Jeff Halper writes: Here is a podcast of an interview i did yesterday for South Africa’s Salaamedia on the Jewish Nationality Law that has just passed. It makes the reality of Israeli apartheid explicit and official. No longer should we debate whether an apartheid regime rules between the Mediterranean and the Jordan Valley. It does.
But what I explain in this interview is that the Jewish Nationality Law is simply the declaration, the cherry on top of the apartheid sundae. It formally declares Israeli apartheid, but it rests on a whole range of laws and regulations that give it substance, laws that have been passed in recent years by the Netanyahu government and laws soon to be passed. Just to name them:
* The “Regulation” Law (Hok Hahasdara) allows Israel to retroactively legalize settlements built on private Palestinian land;
* Military order 1797 which nullifies Jordanian planning law in the West Bank and permits the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes;
*Law extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank (or at over Area C and the settlements);
* Greater Jerusalem Law which will annex Ma’aleh Adumim and the Etzion Bloc settlements to Jerusalem, thus adding 150,000 Jews to the municipal voting lists while also disenfranchizing 150,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites, ensuring a “Jewish Jerusalem”;
* Popular Referendum Law in which no part of the Land of Israel can be relinquished (meaning the West Bank, Jerusalem & the Golan) without a popular referendum, thus removing negotiating authority from any future government;
* Breaking the Silence Law forbidding that anti-occupation group & others critical of the Israeli army from speaking in Israeli schools;
* V-15 Law which severely restricts grassroots organizations seeking to be active in the political process and in elections from raising funds or organizing effectively; and
* Instituting a death penalty for people convicted of terrorism.
The scaffolding of apartheid is in place, and the Jewish Nationality Law gives the entire structure its legal and official form. Now that the two-state solution has been eliminated by Israel and, I assume and hope, apartheid is unacceptable, only one other way out of this tragedy remains: transforming the one apartheid state created by Israel over the entire country with a single democratic state of equal rights for everyone. The political logic seems compelling.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.