Ilan Baruch and Dr. Alon Liel are two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa. Dr. Liel also served as the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Baruch and Liel wrote an op-ed for GroundUp arguing that Israel’s occupation is an apartheid system inspired by South Africa’s apartheid regime.
They write, in South Africa “we learned firsthand about the reality of apartheid and the horrors it inflicted. But more than that – the experience and understanding we gained in South Africa helped us to understand the reality at home. For over half a century, Israel has ruled over the occupied Palestinian territories with a two-tiered legal system, in which, within the same tract of land in the West Bank, Israeli settlers live under Israeli civil law while Palestinians live under military law. The system is one of inherent inequality.” They compare the West Bank situation to South African bantustans.
Read their opinion article here.
