Jeff Halper, Znet, September 8:
Warehousing is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is indeed worse than the apartheid-era South African bantustans. The ten non-viable mini-states established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.”
This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing 15% of historic Palestine, but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel, which has found a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, au! gmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.