Redefining Apartheid in American and Global Palestine Solidarity Debates

In the recent past, debates have popularized concerning the value and meaning of the term
apartheid. Is it a term that is adequate for discerning Israel’s subjugation of Palestine, or not? A
number of articles have been published in Palestine Studies that characterize apartheid as a term
which only signifies a liberal legal system based on racial discrimination. One author, Lana
Tatour, argues that it is insufficient with regards to fully capturing the settler-colonial nature of
the Israeli state. Another, Loubna Qutami, in part argues that racial capitalism, especially in the
context of the post-94 Oslo Accords, might be a more helpful concept in drawing similarities and
differences between South Africa and Palestine. In contrast, Noura Erakat more explicitly argues
against the liberal legal definition of apartheid a through international law and rather argues that
apartheid analogy always had a more radical understanding informed by the economic
dimensions of colonialism in relation to labor and land.
The arguments of Tatour and Qutami seemingly point towards the insufficiency or limits of using
the term apartheid to describe Israel’s system of oppression against Palestinians. Erakat
demonstrates that the meaning of apartheid has been captured by liberal-legalistic definitions,
particularly through international law, and that there is a longer more radical history of the
critique of apartheid by Palestinian and South African intellectuals. On one hand, Tatour and
Qutami demonstrate a limited understanding of the term and system of apartheid in and of itself,
especially in relation to systems of colonialism and capitalism. Rather than viewing these terms
at best as near synonyms - or at worst as co-determinative - in understanding the Israeli state,
their arguments focus on supposed sharp differences without sufficiently demonstrating a deep
understanding of how apartheid has operated in South Africa, or in the other places the term
apartheid has since been used to describe. These positions in part emanate from a type of
analytical “oppression Olympics” and are a symptom of provincial debates in North America
which are unaware of more global engagements with these sociological units of analysis. In
contrast, Erakat’s argument is more nuanced and demonstrates a long intellectual history of
Palestinian and South African engagement with the apartheid concept which always viewed
apartheid alongside and as part of global systems of capitalism and imperialism.
In large part, I agree with Erakat’s critique of the liberal legalistic definition of apartheid and her
reclamation of a more radical critique of apartheid which includes the colonial and economic
dimensions of the term. However, what is missing in all of the arguments above is a comparative
conceptual framework which seeks to clarify the similarities and differences between apartheid,
settler-colonialism and capitalism. In this paper, I provide a conceptual and historical framework
for understanding the various dimensions of apartheid, (settler)colonialism and capitalism. In
addition to the arguments above, this framework engages with meanings of the terms that have
been understudied or previously not put in conversation. In relation to the term apartheid, I
demonstrate that it has always been used to describe the legal, political, social, cultural,

economic and even gendered ways in which apartheid was understood in the South African and
other global contexts - including within the global BDS and Palestine solidarity movement. With
regards to the concepts of settler-colonialism and racial capitalism, I place them within debates
emanating from Decolonial Theory which similarly outline their varied dimensions and
hierarchies as understood by the long-duree critique of coloniality and capitalism. In conclusion,
I argue that approaching the definition of apartheid from within this comparative conceptual
framework demonstrates that their meanings are co-constitutive and co-determinative.