< Galloway / Sky News
Out of context: Reply #52
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- KuzII0
In a democratic context, citizenship is a legal relationship between the individual and the state whereby the state recognizes the fundamental rights of the citizen and undertakes to guarantee him/her equal access to the civil, political, economic and welfare resources. Citizens in a democratic state would have equal standing in the course of law, equal access to the political process - such as the right to vote and be elected – they would have equal access to land and water resources, and so on.
When there isn't universal citizenship that is equitable to all, democratic values are compromised in a serious way. A quintessential illustration of this is Apartheid South Africa, where 87% of the territory of South Africa was reserved under law for white citizens only, and denied from non-white citizens.
The situation in Israel is comparable, and I'm not talking about popular xenophobia, but rather a situation regulated by an act of parliament where 93% of the territory of the State of Israel - and I am not referring to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - is reserved under law for Jewish citizens only. If the apartheid distinction in South Africa was between white and non-white, the apartheid distinction in Israel is between Jew and non-Jew. Or specifically, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is essentially a conflict between a settler-colonial state and an indigenous population dispossessed by the colonial project. Scores, and I mean SCORES, of historical Palestinian-Arab villages have been turned into parks and picnic spots amongst other "making the desert bloom" Zionist projects.
What you see in the prison-state of Gaza and the Palestinian territories in the West bank surrounded by large Jewish settlements, is directly comparable to the Bantustisation in apartheid South Africa, where the Zulu population were housed and restricted to small Bantustan enclaves.
From its birth the Zionist project was tied to ethnic cleansing and emptying of Israeli lands of Arab populations. 1 million were expelled to the Gaza strip and 4 million into the West Bank. The seperation wall being built is consolidating this long term process of ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, last month (maybe in June) the Israeli Supreme Court upheld a new law which states that if an Israeli Palestinian marries a Palestinian in the West Bank or Gaza (even if they are refugees of the 1948/1967 expulsion processes), that marriage is not recognised by the state of Israel. These practices are designed directly to counter what Ariel Sharon called the "demographic time-bomb". i.e, Arabs are breeding faster than Jews in eretz Israel/mandate palestine.