The Wire

Reports today are predicting more violent clashes between Palestinian protestors and Jewish visitors to the sacred Jewish site, the Wailing Wall. However, controversial Israeli academic and social justice activist, Dr Uri Davis, currently visiting Australia, believes there will be no end to violence in Israel until the world sees the Jewish nation for what he says it truly is – an apartheid state. In his recent book “Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the struggle within” Dr Davis outlines his beliefs about how the state of Israel can be forced to share its land equally with the Palestinians. Dr Davis ? who in his youth was jailed for refusing to serve in the Israeli army ? is a long-time critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He says that like Apartheid South Africa, Israel’s Jewish majority state is based on a raft of laws, enacted in the early days of the nation, which effectively prevent Palestinians from being able to access 93 per cent of the land, which he says is kept exclusively for Jewish Israelis. Dr Davis believes the only way to stop the deadlock of violence and terrorism is to implement the same tools that brought down the South African apartheid system – international trade sanctions and boycotts of Israel. A future state would be based on two nations – Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs ? sharing the one piece of land as equal partners. Speaking from Canberra, he explained to Erica Vowles why he believes the controversial label of “apartheid” is accurate when applied to the Israeli state.