De l’apartheid d’Israël | Christophe Koessler
▻https://lecourrier.ch/2018/04/05/de-lapartheid-disrael
Passé inaperçu, un rapport des Nations Unies publié en 2017 qualifie Israël de régime d’apartheid. Explications avec Virginia Tilley, coauteure du rapport, de passage à Genève. Source : Le Courrier
Qualifier Israël de régime d’apartheid est-il erroné ou excessif ? La Commission économique et sociale pour l’Asie occidentale des Nations Unies a voulu en avoir le cœur net en confiant une étude sur le sujet à deux universitaires. Publié en 2017, le rapport de Richard Falk, ancien rapporteur spécial de l’ONU sur les territoires occupés, et de Virginia Tilley, professeure étasunienne spécialisée dans les conflits à caractère racial ou ethnique, est pourtant passé presque inaperçu.
Et pour cause : postée sur le site des Nations Unies, l’étude en a vite été retirée : « Notre rapport a été validé par les Nations Unies et nous n’avons reçu aucune critique sur le fond. Mais, mis sous pression par Israël et ses soutiens, le secrétaire général de l’ONU a prétexté que le texte n’avait pas été soumis selon les règles de procédures. Ce qui est faux », assure Virginia Tilley au Courrier. La spécialiste était de passage fin mars à Genève pour y donner une conférence à l’Institut des hautes études internationales et du développement.
« Actes inhumains »
Il faut dire que les conclusions du rapport n’y vont pas par quatre chemins : « Les preuves disponibles établissent au-delà de tout doute raisonnable qu’Israël est coupable de politiques et de pratiques qui constituent le crime d’apartheid tel que défini juridiquement dans le droit international. » Pour les auteurs de l’étude, l’apartheid s’applique selon eux tant aux Palestiniens des territoires occupés et de la bande de Gaza, à ceux qui vivent à Jérusalem-Est et en Israël, qu’aux réfugiés demeurant dans d’autres pays. « Tous ces éléments que nous voyions au départ comme séparés, compartimentés, proviennent d’une même logique première : la discrimination raciale », précise Virginia Tilley.
C’est dans les territoires occupés et à Gaza, où vivent quelque 4,6 millions de Palestiniens, que l’apartheid apparait plus clairement, estime la professeure : « Là, il y a deux systèmes très distincts : un mur qui sépare les populations, des routes réservées aux juifs (colons), des lois civiles pour les juifs, d’autres – militaires – pour les arabes, des tribunaux pour les juifs, d’autres pour les Palestiniens. C’est une séparation totale ». A cela s’ajoutent « une gestion discriminatoire de terres et de l’aménagement du territoire par des institutions nationales juives chargées d’administrer les ‘terres d’Etat’ dans l’intérêt de la population juive », et les « actes inhumains quotidiennement et systématiquement pratiqués par Israël en Cisjordanie », constate le document.
Et c’est là que la similarité avec l’Afrique du Sud est la plus forte, estime Virgina Tilley, qui a vécu et mené des études sur l’apartheid dans ce pays : « Les Israéliens ont appris énormément sur le système des bantoustans et ont importé les méthodes d’Afrique du Sud. Quand j’y travaillais, des membres du gouvernement me racontaient que chaque fois qu’Ariel Sharon leur rendait visite, il posait beaucoup de questions sur ces régions autonomes réservées aux Noirs. » La séparation de la Cisjordanie en zones A, B et C s’inspirerait directement du système sud-africain. « De nombreuses dispositions des accords d’Oslo sont calquées sur les Constitutions des bantoustans, point par point. »
Lois discriminatoires
La situation des quelque 1,7 million de Palestiniens qui résident en Israël même est très différente de celle qui prévalait en Afrique du Sud. Mais les « arabes » y sont également soumis à l’apartheid selon les deux experts. « Leur situation peut porter à confusion car ils sont des citoyens d’Israël et peuvent voter, prévient Virgina Tilley. Mais ils sont soumis à des lois discriminatoires, lesquelles assurent que les citoyens juifs ont des privilèges : accès aux terres et à des emplois, à des logements subventionnés, de meilleurs salaires, des protections diverses, etc. Tous types d’avantages basés sur le fait d’être juif. Les Palestiniens et arabes en sont exclus. »
Le rapport ajoute : « Cette politique de domination se manifeste aussi dans la qualité inférieure des services, dans des lois de zonage restrictif et des allocations budgétaires limitées pour les collectivités palestiniennes. » Les citoyens juifs disposent d’un statut supérieur à celui de leurs homologues non juifs, ils ont la nationalité (le’um), alors que les autres n’ont « que » la citoyenneté (ezrahut).
Si les arabes israéliens ont le droit de vote, ils ne peuvent contester la législation qui maintient le « régime racial », précise l’étude. « C’est illégal en Israël car ils n’ont pas le droit de créer un parti politique qui s’oppose aux lois qui font d’eux des citoyens de seconde classe », précise Virginia Tilley.
