Sunday 8 March 2009

Ignatieff on Occupied Palestinian Territories

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On this last day of the 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week, it is fitting that we should remember these words of Michael Ignatieff about the Occupied Palestinian Territories:

Two years ago, an American friend took me on a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights over the Palestinian West Bank. He wanted to show me how vulnerable Israel was, how the Arabs only had to cross 11 km of land to reach the sea and throw the Israelis into it. I got this message but I also came away with another one. When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control.” — Michael Ignatieff

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