Afrasianet - Laila Nicolas - Madoncella's remarks reflect a fact that has become known to world public opinion, suggesting that Israel may one day face the fate of the apartheid regime in South Africa itself.

The statements of South Africa's ambassador to the International Court of Justice, Fusimozi Madoncella, have aroused a lot of attention at the level of human rights organizations around the world, as Madonsela considered that "institutional impunity has led Israel to engage in this genocide, which has shocked the conscience of humanity." In February 2024, Madonsela himself indicated that Israel was implementing a "more extreme" version of the apartheid that his country witnessed.

In fact, Madoncella's remarks reflect a fact that has become known to world public opinion, suggesting that Israel may one day face the fate of the apartheid regime itself in South Africa.

First: Definition of the Crime of Apartheid

Under the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7.2.h), the crime of apartheid is defined  as:

A. An institutional system of oppression and domination: i.e., the existence of a systematic and well-established system in which one racial or ethnic group exercises control over another.

B. Committing inhumane acts: These acts are committed in the context of that regime, such as murder, causing serious harm, arbitrary detention, or deprivation of a range of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Reports from international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch (2021) and Amnesty International (2022) indicate that Israeli policies toward Palestinians meet the definition of the crime of apartheid under international law.

Second: Forced Separation and Institutionalized Oppression 

The systematic similarities between the South African apartheid regime and Israeli policies in the territories under its control are illustrated by four axes:

A. Legal basis: The South African system relied on explicit and overt racial segregation laws, such as the Population Registration Act and the Collective Areas Law, to establish a detailed legal system that enshrines the racial superiority of the white minority.

b. Geographical fragmentation: In South Africa, this mechanism was the establishment of Bantustans, divided, isolated and overcrowded areas of the black population of South Africa, with the aim of depriving them of their rights and nationality. In the Israeli context, this is countered by the separation wall, the division of the West Bank into areas (A, B, and C), along with the blockade of Gaza, which is a geographical structure aimed at fragmenting the Palestinian presence and isolating it from the resource centers and the land seized to ensure settlements.

C. Restriction of movement: The system of "traffic laws" has been the central tool in South Africa to strictly control the movement of blacks and deny them access to white areas, paralyzing their economic and social lives. Israel implements a similar system through a network of checkpoints, permits, and physical barriers that restrict the movement of millions of Palestinians on a daily basis, in addition to isolating the Gaza Strip from the world with a comprehensive blockade that has lasted since 2007.

D. Control of resources: Both regimes have sought to control vital resources for the benefit of the dominant group. While apartheid has allocated arable land and economic resources to the white minority, Israel exercises full control over water, energy, natural resources, and urban planning in the West Bank, allocating it disproportionately to Israeli settlements at the expense of Palestinian development.

Third: A more extreme and savage version

If we want to evaluate Madoncella's statement about the intensity and extremism of Israel's apartheid, we can refer to the following:

-  The South African regime sought to exploit black workers after stripping them of their rights, but the settler-colonial Zionist project is based on ethnic cleansing and substitution, not just exploitation, so that it wants to expel the Palestinians and displace them to replace the Jews with them.

- Comprehensive control over the Palestinian territories and the lives of Palestinians, as the Israeli regime has a technological and military advantage that allows it to have full control over the lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories, including control of airspace, borders, population registration, basic civilian infrastructure, etc.

- The genocide that has taken place in the Gaza Strip, and the unprecedented killing and violence that Israel has carried out against Palestinians both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since before the last Gaza war, makes the Israeli version indeed "more extreme."

While South Africa's apartheid regime was an explicit de jure  based on race, the Israeli system is characterized by legal complexity.

The Israeli system is a complex and dual legal system, enshrined in law within the 1948 borders through a set of discriminatory legislation (such as land and citizenship laws), while de facto and occupation in the West Bank, where military law is applied to Palestinians versus civil law to settlers, creating a stark legal disparity that covers the entire area under Israeli control.

As a result, it can be said that there is a similarity between the Israeli and South African regimes, which lies in institutionalized racial domination and geographical fragmentation, but the excessive and systematic use of military force makes the Israeli regime practice multiple international crimes, which go beyond the crime of apartheid to the level of genocide, and makes the Israeli occupation in Palestine more than just apartheid, and more extreme and criminal than the South African "apartheid" regime.