Quant aux 300 000 Palestiniens de Jérusalem-Est, ils sont encore plus mal lotis : « Ils sont victimes d’expulsions et de démolitions de leurs maisons décidées par Israël dans le cadre de sa politique ‘d’équilibre démographique’ en faveur des résidents juifs. » Ses habitants arabes ne disposent que du statut de « résident permanent » et peuvent être expulsés vers la Cisjordanie, et perdre jusqu’à leur droit de visite dans la ville, « s’ils s’identifient politiquement, de manière ostentatoire aux Palestiniens des territoires occupés », indique la professeure.
La solution d’un Etat démocratique pour tous
Les Palestiniens réfugiés à l’étranger, entre 5 et 8 millions, seraient victimes d’apartheid en raison du refus d’Israël de les laisser rentrer chez eux, expliquent Richard Falk et Virginia Tilley : « Cela fait partie intégrante du système d’oppression et de domination du peuple palestinien dans son ensemble, estiment-ils. Le refus du droit au retour fait en sorte que la population palestinienne ne croisse pas au point de menacer le contrôle par Israël du territoire [occupé] ni de fournir aux Palestiniens citoyens d’Israël le poids démographique nécessaire pour obtenir les pleins droits démocratiques, éliminant par là le caractère juif de l’Etat d’Israël. »
Pour les deux universitaires, seul l’établissement d’un Etat démocratique pour tous sur l’ensemble du territoire d’Israël et de Palestine est à même d’en finir avec l’apartheid, et donc, de régler la cause du conflit (lire ci-dessous). Une solution que préconise Virginia Tilley depuis la publication de son livre sur la question en 2005, The One State solution.
#apartheid #Israël #mots #terminologie #rapport #ONU #discriminations #vocabulaire
ESCWA Launches Report on Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Rima Khalaf pointed out today that it is not an easy matter for a United Nations entity to conclude that a State has established an apartheid regime. In recent years, some have labelled Israeli practices as racist, while others have warned that Israel risks becoming an apartheid State. A few have raised the question as to whether in fact it already has.
Khalaf’s remarks were given during a press conference held this afternoon at the UN House, in Beirut, when she launched a report by ESCWA on “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.”
Khalaf noted that Israel, encouraged by the international community’s disregard for its continual violations of international law, has succeeded over the past decades in imposing and maintaining an apartheid regime that works on two levels. First, the political and geographic fragmentation of the Palestinian people which enfeebles their capacity for resistance and makes it almost impossible for them to change the reality on the ground. Secondly, the oppression of all Palestinians through an array of laws, policies and practices that ensure domination of them by a racial group and serve to maintain the regime.
The Executive Secretary stressed that the importance of this report is not limited to the fact that it is the first of its kind published by a United Nations body, clearly concluding that Israel is a racial State that has established an apartheid regime. It also provides fresh insight into the cause of the Palestinian people and into how to achieve peace.
Khalaf maintained that the report shows that there can be no solution, be it in the form of two States, or following any other regional or international approach, as long as the apartheid regime imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people as a whole has not been dismantled. Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Not only does international law prohibit that crime, it obliges States and international bodies, and even individuals and private institutions, to take measures to combat it wherever it is committed and to punish its perpetrators. The solution therefore lies in implementing international law, applying the principles of non-discrimination, upholding the right of peoples to self-determination and achieving justice.
Khalaf concluded that the report recognizes that only a ruling by an international tribunal would lend its conclusion that Israel is an apartheid State greater authority. It recommends the revival of the United Nations Centre against Apartheid and the Special Committee against Apartheid, the work of both of which came to an end by 1994, when the world believed that it had rid itself of apartheid with its demise in South Africa. It also calls on States, Governments and institutions to support boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives and other activities aimed at ending the Israeli regime of apartheid.
The report was prepared, at the request of ESCWA, by two specialists renowned for their expertise in the field: Richard Falk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University; and Virginia Tilley, a researcher and professor of political science at Southern Illinois University with a wealth of experience in Israeli policy analysis.
Two former special rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Falk and his predecessor, John Dugard, raised in their reports the issue of whether Israel has actually become an apartheid State and recommended that it be examined more closely. About two years ago, member States requested that the ESCWA secretariat prepare a study on the matter. At the Commission’s twenty-ninth session, held in Doha, Qatar in December 2016, member States adopted a resolution stressing the need to complete the study and disseminate it widely.
The report concludes, on the basis of scholarly enquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel has imposed a regime of apartheid on the Palestinian people as a whole, wherever they may be. A regime that affects Palestinians in Israel itself, in the territory occupied in 1967 and in the diaspora.
