Privatizing Apartheid in Israel

An important article [Leila Khaled Mouammar, "Privatizing Apartheid in Israel," ZNet, December 08, 2005] notes that:

Prior to the dismantlement of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the privatization of state assets and services was quietly undertaken in order to ensure that the loss of political power would not also mean the loss of an economic status quo beneficial to the White minority.

In the past few years, the Israeli government has also been steadily transferring key state assets and services into private hands. Most recently and significantly, state-held lands are being transferred over to quasi-private or private control.

and concludes,

Apartheid regimes never last forever and this one will fall too. But this regime has already laid the groundwork to safeguard its assets. Most state wealth will soon be in private hands that will have made a pretty penny off of apartheid, occupation, murder and dispossession. Unfortunately, white collar criminals tend to get away with their crimes.

The article also contains one of the most open expressions of the real meaning of the Gaza withdrawal I've seen and from the General himself:

In a conference at Ort Braude College in Karmiel in the Galilee, the day after the land swap agreement was reached between the JNF and the ILA [16 June 2005], Prime Minister Sharon outlined the relationship between the disengagement of Gaza and development plans for the Negev and the Galilee stating : "I am not prepared to accept the claim that leaving Gaza is the trampling of Zionism. It is in fact strengthening Zionism in areas that are much more important, and that's what must be done in the Galilee."