The ISRAELI APARTHEID MAPS
Nowhere
else in the world is there anything of this kind. Only when the South African
White government drew up the "Apartheid" plans of the 1970s did a pattern
of this kind exist elsewhere other than the Israeli occupied territories
-- and those "Bantustans" are now gone. Beyond the maps, the Israelis
enforce a regime of colored and computerized passes that restrict where
Palestinians can go, different color license plates for Jews and Arabs
with similar result, "by-pass" roads for "Jews only", land confiscations,
home destructions, settlements, all on top of a deceptive and complicated
systems of apartheid-type laws that create systematic separation
while promoting Jewish interests and severely repressing and dispossessing
Palestinians. The changes agreed to recently in the "Wye Memorandum"
do not alter these overall conditions and are hedged with so many Israeli
restrictions that the situation is likely to soon become even worse for
Palestinians.
The majority
of Palestinians are essentially imprisoned in a large Gaza Ghetto from
which they are unable to leave and which is now surrounded by a barbed
wire, electrified fence. Most others are now bottled up in one of
the "autonomous" population centers, all of which are surrounded by Israeli
check-points and roadblocks. Millions more Palestinians continue
to live in dozens of refugee camps in neighboring countries or in diaspora.
And even
if the territorial aspects of "Wye" were fully implimented, the Palestinians
would still have "autonomous" control of less than 20% of the 1967 occupied
territories (less than 7% of 1947 Palestine), and all the "autonomous"
areas would remain totally surrounded by the Israeli army giving them
the actual status of Bantustans or Reservations, and certainly not sovereignty.
Since
1967 the Israelis have continually expanded Jerusalem, claiming it is not
part of the West Bank, and thus not including it in the inflated percentages
that are used to make it seem the Palestinians are "getting back" more
than than is actually true. Even this map doesn't show the full extent
of how the Israelis have recently still further expanded Jerusalem to encompass
nearby settlements and the city of Ma'ale Adunim, the green area on the
extreme right.
M I D -
E A S T R E A L I T I E S
(202)
362-5266, Ext 638 Fax: (202) 362-6965 MER@MiddleEast.Org
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