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Prologue1
J.G. Strijdom, South Africa's prime minister from 1954 to 1958, described the racialized construction of space at the core of apartheid in these terms: "in a bus I will not sit alongside a native."2 In May 2015, the military commander of the occupied West Bank issued an order that allocated separate bus lines for local Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Upon the instruction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Minister of Defense Moshe Yaa'lon revoked the order the next day.3 Prima facie, these two acts seem to suggest a salient moral and political difference between the ongoing state of affairs of contemporary Palestine/Israel and what occurred under the apartheid in South Africa. This is all the more so if one considers explicit commitments to civil rights for all Israel's citizenry (which comprises a fraction of the Palestinian people) found in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (1948).4 Despite national subordination and blatant cases of segregation (especially in zoning and housing) in Israel proper,5,6 Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel study together in colleges and universities, work together in civilian hospitals and clinics on all levels, dine in the same restaurants, and, indeed, ride on the same buses. It is therefore tempting for some analysts to argue that apartheid South Africa and Palestine/Israel represent two different stories, historically, morally and politically. Yet for others it is equally, if not more, plausible, to argue that the state of Israel shares the intention, goals and de facto practices, especially in the West bank and Gaza, of apartheid South Africa—as both projects aimed to create and maintain purified ethno-national political entity while segregating, separating and dominating the native population. This article elaborates in what senses the two stories appear analogous and in what senses they appear not.
1. Introduction
On July 19, 2018, the Basic Law: Israel—The Nation State of the Jewish People (hereinafter "The Jewish Nation State Basic Law") was passed in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) after seven years of deliberations. This Basic Law, which has a constitutional status, signals a new, yet continuous, phase in the juridical, legal and political reality in Palestine/Israel, for it ordains explicitly the ethno-national supremacy of Jews in a sweeping and systematized manner.