Bantustan plan for an apartheid Israel

[Karmadillo]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1203156,00.html

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What's the connection between, on the one hand, the end of the conquest in the Gaza Strip and the dismantling of settlements and, on the other, the establishment of a binational state? After all, the goal of disengagement is to improve the demographic situation by removing a million and a half Palestinians from Israeli control and thereby reducing the danger that the country will cease to be a Jewish state. The surprising fact is that this "conceptual transfer" is accepted by the Israeli left, which continues to believe in anachronistic slogans about the "end of the conquest" and the "dismantling of settlements".

The report about a tacit agreement being reached between the Peace Now movement and Sharon's aides - Peace Now will suspend its "evacuate settlements, choose life" campaign so as not to harm public relations efforts for Sharon's separation plan - illustrates the profoundly confused state of public discourse in Israel. As the Israeli left sees it, the confinement of one and a half million people in a huge holding pen fulfils the ideal of putting an end to the occupation, and furnishes some relief about how "we are not responsible".

Similarly, when in South Africa a failed attempt was made to solve demographic problems by creating "homelands for the blacks", liberals originally supported the idea, and even a portion of the international community viewed the measure as a step toward "decolonisation". But, after a short time, it became clear that the ploy was designed to confer legitimacy on the expulsion of black people, and their uprooting. The bantustans collapsed, demands for civil equality intensified, and the world mobilised for the defeat of apartheid.

The bantustan model for Gaza, as depicted in the disengagement plan, is a model that Sharon plans to copy on the West Bank. His announcement that he will not start to disengage before construction of the fence is completed along a route that will include all settlement blocs (in keeping with Binyamin Netanyahu's demand), underscores the continuity of the bantustan concept. The fence creates three bantustans on the West Bank - Jenin-Nablus, Bethlehem-Hebron and Ramallah. This is the real link between the Gaza and West Bank plans. The link is not what those politicians who will provide a "security net" for Sharon in a Knesset no-confidence vote call "the precedent of the dismantling of settlements".

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[Jim Sagle]

1. Twisted, upside-down reasoning - slamming Israel for leaving Gaza.

Once the Palestinians actually set up a state - and BTW, who the FUCK is stopping them? - they'll be independent. And everybody else will wonder what the FUCK those who were babbling about Bantustans were babbling about.

[Djinn]

2. have you looked at the fineprint

Apart from the open air prison issues that will derive from Israel retaining control over the air and water of Gaza, there is the question of refusing to allow an open border with Egypt. There will CONTINUE to be Israeli troops stationed in Palestine - how do you think the US would react to Cuban soldiers stationed in Florida?

Settlements would NOT be destroyed and Israel would be the arbiter of who may and may not live in them - any chance of the US allowing Hugo Chavez to decides who lives where in US?

Israel also wants compensation for the homes left in Gaza - kind of ironic when looked at in view of the right of return issues or compensation for Arab houses lost in what is now Israel, that has not been forthcoming.

A nation that has no control over it's ports or foreign affairs and is occupied by armed and hostile foreign soldiers is not a nation.

[Karmadillo]

3. For those wondering what the

babbling is all about, here's a good article on bantustans from Wikipedia. Any resemblance to Israeli/US peace proposals is completely intentional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan

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These homelands were allocated to blacks by the white Apartheid government of the Republic of South Africa and were designated to become independent states under a plan called "Separate Development." This plan would have given independence to blacks in these newly created tribal states, while stripping them of their South African citizenship, leaving whites as the majority in South Africa. Originally, there were to be about ten Bantustan-Homelands. These small, quasi-sovereign regions were established under the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act, and began to be given "independence" in 1976.

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Of note is also the way the borders for these territories were drawn. They were broken up into numerous enclaves, and the boundaries between these were very convoluted, in fact, the South African embassy to Bophuthatswana had to be moved because it turned out that it was accidentally built in South Africa.

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With the demise of the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the end of exclusive White rule, the Bantustans were dismantled as the country was constitutionally redivided into new provincial governments.

The word Bantustan has become something of a pejorative when describing a country or region that lacks any real legitimacy or power, viewed as a form of national or international gerrymandering.

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[melbrooks]

4. Arafat and the palestinians have had many opportunities to

make peace and get what they supposedly wanted but Arafat either walked away from the negotiation table or refused to live up to his side of the bargain. Like refusing to police territories. embezzling funds and committing terror. Arafat and Hamas want the destruction of Israel and that will never change.

[tinnypriv]

5. The Israeli press

Quite frankly discusses the creation of kantovnim ("Cantons") in "Judea and Samaria", noting that the U.S. is slighty opposed (usually for reasons of image or practicality).

There was a quite interesting article about all this by Ben Kaspit, noting that the Americans do not want to wake up and find the Palestinians in "monsterous" cantons, nor the West Bank settlement population increased by 7,000 "overnight" by moving the Gaza settlers there (sardonically noting that would be claimed to be "natural growth").¹

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1. 'Pay day', Ma'ariv, 9 April 2004 (Hebrew only).

[Name removed]

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