Deepening israeli Apartheid
More Israeli apartheid laws are being enacted and others being enforced. A new law will punish Palestinians using yellow-plated (”Israeli”) cars (including taxis) and punish the drivers unless they have special permits from Israeli occupation authorities. A Palestinian getting a ride even from a friend or a relative (or even an Israeli spouse) will get them both punished. The law was enacted and will go into effect in January. Israel also is proceeding with other laws intended to ethnically cleanse Palestine of a key segment of its remaining population and deny any international support to Palestinians. An apartheid law is being implemented removing Palestinians, including those born in Palestine, who hold foreign passports (and who were unable to retain or get the Israeli issued ID card, other set of apartheid laws stripped thousands of their ID cards).
Tens of thousands of Palestinians thus were denied their residency rights and families are forced to either separate or find other countries to live in. This coincides with accelerated plans to de-develop the remaining Palestinain economy by a system of strangulation. For example, Palestinians in Jerusalem are being separated by massive walls from Palestinians in the suburbs of Jerusalem (imagine the devastation to both suburbs and city in America if a wall is built around the city separating it from these suburbs).
BTW Bethlehem and Ramallah are each within 10 mile radius of Jerusalem old city and are thus suburbs. Unemployment in the West Bank (including Jerusalem) is now at 70% and over 50% of Palestinians who remained in Palestine live in poverty. 80% of Palestinians overall are refugees or displaced people (the largest and longest lasting among the world’s refugees). Foreigners are also now routinely denied entry to Palestine.
This is intended to remove witnesses and peace activists from the deepening apartheid/hafrada. How will we respond and will the hundreds of organizations around the US (and thousands around the world) that profess support for human rights rise to this challenge? Will governments be forced to obey the International Covenant against Crimes of Apartheid and Racism? Will more people write regularly to the media to demand they do their job and report the real news, not racist PR?
A new e-Book/Book on the Web explores some of the Israeli apartheid laws and practices: “Foundations of Civil and Political Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories”
I got this email from Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh - who is on the National Executive Committee for the Palestinian American Congress. Every single day, we learn of new suffocating laws that are being drafted as a deliberate attempt to make the lives Palestinians living there more of a living hell than it already is under the brutal occupation and to drive away those people who are passionate about visiting and helping Palestine and Palestinians. So how will we respond?
