Israel journalist: Majority of next parliament will be ‘supporters of apartheid’

The vast majority of parliamentarians in Israel’s next Knesset “will be supporters of apartheid”, according to veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy.

Writing in a column for Haaretz published yesterday, Levy declared:

There will be one certain result from Tuesday’s election: Around 100 members of the next Knesset will be supporters of apartheid.

“This has no precedent in any democracy. A hundred out of 120 legislators, an absolute of absolute majorities, one that supports maintaining the current situation, which is apartheid.”

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Levy added that “with such a majority, it will be possible in the next Knesset to officially declare Israel an apartheid state”, and that “no propaganda will be able to refute the simple truth: Nearly all Israelis want the apartheid to continue.”

Turning to the occupied West Bank, Levy wrote that “in no other regime around the world is there one community next to another where the residents of one” – illegal Israeli settlements – “have the right to vote, while the residents of the other, a Palestinian village, don’t”.

“This is apartheid in all its splendour, whose existence nearly all the country’s Jewish citizens want to continue,” Levy continued.

“A hundred Knesset members will be elected from slates referred to as either right-wing, left-wing or centrist, but what they have in common surpasses any difference: None intend to end the occupation,” the Haaretz columnist wrote.

“The right-wing proudly says so, while the centre-left resorts to futile illusions to obscure the picture, listing proposals for a ‘regional conference’ or ‘secure separation’. The difference between the two groupings is negligible. In unison, the right and left are singing ‘say yes to apartheid’.”

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