Declaration by South Africans
on
Apartheid Israel
and the
Struggle for Palestine.
Issued by the Palestine Solidarity Committee
Durban South Africa August 31, 2001
* * * * * * *
The Palestinian rebellion has been a long time coming. Over three
decades of occupation is but one dimension of their tragedy. Driven
from their original homes, villages and land by sustained atrocities,
condemned to miserable camps, dispersed in a far-flung Diaspora,
subjected to massacres like the Sabra and Shatila slaughter of over
2000 refugees, and unending persecution.
The suffering in the West Bank and Gaza is the continuation of the
colonisation of all of Palestine. Zionist militias seized 75% of the
land and drove out 800 000 Palestinians through a series of massacres
between the partition of Palestine in 1947 and the formation of
Israel. With the declaration of the state of Israel, 385 out of 475
Palestinian cities, towns and villages were razed to the ground,
disappearing from the map. The 90 remaining were denuded of land,
confiscated without compensation.
We acknowledge the theft of the land and realise how today the Jewish
National Fund, a member of the World Zionist Organisation, administers
93% of the land of Israel. To live on land, lease it, sharecrop or
work on it, one must establish four generations of maternal Jewish
descent. In Israel, such a lineage is necessary in order to enjoy
elementary rights. We cannot mistake the quintessentially racist
character of such a state. Israel is an apartheid state, founded on
pillage and predicated on exclusivity. Rights flow from ethnic and
religious identity.
We, South Africans who have lived through apartheid cannot be silent
as another entire people are treated as non-human beings; people
without rights or human dignity and facing daily humiliation. We
cannot permit a ruthless state to use military jets, helicopter gun-
ships and tanks on civilians. We cannot accept state assassinations of
activists, the torture of political prisoners, the murder of children
and collective punishment.
We, South Africans who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial
mentality see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of colonialism
in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of `settlements' and
`settlers'. Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take
over hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell
schools, churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block
access to an indigenous population's freedom of movement and right to
earn a living. These human rights violations were unacceptable in
apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid Israel.
We South Africans faced apartheid and exploitation, bullets and
prison, not with bouquets of flowers, but with resistance. We are
proud of this, our history. This is the history of all oppressed
people. Why should it be different for Palestinians? Born in squalid
refugee camps, living in poverty and believing the world community
does not care, more and more young Palestinians see empty futures,
aborted hopes and feel unbearable frustrations. The great African-
American poet, Langston Hughes, asked: "What happens to a dream
deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun...or does it explode?"
The shocking suicide bombings answers this rhetorical question.
Apartheid Israel has created a situation in which people feel they
have nothing to lose. This dangerous situation could be reversed, if
the Israeli state and the one country that funds and supports it
unconditionally- the US, as well as the world community, act in a
moral and just manner.
It's Apartheid Again!
We note how the Israeli state rests on overt repression, a system of
structural violence and institutionalised discrimination that
dehumanises one group to the advantage of another. Apartheid Israel
has developed an elaborate system of racial discrimination, embedded
in its legal system-even surpassing Apartheid South Africa's laws.
These laws include the Law of Entry, the Law of Return, Citizenship
Law, legally sanctioned discriminatory rabbinical rulings and the
Military Service Law. Palestinians are denied various welfare
benefits, access to many jobs, and the leasing of homes and land
controlled by government bodies. We realise that while Palestinians
within the '48 borders may vote, they face these discriminatory laws
and are treated like third class citizens. Electricity, sewerage,
roads and water supplies are provided free to Israeli households
whereas many Palestinian communities in Israel, let alone the occupied
territories, have existed for decades without adequate services. The
Israeli education system is racist in practice and in content. Almost
no Arab history is covered and there are no Arab textbooks in the
Israeli curricula. Palestinians also face significant barriers in
gaining access to universities. In South Africa similar factors
contributed to the Uprisings in 1976 and the 1980s.
Laws governing land ownership such as the Law of Acquisition of
Absentee Property and the Law for Acquisition of Land blatantly
discriminate against Palestinians. Although settlers constitute a tiny
minority in the West Bank, they own 60 percent of the land. Many of
these settlers come from the US, the ex-Soviet Union and South Africa.
In Gaza, 6000 settlers live among a population of one million
Palestinians yet they own 42 percent of the land. Land ownership in
Palestine is more unjust than it ever was in South Africa. At the
height of apartheid black people nominally `controlled' 13 percent of
the land, in Israel the oppressed control only 2 percent. The Israeli
government also pursues a grossly discriminatory water policy. In Gaza
in 1985, for instance, settlers consume about 2000 cubic meters of
water per person; Palestinians are allowed to consume only about 120.
