DAVIS, Uri: "Apartheid Israel?... You don't see petty apartheid in Israel. But the core is very similar, both in South Africa and in Israel... 93% of the territory of the State of Israel, 93% is reserved in law exclusively for Jewish settlement, cultivation and development”

Dr Uri Davis (Jewish Israeli academic, writer and human rights activist) on Zionism, 93% ethnic cleansing of Israel, and Apartheid Israel (2005): “Zionism is not a swear word, Zionism is not a conspiracy. When I refer to myself as an anti-Zionist, I do so with reference to the mainstream. The mainstream and the dominant element in Zionist history is political Zionism. But there have been other schools, and some of these schools within the Zionist environment have been bitter opponents of the mainstream of political Zionism. I would refer in this connection for instance, to the school known as spiritual Zionism, founded and led by a very distinguished Jewish intellectual known as Ahad Ha'am , Asher Ginsburg. And the vision is significant, whereas the political Zionist school aimed to establish a sovereign State, and attempt to secure in that territory both in law and in practice, a demographic majority of ethnic Jews. Spiritual Zionism were very vehement and strongly opposed to that. Ahad Ha'am argued very much in favour of establishing in Jerusalem, a cultural centre for the Jewish people, and was dead opposed to the establishment of a Jewish State. He had a series of seminal articles published in the wake of his visit to Palestine, and these should be re-read again today. They were prophetic, he explained, that the banner or the slogan of "A Land without the People, for a People without the Land" is wholly false, that the country is populated, that attempting to establish a State there would result in a protracted and unjustified conflict he was against, then, to our project… You're quite right, you don't see petty apartheid in Israel. But the core is very similar, both in South Africa and in Israel; the core is a conflict between a settler-colonial State and the indigenous population, and these conflicts are anchored in the quest of the settler State to appropriate control of the land and the sub-soil, and deny the indigenous peoples their rights in the land and the sub-soil. The consequence of this project in South Africa resulted in some 87% of the territory reserved in law for white settlement cultivation and development. In Israel it's worse. At the core, namely access to land, housing and sub-soil, 93% of the territory of the State of Israel, 93% is reserved in law exclusively for Jewish settlement, cultivation and development” (Uri Davis in interview, “Apartheid Israel?”, ABC Radio National, The Religion Report, 8 June 2005: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/religionreport/apartheid-israel/3442902#transcript ).