OPINION
South Africa:
apartheid'
An exchange
OPINION I
Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel make their case.
(Ilan Baruch served as Israeli Ambassador to South
Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Dr. Alon Liel served as Israeli
Ambassador to South Africa and as Director General of the Israeli Ministry of
Foreign Affairs).
(8 June 2021)
During our careers in the foreign service, we both
served as Israel’s ambassador to South Africa. In this position, we learned
firsthand about the reality of apartheid and the horrors it inflicted. But more
than that – the experience and understanding we gained in South Africa helped
us to understand the reality at home.
For over half a century, Israel has ruled over the
occupied Palestinian territories with a two-tiered legal system, in which,
within the same tract of land in the West Bank, Israeli settlers live under
Israeli civil law while Palestinians live under military law. The system is one
of inherent inequality. In this context, Israel has worked to change both the
geography and the demography of the West Bank through the construction of
settlements, which are illegal under international law.
Israel has advanced projects to connect these
settlements to Israel proper through intensive investment in infrastructure
development, and a vast network of highways and water and electricity
infrastructure have turned the settlement enterprise into a comfortable version
of suburbia. This has happened alongside the expropriation and takeover of
massive amounts of Palestinian land, including Palestinian home evictions and
demolitions. That is, settlements are built and expanded at the expense of
Palestinian communities, which are forced onto smaller and smaller tracts of
land.
This reality reminds us of a story that former
Ambassador Avi Primor described in his autobiography about a trip that he took
with then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon to South Africa in the early 1980s.
During the visit, Sharon expressed great interest in South Africa’s bantustan
project. Even a cursory look at the map of the West Bank leaves little doubt
regarding where Sharon received his inspiration.
The West Bank today consists of 165 “enclaves” – that
is, Palestinian communities encircled by territory taken over by the settlement
enterprise. In 2005, with the removal of settlements from Gaza and the
beginning of the siege, Gaza became simply another enclave – a bloc of territory
without autonomy, surrounded largely by Israel and thus effectively controlled
by Israel as well.
The bantustans of South Africa under the apartheid
regime and the map of the occupied Palestinian territories today are predicated
on the same idea of concentrating the “undesirable” population in as small an
area as possible, in a series of non-contiguous enclaves. By gradually driving
these populations from their land and concentrating them into dense and
fractured pockets, both South Africa then and Israel today worked to thwart
political autonomy and true democracy.
This week, we mark the fifty-fifth year since the
occupation of the West Bank began. It is clearer than ever that the occupation
is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government
to bring about its end. Human Rights Watch recently concluded that Israel has
crossed a threshold and its actions in the occupied territories now meet the
legal definition of the crime of apartheid under international law.
Israel is the sole sovereign power that operates in
this land, and it systematically discriminates on the basis of nationality and
ethnicity. Such a reality is, as we saw ourselves, apartheid. It is time for
the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is
happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too. And just as the world
joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is time for the world
to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards
building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and
Israelis alike.
OPINION II
Benjamin Pogrund replies:
Dear Editor
So, exactly what did former Israeli ambassadors Alon
Liel and Ilan Baruch learn from their postings in South Africa? Not much,
judging from their claims on 8 June.
First, they say Israel
drew inspiration for the West Bank from the Bantustans. That’s totally faulty.
Anyone with elementary knowledge of South Africa knows that the white
nationalist government decided to create the Bantustans, imposed them and
defined the borders. It was unilateral and one-sided.
On the other hand, the division of the West Bank into
Areas A, B and C between Israelis and Palestinians was agreed upon between them
in the Oslo Accords of 1993. The arrangement was meant to last for five years
when a Palestinian state would come into being. Unhappily, both sides screwed
up – Israel seized land and Palestinians stepped up terror attacks. The
promised Palestinian state must still be formed.
Two, each Bantustan
had its own government, albeit nominal and vassal-like. Most of them had
contiguous areas of land.