During the press conference, Khalaf gave the floor to Falk and Tilley who participated by video conference. Falk said that this study concludes with clarity and conviction that Israel is guilty of the international crime of apartheid as a result of the manner in which exerts control over the Palestinian people in their varying circumstances. It reached this important conclusion by treating contentions of Israeli responsibility for the crime of apartheid by rigorously applying the definition of apartheid under international law.
Falk added that the study calls, above all, on the various bodies of the United Nations to consider the analysis and conclusions of this study, and on that basis endorse the central finding of apartheid, and further explore what practical measures might be taken to uphold the purpose of the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. It should also be appreciated that apartheid is a crime of the greatest magnitude, treated by customary international law as peremptory norm, that is a legal standard that is unconditionally valid, applies universally, and cannot be disavowed by governments or international institutions.
For her part, Dr Tilley noted that it has become entirely clear that “we are no longer talking about risk of apartheid but practice of apartheid. There is an urgency for a response as Palestinians are currently suffering from this regime. There are many references to apartheid in polemics on the Israel-Palestine conflict.” She added that reference for a finding of apartheid in Israel-Palestine is not South Africa but International Law. She concluded that the key finding is that Israel has designed its apartheid regime around a strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people geographically and legally.
▻https://www.unescwa.org/news/escwa-launches-report-israeli-practices-towards-palestinian-people-and-ques
Lien pour télécharger le rapport:
▻https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/201703_UN_ESCWA-israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-oc
v. aussi le débat sur cet autre fil de discussion (débat commencé à partir d’un autre sujet) :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/683104
Palestinian NGOs denounce UN chief for removing report on Israeli apartheid
March 21, 2017 4:39 P.M. (Updated: March 21, 2017 5:37 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=776043
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Palestinians demonstrated outside the United Nations Special Coordinator Office (UNSCO) in Gaza City on Tuesday, in protest of the UN’s decision to withdraw a report prepared by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which accused Israel of apartheid policies.
Protesters expressed support for ESCWA chief Rima Khalaf, who resigned from her post on Friday, after she said she was pressured by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to remove the report.
A joint statement issued Tuesday by Palestinian Human Rights Organizations (PHROC) addressed to Guterres said the groups were “dismayed” by his decision to withdraw the report, and vowed to “adopt the analysis and conclusions contained therein in an effort to achieve justice for the Palestinian people.”
“It is our belief that the withdrawal of this report will contribute to the commission of further violations by Israel, the occupying power, especially in light of a continued politicization of the application of international law.”
PHROC said the report “professionally” addressed the reality that Palestinians have been subjected to “under the Israeli occupation and its colonial policies that have been based on racial discrimination” since the state of Israel was established in 1948.
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Subject: PHROC Letter for Mr António Guterres, Regarding the withdrawal of the UN-ESCWA Report
Date: 21 March 2017
▻http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/86-2017/4745-pr-en-210317-21.html
Lettre de démission de Rima Khalaf , secrétaire exécutive de l’ESCWA (commission économique et sociale pour l’Asie de l’Ouest)
mardi 21 mars 2017
▻http://www.france-palestine.org/Lettre-de-demission-de-Rima-Khalaf-secretaire-executive-de-l-ESCWA
Lettre de démission de la secrétaire exécutive de l’ESCWA (commission économique et sociale pour l’Asie occidentale) Rima Khalaf, en réponse à la demande formelle du secrétaire général des Nations Unies pour que l’ESCWA retire la publication d’un rapport qui affirme que l’Etat d’Israël a mis en place une situation d’apartheid.
UN report: Israel has established an ’apartheid regime’
By Ben White | 15 mars 2017
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/report-israel-established-apartheid-regime-170315054053798.html
A new United Nations report accuses Israel of having established “an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole”.
The publication comes amid renewed debate about whether, through its settlement policy and rejection of Palestinian self-determination, the Israeli government is creating - or even has already created - a de facto “one-state”, which critics warn would constitute a form of apartheid.
It urged governments to “support boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives”.
The report - Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid - was commissioned and published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and launched in Beirut.
John Reynolds, a lecturer in law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, told Al Jazeera the report “breaks new ground in the context of the UN’s analysis of the situation in Palestine”.
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Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid: Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1
Issued in: 2017
▻https://www.unescwa.org/publications/israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation
#Israël-Apartheid
ONU : Washington réclame le retrait d’un rapport accusant Israël d’apartheid
▻http://www.lapresse.ca/international/moyen-orient/201703/15/01-5079034-onu-washington-reclame-le-retrait-dun-rapport-accusant-israel-da
Publié le 15 mars 2017 à 17h50 | AFP New York
Les États-Unis réclament le retrait d’un rapport onusien accusant Israël d’imposer aux Palestiniens des conditions pouvant s’apparenter au régime d’apartheid.
