MIDDLE EAST: WORLD CANNOT IGNORE THE PLIGHT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
ANC Today: The online voice of the African National Congress, Volume 1, No. 31, 24-30 August 2001
No international conference against racism can avoid discussing the racist practises of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. As the two previous world conferences mobilised global condemnation of apartheid, delegates to the UN World Conference against Racism - which starts in Durban next week - should condemn the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians.
The struggle of the Palestinian people, led by the Palestinian Liberation
Organisation (PLO), for national emancipation is a
struggle against racial oppression. It is a struggle for the realisation of
their inalienable rights, including the establishment of an independent state of
Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. The ANC recommits itself to ongoing
solidarity with the Palestinian
people and calls on the Israeli government to immediately and unconditionally
end:
* its campaign of murder and terror against Palestinian activists and
leaders;
* the use of live ammunition against civilians, and the deployment of military
tactics and weapons of war against civilian communities;
* detention without trial;
* its ongoing gross violations of human rights, and the various forms of
collective punishment it imposes on the Palestinian people;
* its illegal and provocative programme of settlement activities.
Until its defeat, South Africa's apartheid regime found much in common with
their Israeli counterparts. Both Afrikaner nationalism, as manifest in the
apartheid state, and Zionism, as manifest in the Israeli state, propagated the
ideology of an exclusive 'chosen people'. In Israel today, the government
classifies its citizens as either Jew or non-Jew. These classifications are
stamped into official identity documents. Political, social and economic rights
and goods are allocated on the basis of this classification. Such an approach is
familiar to black South Africans. It is racist.
The 1948 and 1967 wars led to the displacement of thousands of Palestinians
to neighbouring countries and the creation of a
Palestinian diaspora. The Palestinians insist the right of Palestinian refugees
to return to their homes should be recognised in
principle. Israel adamantly refuses to recognise this principle on the basis
that it would dilute that Jewish character of the Israeli
state. During the past few years more than one million Jewish settlers, from
mainly east European countries, have been encouraged to settle in Israel. Any
Jew, anywhere in the world, has an automatic right to Israeli citizenship,
whereas Palestinians who were born within Israel's borders are treated like
foreigners and criminals. These policies are racist.
The Durban conference cannot avoid discussion of these issues, particularly
when there is an intensification of the brutality
against the Palestinians by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's regime in its
efforts to quell an 11 month-old uprising.
With increasingly violent images being beamed into television screens
world-wide, it would be difficult to pardon the international community from its
responsibility to act swiftly and effectively to help bring about peace to the
region. The international movement needs, and has a responsibility, to help
re-open the door to a just and lasting settlement, beyond racism. Significant
international positions include the resolution of the recent meeting convened in
South Africa of the Non-aligned Movement's Committee on Palestine and the the
G-8 foreign ministers declaration calling on Israel and
Palestine to accept international observers.
The draft declaration of the World Conference against Racism NGO Forum in Durban says: "We call for the employment of all effective measures available to participants, relevant United Nations organs and member States to ensure that Israel complies with its obligations under human rights, humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions with the view to end its colonial policies and apartheid system."
The struggle against apartheid was part of the international struggle against the ideas that found their most direct expression in the advent of Nazism and the holocaust. South Africans, having defeated apartheid, have a direct stake in the eradication of apartheid practices on a global scale, and in the plight of the Palestinian people in particular. Our task is to labour and struggle humanely to confront military occupation, discriminatory actions and gross violations of human rights. The world must work together to find the keys for a just and democratic settlement between Palestinians and Israelis.