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."
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.
Members of the delegation =96 the first of its kind =96 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."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/this-is-like-apartheid-=
anc-veterans-visit-west-bank-865063.html
Mirelle
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