The army will know what to do.
The soldiers are soon there, but they look a little unsure too. They are more used to standing "guard" as settlers attack and terrorize Palestinians, only interfering if it looks like the settlers might be in need of help.
These picnickers aren't Jewish, so the soldiers are under no duty to protect them. But at the same they are Israeli citizens so the soldiers cannot afford to be filmed pointing their guns at them or watching impassively as the settlers beat them up.
Gentle ethnic cleansingThere is no rule book for this situation, so the soldiers improvise. With the wisdom of Solomon, they cut the baby in half. A soldier concedes that they are indeed in a public space but warns the "Arabs" that, unlike the settlers, they are "not allowed here". He adds: "I don't want to use too much force."
The soldiers prefer that the threat remains implicit. The family will have to leave immediately and cede this land to the masters, the Jews. The "Israeli Arabs" are evicted in an orderly fashion.
What we see, caught on the camera of Lubna Abed el-Hadi, is what might be termed gentle ethnic cleansing.
This short video confirms the lie of the oft-repeated claim of Israeli leaders that "Israel's Arabs" have equal rights with Israeli Jews. In truth, Jews always have superior rights, whether it is inside "democratic" Israel or in the occupied territories.
Layers of apartheidThe original apartheid state - the one in South Africa - offers a template that can help us to decode this video. As with Israel, there were layers to South African apartheid, although those layers were much less effective than Israel's at veiling the segregation system.
South Africa had its "Whites" - the masters - and its "Blacks" - the serfs. But it also had a group trapped between them, one that was harder to classify, called the "Coloreds". In a system that craved clear racial categorizations, the Coloreds were a nuisance - a reminder of times before apartheid when segregation was not so strict and inter-racial relationships possible.
The Coloreds were really Blacks in the sense that they had none of the privileges of the Whites. But they also enjoyed a few exemptions from the worse racist policies faced by the Blacks, such as the requirement to carry passes to move around.
A New York Times article in 1985, in South Africa's final apartheid years, concluded: "Despite the law that seeks to lock them into a simple group definition, South Africa's mixed-race people defy such labeling and the ambiguity of their status is acute."
Israel's ColoredsThe comparison is not precise. "Israel's Arabs" are not the descendants of mixed relationships between Jews and Palestinians. They are as native as other Palestinians, their histories indistinguishable until 1948. Like other Palestinians, "Israeli Arabs" have a relatively unified language and culture that was not true of the Coloreds in South Africa.
But their inferior legal status and ambiguous social position within the dominant apartheid system is similar to that of the Coloreds.
After the fall of South Africa's apartheid, and in an era of 24-hour rolling news, Israel has eased the most blatant forms of discrimination faced by its "Arabs". It has been careful to avoid the worst excesses of South Africa's version of apartheid inside Israel. There are no separate entrances to rest rooms or shops for Israel's "Coloreds".
But the core segregation continues. "Israeli Arabs" are expected to live in their own 120 or so segregated neighborhoods, Israel's version of the notorious Group Areas Act. They are banned not only from accessing the Jewish-only settlements of the West Bank, but from living in all of the territory inside Israel bar the 3% reserved for non-Jews.
'Security' policyThe Coloreds had "token representation" in South Africa, according to the Times. "Israeli Arabs" too have the semblance of a vote, but one that makes no impact on the parliamentary system or the shape of the government. Like the Colored counterparts, "Israeli Arab" schools are massively underfunded and under-resourced, and the police force's policy towards them moves between neglect and open hostility.
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