by law in buses, hospitals, beaches, schools and universities. In Israel, Jews and Arabs are cared for in the same hospitals by Jewish and Arab doctors. Jews and Arabs ride the same public buses, use the same beaches and attend the same universities.

Makdisi, in other writings, denies the right of Israel, the national home of the Jewish people, to exist. We challenge him to state publicly that he recognizes the legitimate rights not only of Palestinians, but of Jews to nationhood and sovereignty. Such a statement would do more for world peace than unfounded accusations.

(Beckwith is a professor emeritus in pediatrics, Manson an associate professor in anthropology, Pearl a professor of computer science and Raven a professor emeritus of psychology.)