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'This is like apartheid': ANC veterans visit West Bank
By Donald Macintyre in Hebron
Friday, 11 July 2008
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the
restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories
was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under
white rule in South Africa.
Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans
cited the impact of the Israeli military's separation barrier,
checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to
which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.
After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some
delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the
Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800
settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly
3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in
some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy
streets.
"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to
South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for
the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their
whole lifetime without visiting because it's impossible."
Mrs Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy health minister in President
Thabo Mbeki's government, added: "While I want to be careful not to
characterise everything that I see here as apartheid, I just do find
comparisons in a number of places. I also find differences."
Comparisons with apartheid have long been anathema to majority Israeli
opinion, though they have been somewhat less taboo since the Israeli
Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last year warned that without an early
two-state agreement Israel could face a South African-style struggle for
equal voting rights.
Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: "The
issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by
different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a
soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at
checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we
experienced during apartheid." She was speaking after the tour, which
included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting
with Israel's Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.
One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said
South Africa had been "much poorer" both during and after apartheid than
the Palestinian territories. But he added: "The daily indignity to which
the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid
regime. And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the
repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime."
Members of the delegation -- the first of its kind -- visited Nablus as
well as towns and villages bordering the separation barrier, including
Na'alin where a tem****ary curfew was imposed after joint
Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations against the barrier.
The visit was organised by Israeli human rights groups which co-operate
with Palestinians committed to non-violent campaigns against Israeli
occupation.
In Hebron's main Shuhada Street, the South African delegation was
plunged into a confrontation after one of the local settlers' leaders
disrupted the tour by unlea****ng a barrage of abuse through a megaphone
at one of the Israeli guides. Amid angry arguments, police arrested
three of the Israeli guides.
Mrs Madlala Routledge exclaimed: "This is ridiculous. Why are they
arresting our guides and leaving the man with the megaphone?"
Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African
delegation's several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron
settlers' leader Baruch Marzel: "These provocations didn't come from us.
I'm Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear
from other Jews?"
Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, said that the visit to
Yad Vashem had been "extremely moving" because his mother had been a
Holocaust survivor who lost many members of her family. "As you walk
into Yad Vashem you see a quote that says in effect you should know a
country not only by what it does but what it tolerates," he said. "So I
found it very shocking to then come and here and see footage of
teenagers heaping abuse on Palestinian children as they come out of
school, and throwing stones at them. And that this should be done in the
name of Judaism I find totally reprehensible.
"What the Holocaust teaches us more than anything else is that we must
never turn our heads away in the face of injustice."
The delegation's final formal statement made no mention of comparisons
with apartheid and Judge Davis said he thought the use of the term in
the Middle East context was "very unhelpful".
He added: "The level of social control I've seen here, separate roads,
different number plates [between Palestinian and Israeli cars] may well
be more cynically pernicious than what we have ever had. But this is a
country that is really about how there is going to be divorce and we
were always a marriage." Ms Hassan herself said she thought the
apartheid comparison was a potential "red herring".
Israelis point out there are no South-African-style laws segregating
Israeli and East Jerusalem Arabs from Israeli Jews in public spaces.
The delegation yesterday urged international sup****t for the "new and
small movement of Palestinian-Israeli joint non-violent struggle". And
its members stressed their understanding of Israeli security needs. Mr
Feinstein said: "I completely understand the fears of Israelis ... but
at the same time we have seen for ourselves and been told about all
sorts of measures that don't seem to be in terms of security and in some
instances could if anything undermine security of state."
The delegation also visited the Parents' Circle -- a joint organisation
of Israeli and Palestinian families bereaved by the conflict. Ms Hassan
said this had been at once the most "depressing and inspiring" visit of
the trip.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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