https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1468-3706
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Abstract
Israel/Palestine is a context in which the term “apartheid” keeps reappearing. As a historical analogy and cultural shorthand, it functions as a powerful Palestinian weapon when used to describe Israeli policy and actions in what amounts to a battle of narratives in the international arena. For a long time, Palestinians have been known primarily for their violent struggle, but employing loaded vocabulary to depict their lives and experiences under Israeli control is more than just using a certain word, it is a strategic choice. The earliest uses of the apartheid analogy have long been placed in the 1970s, however, evidence of its use can already be found before the United Nation’s General Assembly declared apartheid a crime in 1973. The first instances happened simultaneously with the development of the organized Palestinian national movement in the 1960s. Focusing on Fayez Sayegh (1922–1980), an academic and UN special rapporteur to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, I argue such historical analogies need to be read as a non-violent tactic of resistance within the Palestinian struggle. Sayegh was almost singlehandedly responsible for introducing the apartheid analogy at the United Nations – my primary contextual interest. His analyses of racial segregation, however, were thoroughly countered, making his engagement for Palestine seem like a failure. And yet his early attempts to bring the apartheid analogy into wide circulation, along with the increasingly more complicated situation on the ground, show results. Today, the term has become common usage in describing Israel and puts enormous pressure on the country. The spread of the apartheid analogy shows that non-violent forms of Palestinian resistance, which in the 1960s and 1970s were almost invisible internationally, long existed.
Acknowledgments
Like all academic work, also this article received much input from others. I particularly want to thank Louise Bethlehem, Shimrit Baer, and the entire team of the Apartheid – The Global Itinerary ERC research team for their support, both intellectual and personal. I also want to thank my class of graduate students in the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who, as scholars and activists, taught me the power of single words in a fraught political context like Israel/Palestine.
Notes
1 Bethlehem builds her understanding on Saul Dubow’s argument that “the word itself condensed a powerful set of fears and hopes” (Citation2014, x).
2 This struggle has three phases: (a) 1882–1948; (b) 1948–1967; (c) 1967 until this day. The first phase, which included the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, was dominated by the struggle against the British Mandate and the increasing Zionist immigration and its national endeavors. The second phase, which started with the Nakba, the destruction of Historical Palestine and the dispersion of around 750,000 Palestinians, was primarily a situation of finding one’s feet in exile or while living under Israeli or Jordanian control. In the 1960s an organized national movement developed. From 1967 onwards, the main focus of the struggle became the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
3 Tal and Bethlehem (Citation2019) have shown that, in the Israeli context, comparative references to apartheid were already made since the early 1950s.
4 The UN status of the two countries is not the same: Israel has been a full member since 1949, but the Palestinians have only been a permanent observer since 1975. In 1998, resolution 52/250 brought them additional rights, including the right to speak. Celebrated in the West Bank and Palestinian communities around the world, in a de facto recognition of statehood, the State of Palestine was voted a non-member observer state in 2012. This status means that the Palestinians continue to have less access and rights than full members.
5 Significant issues include the UN’s creation in 1949 of UNRWA to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. Resolution 242 (Citation1967) calls for the Israeli retreat from captured areas. In 1968 the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People started the so-called settlement investigation. The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (UNGA Resolution 3376) was established in 1975. Here, a seismic shift took place as repatriation rights (previously, the Palestine question was regarded mainly as a refugee problem) and the right to self-determination were aligned. The year 1977 saw the founding of the UN Division for Palestinian Rights.
6 The best-known figure in this context is Leila Khaled, dubbed “the poster girl of Palestinian militancy” (Irving Citation2012).
9 “While official de jure apartheid of the African variety does not exist in Israel, national apartheid on the latent and informal levels … is a characteristic feature of Israeli society” (Zureik Citation1979, 16). Applying the concept to the Palestinian minority in Israel, Zureik's was one of the earliest uses of apartheid as an analytical lens.
10 A frequent accusation that comes with the rejection of apartheid as a fitting analytical lens is that it implies a denigration, delegitimization even, of Israel (Cohen and Freilich Citation2018; Ellis Citation2019; Nelson Citation2015; Sabel Citation2011, 28).
11 Following international pressure, Israel returned the collection – minus the films – in 1983, upon which it was moved to Cyprus. Nonetheless, this looting has not only complicated research into Palestinian history but is also a symbolic act aimed to silence the Palestinian narrative.
12 I want to thank Shimrit Baer for this double understanding of Sayegh’s use of the term apartheid, which disentangles the range of engagement we see in his work, especially in his diplomatic engagements.
13 Studying the UN and Israel can cause pushback from many, as especially those who consider themselves supporters understand it as a forum biased against Israel.
14 For an in-depth discussion of the Israel–apartheid South Africa–UN triad in this period, see Giladi (Citation2017).
15 In a study analyzing the linked terms Israel and apartheid in media around the world, researchers at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies found only fifty articles during the years 1967 to 2000, but 1,741 from 2001 to 2015 (Israeli and Hatuel-Radoshitzky Citation2015).
16 Most noteworthy is Kanafani’s 1966 study in which he defined Resistance Literature and set out a framework for the role of literature within the Palestinian struggle for the homeland (Harlow Citation1987; Klemm Citation1998). However, although it was recently reissued, it is not yet available in English (Kanafani Citation2013).
17 Darwish was widely translated into French and Kanafani into German in the 1980s and 1990s. Kanafani is one of the few Arab writers whose entire oeuvre is available in German (Fischer Citation1995, 7–10).
18 During the First Intifada (1987–1993), images of soldiers beating Palestinian youths for throwing stones flickered across screens worldwide. With the Oslo Peace Process, the Oslo Accords (1993, 1995) and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as an interim self-governing body, the world came to learn about the Palestinian plight. Among the issues that continue to have powerful effects are the status of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and the unresolved status of five million refugees, many of whom still live in refugee camps.
19 Abulhawa is part of a recent wave of contemporary Palestinian diaspora writing in English. While, so far, only Abulhawa’s sweeping historical novel of Palestine Mornings in Jenin (Citation2010) has become a bestseller (translated into 27 languages), the range of writing engaged with the Palestinian homeland in different, generation-influenced ways is starting to shape the perception of Palestine internationally (Fischer Citation2019).
20 I rely on Sturken’s (Citation1997) conceptualization of the screen in memory processes. It can function both as a “surface that is projected upon” and as “an object that hides something from view, that shelters and protects” (144).