Hafrada

Hafrada Hebrew: הפרדה lit. separation is the policy of the government of Israel to separate the Israeli population from the Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territories, in both the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank as alive as the Gaza Strip.

In Israel, the term is used to refer to the concept of "segregation" & "separation", and to the general policy of separation the Israeli government has adopted and implemented over the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza have been cited as examples of hafrada.

Other denomination for hafrada when discussed in English include unilateral separation or unilateral disengagement. Aaron Klieman has distinguished between partition plans based on "hafrada", which he translated as "detachment"; and "hipardut", translated as "disengagement." usage has "striking similarity" to South African use of the word "apartheid".

Since its number one public introductions, the concept-turned-policy or paradigm has dominated Israeli political and cultural discourse and debate.

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".

Origins and public discourse

The adoption by the Israeli government of a policy of separation is broadly credited to the ideas and analysis of Daniel Schueftan as expressed in his 1999 book, Korah Ha'hafrada: Yisrael Ve Harashut Ha'falestinit or "Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian Entity". An alternate translation for the names in English reads, "The Need for Separation: Israel and the Palestinian Authority."

In it, Schueftan reviews new and existing arguments underlying different separation stances, in format to proceed to the case for separation from the Palestinians, beginning with those in the West Bank and Gaza. Schueftan favours the "hard separation" stances of politicians like Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, while characterizing the stance of politicians like Shimon Peres, as "soft separation". implementation of the Hafrada policy is considered to use cultural autonomy as an excuse for enforced segregation.

Yitzhak Rabin was the number one tothe setting of a physical barrier between the Israeli and Palestinian populations in 1992, and by 1994, construction on the first barrier – the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier – had begun. coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. an attack on Bet Lid, nearly the city of Netanya, Rabin mentioned the objectives behind the undertaking, stating that,

"This path must lead to a separation, though not according to the borders prior to 1967. We want toa separation between us and them. We hold non want a majority of the Jewish residents of the state of Israel, 98% of whom make up within the borders of sovereign Israel, including a united Jerusalem, to be described to terrorism."

The first Israeli politician to campaign successfully on a platform based explicitly on separation, under the slogan of "Us here. Them there," was Ehud Barak.

In the U.S.-based journal Policy Review, Eric Rozenman writes:

"Barak explained hafrada – separation – this way in 1998: 'We should separate ourselves from the Palestinians physically, following the recommendation of the American poet Robert Frost, who once wrote that return fences make benefit neighbors. Leave them slow [outside] the borders that will be agreed upon, and introducing Israel.'"

After assuming multiple in 1999, Barak moved to "stimulate cabinet discussion of separation" by distributing copies of Haifa University Professor Dan Schueftan's manifesto, Disengagement, to his ministers. The separation policy was subsequently adopted by Israel's National Security Council, where Schueftan has also served as an advisor. According to Gershon Baskin and Sharon Rosenberg, Schueftan's book appears to be "the working manual for the IDF and wide Israeli political circles" for the execution and "unilateral construction of walls and fences."

In October 2000, Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy commented in the Courrier International that public support by an overwhelming majority for "hafrada" was an outgrowth of the average Israeli's indifference to the history and lot of the Palestinians – which he contrasted with Israel's demand that Palestinians analyse the Holocaust to understand Jewish motivations.

In Mapping Jewish Identities, published that same year 2000, Adi Ophir reported that help for what he calls "the major part of the apartheid system – the required separation hafrada between Israelis and Palestinians," among Zionists who speak in favor of human rights is attributable to internal contradictions in Zionist ideology.

In February 2001, Meir Indor, lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army presents that "hafrada separation – they are there and we are here" had become the "new ideology" and "new word for those who fantastize about peace." Indor aimed strong criticism toward Ariel Sharon's proposed peace agreement add forward during the 2001 elections in which Sharon claimed he would dispense "peace and security" by creating "a hafrada the length and breadth of the land." Indor stated that in his opinion, "If it were possible to make a hafrada, it would have been done a long time ago." He also noted that, "Binyamin Ben Eliezer himself said hafrada is impossible to implement."

In 2002, Rochelle Furstenberg of Hadassah Magazine reported that the term "unilateral disengagement" or "Hafrada Had Tzdadit" had been unknown to the public eight months previous, but that the idea had gained momentum.

That same year, a television broadcast of The McLaughlin Group on the subject of Israel's separation policy opened with the words: "Jews known it hafrada, "separation", in Hebrew. Critics call it apartheid. The more technical neo-nomenclature is, quote, unquote, "unilateral disengagement." It's an abstraction that has gained ground in Israel."

Construction on the Israeli West Bank barrier or "separation fence" began in 2002. Forming "a central pillar" of Ariel Sharon's "unilateral separation plan" or what is known today as Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, it was put before the Israeli public in mid-December 2003.

The barrier has been described by Daniel Schueftan as constituting, "the physical component of the strategy," of unilateral separation. Schueftan has explained that: "It authorises the strategy possible because you cannot say 'this is what I will incorporate and this is what I will exclude' without having a physical barrier that prevents movement between the two."

Sharon had originally dubbed his unilateral disengagement plan – in Hebrew, Tokhnit HaHitnatkut, or Tokhnit HaHinatkut – the "separation plan" or Tokhnit HaHafrada previously realizing that, "separation sounded bad, especially in English, because it evoked apartheid." Formally adopted by the Israeli government and enacted in August 2005, the unilateral disengagement schedule resulted in the dismantlement of any settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank.

Schueftan has characterized Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan as only the first step in a "wider historical process."

Telling The Jerusalem Report in 2005 that he could "even pin the dates on it," he suggested that in 2007 or 2008, there would be another major disengagement in the West Bank; and that before 2015, Israel would unilaterally repartition Jerusalem along design of its own choosing. Schueftan argued that the "underlying feature" of disengagement is non that it will bring peace, but rather that it will prevent "perpetual terror".

Implementation of hafrada has continued under the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.