On the other hand, the myriad Palestinian communities
that Liel/Baruch refer to are merely towns and villages scattered through the
West Bank. There is not the slightest resemblance to the Bantustans.
It’s quite possible, as Liel/Baruch suggest, that the
late Ariel Sharon took a fancy to the Bantustans when he visited South Africa
and saw them in terms of Israel/Palestine. But, as the former ambassadors
cannot but know about quite-recent Israeli history, a fundamental change
occurred inside Sharon when he became prime minister and faced the realities of
ruling: at the time of his untimely death, he was clearly heading towards
separation through two-states – which is the current policy of the Palestinian
Authority and is backed by the US, EU, UK, Russia and most of the world.
Third, Bantustans were a racist device. Called “separate development” they were
intended to fool the world by trying to put a pretty face on naked apartheid.
The West Bank is entirely different. As Liel/Baruch
must surely know, Israel’s occupation did not simply fall from the sky but is
due to well-known historical events. Jordan controlled it from 1948 (and
suppressed any Palestinian political activity). In 1967, Jordan joined the war
between Israel and Egypt/Syria and attacked Israel from the east with artillery
fire. Israeli troops crossed onto the West Bank and drove the vaunted Arab
Legion back to Jordan.
After some hesitation, Israel decided to remain on the
West Bank as a buffer zone against possible Jordanian attack. Its motivation
gradually broadened and strengthened: messianic beliefs came into play with
Jews believing God had given them that part of the world. There was, and is,
also greed, with land seized for Jewish settlement.
The occupation continues to this day. It is an issue
of contention in Israel with many wanting to end it. For the moment, right-wing
views prevail and the Israeli army and the settlers are in control.
The bottom line is that race is not the determining
factor. Security remains a paramount issue with fears, rightly or wrongly, that
an independent Palestinian state could become a terrorist neighbour. Suicide
bombings, stabbings and car killings emanating from the West Bank have
strengthened such Israeli belief. And messianism and greed have become
embedded.
Fourth, Liel/Baruch are surprisingly, really astonishingly, glib about Gaza. They
look the other way about its complexity. It was occupied by Egypt until Israel
conquered it in the1967 war. Israel offered to return the territory. Egypt
declined.
Israel left it in 2005 but controls the northern
border and the sea and air. Egypt controls the southern border and treats
Gazans toughly: it closes the border for lengthy periods, leaving Palestinians
stranded, and has destroyed about 1,000 tunnels built by Hamas, the Islamic
Resistance Movement, to smuggle in arms, explosives, food and even cows.
Egypt views Hamas with hostility, blaming it for
complicity in the Islamicist attacks on its soldiers in Sinai.
Gaza is a colossal problem for Israel. The territory
has limited resources except for wonderful beaches and some agriculture. Hamas
seized power in 2007 and murdered its Palestinian Fatah opponents. It refuses
to accept Israel’s existence and is openly genocidal in declaring that it wants
to kill all the Jews. Israel’s siege of the territory is meant to block Hamas
from bringing in arms and missiles.
But, as last month’s violent outbreak showed, Hamas
manages to build up an arsenal of thousands of missiles and fires them at
Israeli civilian areas whenever it wants to.
Fifth, Liel/Baruch
equate Israel with apartheid, “as we saw ourselves”. When might that have been?
Liel was ambassador from 1992 t0 1994, during the transition period when
apartheid was ebbing away; Baruch was ambassador from 2005 to 2008.
Israel has many faults but apartheid is not one of
them. Those who make the equation either lack knowledge or are politically driven
by hatred of the Jewish state to have Israel declared the same evil as was
apartheid South Africa and hence subject to international boycotts.
Benjamin Pogrund was deputy editor of the former Rand
Daily Mail. His books include Robert Sobukwe: How Can Man Die Better, and
Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel. He has been
awarded the Order of Ikhamanga Silver.
Sincerely
Israel
15 Jun 2021
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