Le secrétaire général des Nations unies Antonio Guterres avait pris ses distances face à ce rapport émanant de la Commission économique et sociale pour l’Asie occidentale (CESAO), mais l’ambassadrice des États-Unis à l’ONU l’a exhorté à envoyer le texte au rebut.
« Les États-Unis sont outrés par ce rapport », a indiqué Nikki Haley dans un communiqué. « Le secrétariat des Nations unies a eu raison de prendre ses distances à son propos, mais il devrait aller plus loin en retirant complètement le rapport ».
Israel’s UN ambassador is going overboard with the ’anti-Semitism’ charge - Haaretz
By Amira Hass | Apr. 14, 2014
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.585464
Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, has found his new anti-Semite of the hour: Dr. Rima Khalaf, UN undersecretary general and executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. In two letters sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon over the past month, Prosor calls for Khalaf’s suspension until an investigation, which he demands be conducted, is completed.
The first letter was sent on March 5, the second on April 7. In the first, Prosor refers to a February 25 speech by Khalaf in Tunisia; Prosor says Khalaf falsely accused Israel of violating minority rights and reviving the idea of “state ethnic and religious purity, which caused egregious human suffering during the twentieth century.” Prosor adds: “As you are well aware, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that safeguards and empowers its minorities.”
In the first letter, Prosor does not mention the occasion on which Khalaf gave her speech: the presentation of the report “Arab Integration – A 21st-Century Development Imperative,” initiated by the commission she heads. The 300-page report (including appendices) was two years in the making. The research and analysis were conducted by a wide spectrum of academics, intellectuals, writers and artists from Arab countries — both establishment and opposition figures, right-wingers and left-wingers, neoliberals and socialists, secular and religious people.
Inspired by the uprisings in the Arab world, the report proposes a vision: the establishment of a united political, cultural and economic entity based on reforms that aim for equality. Integration is seen as an objective and a means to extricate the Arabs from chronic “oppression, foreign intervention and stifled development.” In the document’s preface, Khalaf replies to skeptics with something along the lines of “If you will it, it is no dream.”
Was Prosor aware of the report? I posed this question to the Foreign Ministry three weeks ago, but the strike at the time by the ministry staff left me without an answer. The UN secretary general’s office said two weeks ago it plans to respond to Prosor, a response that obviously has not yet been sent because the ambassador wrote a second letter, which refers to the report.
Hitler’s role
The following are the diplomat’s words in his April 7 letter. “Ms. Khalaf may have a PhD in Systems Science, but she deserves a PhD in science fiction …. Ms. Khalaf also preposterously claims that Hitler, who was responsible for the murder of six million Jews, sought to create a safe haven for the Jewish people in the Middle East.” (I have not found any such statement in the report. If Khalaf said this elsewhere, Prosor provides no citation, and I was unable to find any such reference on Google.)
Hitler is mentioned as having held a negative view similar to Britain’s on the subject of Arab unity. “Arab unity was incompatible with the Transfer Agreement [Hitler] had concluded with the Zionist movement to facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine,” the report says. Prosor charges that the report “goes so far as to accuse Israel of fostering discord and instigating regional conflicts.” Such accusations “represent the epitome of modern-day anti-Semitism,” he writes.
Yes, several pages of the report are devoted to Israel in terms of Western-colonialist control of the region, the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948, the occupation in 1967 and the wars since then. Yes, the description is not flattering. The report’s references to Nazi Germany evade that regime’s systematic murderous nature.
The essence of the report
But the lion’s share of the report is inward-looking, at the Arab world, as the following statements from the document illustrate:
“The Arab popular uprisings were triggered by young Arabs who finally took a stand against long-running tyranny and oppression.”
International and regional conflicts infiltrated the Syrian uprising, transforming the conflict from one between the regime and pro-democracy opponents, to a geopolitical struggle over Syria in which the Syrian people are perhaps the greatest losers.”
“In the absence of democratic governance and equal citizenship rights in most Arab countries, poor integration has stoked ethnic, religious and sectarian identity conflicts.”
“A fifth of the population of the Arab region is poor, and it is the only region that has not achieved any significant progress in poverty reduction in the past two decades.”
“Arab countries spend more on defense or consumer goods than on scientific research and technological development.”
“The crisis of the Arab Islamic culture has produced groups with extreme and exclusionary doctrines that limit public rights and freedoms – especially those of women and non-Muslims. These groups seek to impose a rigid version of sharia on society.”
The report does not explain how the united Arab nation will overcome a problem that has plagued long-standing democracies: the concentration of resources and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few — resources and capital that are the product of the majority.
But that’s not what worries Prosor. His aggressive demand for Khalaf’s dismissal reflects Israel’s deep disdain for the countries of the region in which we live and for the issues that concern them. The excessive use by him and his ilk of the “anti-Semitism” charge is bringing us closer to the day when “anti-Semite” is a compliment.