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Israel's ID/Permit System - by Stephen Lendman
On April 23, Arizona's racist immigration bill became law. Called "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act," it requires proof of legal entry or citizenship or face arrest, fines, jailing, and/or deportation.
Under South African apartheid, pass laws segregated blacks from whites, restricted their movements, required pass books be carried at all times, and produced on demand or face arrest and prosecution. Evolving from the 18th and 19th century until their 1986 repeal, they restricted entry to cities, forcibly relocated blacks, denied them most public amenities and many forms of employment, and became apartheid's most hated symbol.
Under Israeli military occupation, repression is worse than South Africa's. It's a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their rightful civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether.
Apartheid is the worst form of racism. Israeli militarized occupation is the worst form of apartheid, incorporating violence, military incursions, land theft, home demolitions, targeted assassinations, murder, mass arrests, torture, destruction of agricultural land, and isolation - measures amounting to genocide, including starving Gazans under siege.
The ID/permit system is one of many elements designed to make greater Israel an ethnically pure Jewish state.
Israel requires all permanent residents and citizens over 16 to have color-coded ID cards (called te'udat zehut) for West Bank and Gazan Palestinians, East Jerusalem ones, Israeli Arabs and Jews.
For Palestinians, they dictate where they may live, work, and move, or be allowed through West Bank checkpoints, to Israel or Gaza. Doing so requires hard to get permits, easily cancelled without notice. More on them below.
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