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That "a" word just won't go away....

George Bisharat is a professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. He writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bisharat revisits the "a" word - apartheid - used by Jimmy Carter in his recently released book in relation to Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, and in the process puts forward a reasoned and balanced view of the matter in both a narrow and wider context.

"The word apartheid typically evokes images of former South Africa, but it also refers to any institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. Carter applies the term only to Israel's rule of the occupied Palestinian territories, where it has established more than 200 Jewish-only settlements and a network of roads and other services to support them. These settlements violate international law and the rights of Palestinian property owners. Carter maintains that "greed for land," not racism, fuels Israel's settlement drive. He is only partially right."

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