Israel and The Apartheid Analogy - History of The Analogy

History of The Analogy

In 1961, the South African prime minister, and the architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, Hendrik Verwoerd, dismissed an Israeli vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations, saying that "Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." Since then, a number of sources have used the apartheid analogy in their examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the early 1970's, Arabic language magazines of the PLO and PFLP have compared the Israeli proposals for a Palestinian autonomy to the Bantustan strategy of South Africa. During the 1980's, Uri Davis, Meron Benvenisti, Richard Locke and Anthony Stewart have used the analogy to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. In the 1990's, the analogy has gained prominence, after Israel, as a result of the Oslo Accords, granted the Palestinians limited self-government in form the the Palestinian Authority, and established a system of permits and checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories. The analogy has gained additional traction following Israel's construction of the West Bank Barrier.