Hafrada

Hafrada (Hebrew: הפרדה, lit.'separation, disengagement')[1] is the policy of the government of Israel to separate the Israeli population from the Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territories,[2][3] in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[4][5][14]

Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister from 1992-1995, was the first to advocate for the construction of a physical barrier between Israelis and Palestinians. Following the 1995 Beit Lid suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis, Rabin stated that separation is necessary to protect the majority of Israeli Jews from Palestinian terrorism.[15] Ehud Barak, Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, stated that "good fences make good neighbors."[16] Since its first public introductions, the concept-turned-policy or paradigm has dominated Israeli political and cultural discourse and debate.[3][17][6]

The separation policy was maintained by successive Israeli governments, which constructed the Israel-Gaza barrier and the Israeli West Bank barrier (Geder Ha'hafrada, Hebrew for "separation fence").[6] In 2005, Israel carried out the disengagement from Gaza, which included the evacuation of Israeli settlements and the IDF from the Gaza Strip. The West Bank closures have also been cited as an example of the policy.[6][8][18]

Other names for hafrada when discussed in English include unilateral separation[6][19] or unilateral disengagement.[23] Aaron Klieman has distinguished between partition plans based on "hafrada", which he translated as "detachment"; and "hipardut", translated as "disengagement."[24] The Hebrew word Hafrada can imply both "separation" and "segregation."[25][17] Critics have linked the Hafrada policy to apartheid,[10] and others argue the word "hafrada" bears a "striking similarity" to the South African use of the term.[26]

In 2014, United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard A. Falk used the term repeatedly in his "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967".[27][28][29]

  1. ^ According to the Milon and Masada dictionaries, hafrada translates into English as "separation", "division", "disengagement", "severance", "disassociation" or "divorce". Milon: English Hebrew Dictionary
  2. ^ Smith & Cordell 2013, p. 25: "The Hebrew term Hafrada is the official descriptor of the policy of the Israeli Government to separate the Palestinian population in the territories occupied by Israel from the Israeli population, by means such as the West Bank barrier and the unilateral disengagement from those territories. The barrier is thus sometimes called gader ha'hafrada (separation fence) in Hebrew. The term Hafrada has striking similarities with the term apanheid, as this term mean 'apartness' in Afrikaans and Hafrada is the closest Hebrew equivalent."
  3. ^ a b Gideon Levy (4 November 2000). "Republished as an excerpt of the original 28 October 2000 article in the Courrier International, under the title Au fil des jours, Périphéries explore quelques pistes – chroniques, critiques, citations, liens pointus : Israël-Palestine, revue de presse". Périphéries. Archived from the original on 24 July 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2007.
  4. ^ Alcalai, Reuben (1981). The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary. Masada.
  5. ^ Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning, Michael G. Clyne, p.403, "In the Language of "us" and "them" we could have expected an undoing when an integrative policy of the two communities was introduced. Obviously the [Peace] Process moves in the opposite direction: separation. Actually, one of the most popular arguments use by the government to justify its policy is the "danger" ("the demographic bomb", "the Arab womb") of a "bi-national state" if no separation is made: the Process is thus a measure taken to secure the Jewish majority. The term ‘separation’ ‘’hafrada’’ has become extremely popular during the Process referring to fences built around Palestinian autonomous enclaves, to roads pave in the Territories exclusively for Israelis to the decrease of the number of Palestinians employed in Israel or allowed to enter into it altogether. The stereotypes of the Palestinian society as backward" have not changed either."
  6. ^ a b c d e Eric Rozenman (April–May 2001). "Today's Arab Israelis, Tomorrow's Israel: Why "Separation" Can't Be the Answer for Peace". Policy Review. Hoover Institution. Archived from the original on 7 February 2007. Retrieved 17 March 2007.
  7. ^ Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). "Nishul (Displacement): Israel's form of Apartheid". Retrieved 17 March 2007.[permanent dead link]
  8. ^ a b c Alain Epp Weaver (1 January 2007). "Further footnotes on Zionism, Yoder, and Boyarin". Cross Currents. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  9. ^ Mazin B. Qumsiyeh (28 June 2006). "Discussion on: Searching for Peace in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (PDF). Institute of Strategic and Development Studies, Andreas Papandreou, University of Athens. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  10. ^ a b c "Transcript from broadcast of The McLaughlin Group". The McLaughlin Group. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2007. Taped 24 May 2002 & broadcast 1 to 2 June 2002
  11. ^ Ben Shani (19 January 2007). ""The Result of the Hafrada Policy is Quiet in Hebron, But All Await the Storm" (Hebrew)". Nana.co.il Magazine (original from Channel 10 News). Archived from the original on 4 October 2015.
  12. ^ Fred Schlomka (28 May 2006). "Toward a Third Intifada". Common Dreams (originally published in The Baltimore Sun). Archived from the original on 16 June 2013.
  13. ^ James Bowen (28 September 2006). "Making Israel Take Responsibility". Archived from the original on 1 December 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2007.
  14. ^ [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference David Makovsky2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference David Makovsky was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ a b Esther Zandberg (28 July 2005). "Surroundings: Separation Seems to Have Spread Everywhere". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2007.
  18. ^ Neil Sandler (11 March 2002). "Israel: A Saudi Peace Proposal Puts Sharon in a Bind". Business Week. Archived from the original on 23 December 2011. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  19. ^ Jonathan Cook (11 May 2006). "Israel's Road to "Convergence" Began with Rabin: A Short History of Unilateral Separation". CounterPunch. Archived from the original on 4 February 2007. Retrieved 23 March 2007.
  20. ^ Rochelle Furstenberg (November 2002). "The Left Regroups on the Fence". Hadassah Magazine. Archived from the original on 10 September 2004. Retrieved 22 March 2007.
  21. ^ Shlomo Brom (November 2001). "The Many Faces of Unilateral Disengagement in Strategic Assessments". The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  22. ^ Steven Poole (2006). Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality. Grove Press. p. 87. ISBN 0-8021-1825-9.
  23. ^ [8][10][20][21][22]
  24. ^ Aaron S. Klieman (15 January 2000). Compromising Palestine: A Guide to Final Status Negotiations. Columbia University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-231-11789-2.
  25. ^ Beyond the Two-State Solution: A Jewish Political Essay, Yehouda Shenhav, "Israel's present separation policy – known in Israel as hafrada, a Hebrew Word which can mean both segregation and separation – is a natural continuation of the cultural-political position designed by the new nostalgia and of the demographic project, which constitutes the continuation of the war through other means."
  26. ^ Smith & Cordell 2013, p. 25
  27. ^ "A/HRC/25/67, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967". 13 January 2014. Archived from the original on 5 November 2014. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  28. ^ "UN's Falk accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing'". The Times of Israel.
  29. ^ "U.N. Rights envoy points to apartheid in Palestinian areas". Reuters. 24 February 2014. Archived from the original on 16 January 2016.