A PLEA FOR "JUSTICE" FOR PALESTINIANS - "Turning Our Heads Away"
THE NEW APARTHEID ENTRENCHES
ITSELF FURTHER IN THE HOLY LAND
MER - Nowhere else in the world is institutionalized discrimination not only condoned but actually touted as a "peace process".
One of the greatest ironies of the last decade of the 20th century is that whereas the forced separation known as "apartheid" in South Africa was condemened and ended, the forced separation which marches forward under a twisted form of "Zionism" has been glorified in the Middle East.
Yet not until the recent years of the "peace process" have the institutions of a new Middle Eastern apartheid become so widely accepted they they are not even recognized when blatantly paraded in front of the world. The "Jews-only" "By-pass" roads. The "pass-laws" and "road- blocks". The division of historic Hebron into Jewish and Arab zonese. The advent of "joint patrols" and different Jewish and Palestinian "police". The fracturing of Palestinian areas into Areas A, B, C, with Palestinian towns surrounded so that Bantustans and Reservations -- indeed "Ghettos" -- are the closest historical analogies.
The situation has become so accepted, so "normal", that now when an Israeli official says we are going to build a Jewish neighborhood in one place, and an Arab neighborhood in another, few seem to understand what this really means. It's really "Arabs to the rear", "Palestinians to the back of the bus." It's really a new and insidious Zionist-inspired Middle Eastern apartheid. And what is happening today will haunt the Middle East and Arab- Jewish relations for a very long time to come, while further fueling the a counter-reaction in the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism and a counter- anti-Jewish racism that exists within some elements of it.
JEWS TO THE FRONT
ARABS TO THE REAR
"I AM CONVINCED THERE ARE NO CONCESSIONS REGARDING THE BUILDING AT HAR HOMA AND I BELIEVE THAT IF THE PRIME MINSTER HAS PROMISED BUILDING FOR ARAB CITIZENS, THIS IS OUR POLICY AFTER ALL...BUT IN ARAB NEIGHBORHOODS, NOT IN JEWISH NEIGHBORHOODS."
Limor Livnat Minister of Communications, Israel
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Note: The recent MER Internet quotation of Ihab el-Shakkout, quoted from The Arab Journal and praising MER, was not written to Egyptian Foreign Minister, Amr Mousa, but was posted on Egypt Net commenting about an MER message severely criticizing Mousa.
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