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It looks more and more like apartheid, says an Israeli

Nothing new in people accusing Israel having an apartheid regime in place. How else to describe roads for the exclusive use of Israelis? - and not Palestinians - and laws which actively discriminate against non-Israelis or don't confer the same benefits as those available to Israeli citizens.

From an op-ed piece in Forward, a Jewish publication out of the USA, by an Israeli military historian:

"Keeping all these facts in mind — and provided that Israel maintains its military strength and builds a wall to stop suicide bombers — it is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank. Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible. What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million — nobody knows exactly how many — occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses. Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it is already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its control by means of repressive secret police actions.

To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included. If possible, it should do so by agreement with the Palestinian Authority; if not, then it should proceed unilaterally, as the — in my view, very successful — withdrawal from Gaza suggests. Or else I would strongly advise my children and grandson to seek some other, less purblind and less stiff-necked, country to live in."

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