The words “apartheid” and “Israel” keep coming up in relation to each other, and people keep saying that it isn’t helpful at all. I don’t know whether it is helpful or not, but there’s a reason that it keeps happening. Whether the comparison is made by Ehud Barak, Jimmy Carter, or John Kerry, it always means the same thing. If the people living in Gaza and the West Bank don’t gain some kind of political independence including the right to both elect their leaders and have those leaders free to implement their policies, then they will be in a situation similar to how blacks were treated in South Africa prior to the end of the Afrikaner regime. People talk about a two-state solution for a reason. If there is only one state, that state is going to be Israel. And Israel allows Arabs to have citizenship and to vote, but they will never allow West Bank and Gazan Arabs to vote.
What I think is unhelpful is to keep trying to make people shut up about apartheid. Either Israel wants to govern all of Palestine as an apartheid state or they don’t. If they don’t, then they should stop dithering about a two-state solution. They should also stop using Hamas as an excuse not to negotiate. It’s better for Hamas and Fatah to be working together because that means that they have the capability of making concessions that the other side will keep. Endlessly repeating that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel precludes the possibility that Hamas might change its mind about that.
