An African suggestion for Palestinians

While on a lengthy trip to South Africa — and three adjoining states noted for their safaris and the picturesque Victoria Falls — I came across a leading article in The Star, a Johannesburg newspaper established in 1887, which devoted a whole page to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It included a lead article by Ronnie Kasrils, a former minister for intelligence services, titled “the veil needs to be lifted on the true nature of an historic struggle”.

Next to the impressive column was a lengthy letter headlined “Dear friends, let’s espouse humanism” signed by 77 South Africans of Jewish descent who recalled “the devastating [51-day Israeli] assault last year” on the Gaza Strip in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 490 children.

It underlined that “millions of people across the world were mobilised to take action [and] Cape Town saw its largest protest march ever recorded, with participation of different political and civic organisations including the newly formed Jewish Voices for a Just Peace [JVJP]”.

The page also ran a short item from The Washington Post that described Gaza “as one of the worst spots on Earth”.

“One year later,” the letter from African Jews said, “Gaza is not in the headlines anymore, but the people are still being systematically oppressed and denied fundamental human rights.”

But what Kasrils, whose Jewish grandparents were from Latvia and Lithuania and had fled the tsarist pogroms at the end of the 19th century, had to say about Israel’s “offensive into Gaza” is that the Palestinians still find themselves “in quandary on their arduous journey in search of freedom”.

In his extensive column, Kasrils echoed the view of an Egyptian scholar, Abdelwahab Elmessiri, about Britain’s aim in creating the Union of South Africa in 1909 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

He said: “In implanting and backing white settlers in South Africa and Zionist settlers in Palestine, the British empire was founding two little pockets of settler-colonists who would owe allegiance to the imperial metropolis and would serve as bases of operation when the need arose.”

However, 50 years later, “the British, shrugging off Jewish terrorism, had left the Zionist militia vast supplies of arms and equipment. Many had served in Britain’s war-time forces and they numbered more than the combined Arab armies dispatched to protect 45 per cent territory apportioned to the Palestinians by the 1947 UN Partition Plan”.

“The year 1948 was one of the darkest for both the Palestinian and South African people; truly an annus horribilis. For South Africans, May 1948 marked the election of the apartheid government and the prelude to a 46-year maelstrom for the African people. For the Palestinians, May 1948 marked the Nakbeh — the catastrophic dispossession and ethnic cleansing at the hands of the rampant Zionist project,” he added.

Then, Kasrils noted that former US president Jimmy Carter had described the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories as being akin to apartheid — “a horrible example of apartheid is being perpetrated against the Palestinian people who live there” in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Kasrils recalled a secret statement by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first president, in which he said: “After we become a strong force, as the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish the partition and expand into the whole of Palestine.”

This is revealed by his confidant Nahum Goldman in The Jewish Paradox.

In other words, the former South African minister continued, “given the consistence of such statements through to [the Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu it becomes obvious that Israel’s existence has been based on colonial conquest, and, as had been the case in apartheid South Africa, a reliance by the state on brute force and terror”.

He continued: “Lift[ing] the veil on the true nature of this historic struggle requires full national self-determination and independence for the Palestinian people before all else. This is fundamental and the basis for solving the national question which, among other key elements calls the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees as per UN resolutions and the handing back of their homes and property; and rejecting the Law of Return which allows any Jew anywhere in the world to claim a place in Palestine and supplant the indigenous populace.

“It is only on the basis of the freedom, independence and equality of the colonised nation that the settlers and their dependents find security …. It demolishes Israel’s attempts at divide and rule. It unites all contingents in their millions in a clear vision for their undivided land and with correct leadership and action can dramatically alter the balance of forces so long stacked against the Palestinians.”

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.