Despite the terminology, we recognise segregation when we see it. The
policy of `closures' is a policy of segregation. Blockades which allow
settlers free movement but restrict Palestinians have lost 100 000
workers their jobs. Some roads are for settlers only. The Israeli
government issues identification cards and car number-plates, colour
coded, which restrict travel for non-Jews. Palestinians in the West
Bank are routinely prevented from travelling to the Gaza Strip because
they have to travel through `Israeli' territory. No significant
industry has been permitted to develop in the West Bank or Gaza.
Consequently, Palestinians are concentrated in the lowest paying jobs
and form a super-exploited labour force for Israeli capital. The
occupied territories import 93% of goods but export a mere 7% of what
they produce. Palestinian exports to Western Europe are banned so as
not to compete with Israeli exports. Ninety percent of Palestinian
workers must travel to Jewish towns for employment.
Israel is, simply, an Apartheid state. Apartheid laws, such as the
pass system and influx control, bantustans, job reservation, bantu
education and laws resulting in unequal resource allocation live on.
As one South African journalist wrote after visiting Israel: "In both
countries [apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel] `subordinate
races' were dispossessed of their land and crowded into marginal,
drought-stricken ghettoes; their movement was restricted; access to
education and skilled jobs limited so that they inevitably sank into a
pool of low wage labour. In both societies, bans on inter-marriage and
daily lives segregated by race did little to dispel the fear and
ignorance that feeds racial bigotry."
Globalisation's Watchdog.
Israel is the highest recipient of US support. In return, it makes its
own contributions to maintaining the imperialist world order and
stability for transnational corporations, particularly oil companies.
In the `70s it supplied the military dictatorships of El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua with more military hardware than the US. It
supports adventures and trains personnel of unpopular regimes the US
does not openly want to be identified with. The latest regime is
Turkey, which brutally suppresses its trade unions, workers'
organisations and the Kurds. In its illegal blockade of Cuba, the only
support for the US now comes from Israel. Of course, we will never
forget the support Israel provided to apartheid South Africa. While
the world condemned apartheid in South Africa as a crime against
humanity, Israel happily cemented trade, cultural, military and
nuclear links with the white minority regime.
A Bantustan or a Democratic Secular State?
We realise that the `peace plan' brokered by the US at Oslo, Camp
David, and the Wye River were recipes for continued misery and poverty
for millions of Palestinians. Rather than promise a future of peaceful
co-existence they virtually guaranteed a continuation of conflict and
violence. They proposed a Bantustan, a `state' with a dependent
economy, no contiguous territory and no substantial power, where
Palestinians can be exploited, controlled, restricted and confined in
reservations. A dependent Bantustan alongside an apartheid state is a
mockery of self-determination-as it existed in apartheid South Africa
and now in apartheid Israel. In Israel, no less than in South Africa,
minimum justice requires dismantling the apartheid state and replacing
it with a democratic secular Palestine, where Jews and Arabs,
Christians and Muslims, live together with equal rights and
opportunities.
We observe the stone throwing children of Jabaliya, the Beach Camp,
Balata, Khan Younis and Dheisheh and we see the response to over five
decades of outrageous tyranny and occupation. It is echoed in those
Israeli Jews who resist the oppression of others, like Mordechai
Vanunu who, in 1986, was sentenced by a secret security court to 18
years in prison for exposing Israel's nuclear plans and indirectly
Israel's nuclear collaboration with apartheid South Africa.
We reject the calumny that to condemn Israeli apartheid or Zionism's
`ethnic cleansing' implies animus against Jews; or that it attempts to
diminish the Holocaust. The opposite is true. As the famed violinist
Lord Yehudi Menuhin told the French newspaper Le Figaro "It is
extraordinary how nothing ever dies completely. Even the evil which
prevailed yesterday in Nazi Germany is gaining ground in that country
[Israel] today".
We, South Africans, extend our hands to the heroic people of
Palestine. Theirs is the struggle, slingshots in hand, of David
against Goliath. Theirs is the vision of a country shorn of racist
dominion. Theirs is the passion for life without oppression. Theirs is
the struggle, Arab and Jews to be free from discrimination and
injustice. As South Africans we understand these struggles, visions
and passions. We support the demand to isolate Apartheid Israel, the
right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees and the
dismantling of racist settlements. We pledge ourselves to be part of a
new International Anti-Apartheid movement against Israel.
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