[Published May 2007]
Mr. Ronnie Kasrils is South Africa’s Intelligence Minister.
He has chosen to make many unintelligent remarks in an op-ed piece written by him for the Mail and Guardian on 18 May titled “Israel 2007 : worse than apartheid” which can be located at:
http://www.monitoringsa.com/PDFS/2007_05_18_380d2.pdf
Such remarks require rebuttal, especially as they have been uttered by a person of his prestige and stature.
Let me deal with some of these remarks that mouth so many similarly wild and unsubstantiated claims being uttered with growing frequency in the media by others under the guise of free speech.
1. “The West Bank and Gaza have become hermetically sealed prisons”
Freedom of movement between Gaza and Egypt is available through the Rafah border crossing and between the West Bank and Jordan through the Allenby Bridge.
Movement between Gaza and Israel and the West Bank and Israel is permitted but is more limited and subject to frequent closure during terrorist attacks or terror alerts.
How does this inflammatory and misleading statement serve any purpose?
2. “Its [the security barrier] route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements - some of which are huge towns - and annexes more and more Palestinian territory.”
The Israeli settlements are permitted in international law under article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter provided that nothing is done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.
Where prejudice has been proved to have occurred in construction of the security barrier, Israel’s High Court of Justice has intervened and ordered relief and will continue to do so.
The West Bank is the only territory of the Mandate for Palestine remaining unallocated between Jews and Arabs, both of whom maintain claims that are still to be resolved.
3. “The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine,..…”
The West Bank is only 5% of historic Palestine.
Gaza is 1% of historic Palestine ,Israel is 17% of historic Palestine and Jordan is 77% of historic Palestine .
4. “It is shocking to discover that certain roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite obscene in apartheid South Africa”
Really, is Mr Kasrils’ memory that short ? - no blacks in restaurants or on “whites only” buses, no rights for the black majority to vote or control their own futures, separate toilets at the airports and all other public places, the banning of sex between the races - to name but a few.
Mr Kasrils was in the forefront in fighting apartheid in South Africa. What on earth did he think he was fighting?
Mr Kasrils is really insulting our intelligence with this kind of fatuous remark.
Mr Kasrils’ concern for the Palestinians is obviously sincere and well intended .
However his inane remarks leads one to conclude that his views have been formulated as a result of some fairly basic misunderstandings of the conflict that has been going on since the 1880’s in what was once called Palestine.
The ongoing refusal of the Arabs to countenance the right of Jews to have their own State in their biblical and ancestral homeland comprising 0.001% of the territory freed from Ottoman occupation by Britain and France in 1917 as part of a package deal that handed the Arabs the remaining 99.999% - eventually leading to the creation of such states as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan - still remains the sticking point in the throats of the Arabs to this very day.
Looking at Palestine only in isolation is the trap into which many well meaning persons stumble.
The Arabs now have 22 States in which hardly a Jew lives and in which selling land to Jews is punishable by death . Arabs involved in selling land to Jews in Jerusalem have been hunted down and murdered. Try and enter Saudi Arabia if you are a Jew.
The Jews have one state - Israel - in which over 20% of the population - or more than one million - are Arab citizens. They eat in the same restaurants, travel on the same buses, use the same toilets and yes, vote in elections and even intermarry with Jews.
Who is practising apartheid?
Yes, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza are doing it tough - but they have no one but themselves and their intransigent brethren to blame for the sorry position they find themselves in.
There was a time between 1948-1967 when Statehood in the West Bank and Gaza and even part of what is now Israel could have been achieved with the stroke of a pen. What is yearned for now was rejected then. What was available then is not available now.
This reality still eludes the Arabs as they call for 400000 Jews to pack up and vacate every square inch of the West Bank. This is cuckoo land thinking and is bound to ensure the conflict will continue.
Whilst persons like Mr Kasrils continue to make their judgements based on facts that are demonstrably wrong, they will continue to give fuel to Arab demands that are impossible for Israel to accept.
Let the influential Mr Kasrils support handing over sovereignty of the Arab occupied areas of the West Bank to Jordan as a means of ending the indignities he witnessed on his recent wanderings.
That would be an intelligent contribution to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. His article certainly isn’t.
Mandate for Palestine - July 24, 1922
Jordan is 77% of former Palestine - Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza comprise 23%.
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Going Gaga over Gaza
[Published February 2007]
Gaza has all the trappings of a State except declared Statehood.
The Quartet - America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - and the 22 members of the Arab League have allowed this farce to continue for the last 18 months.
Gaza, larger in area than Malta, has a President, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, a full complement of Ministers, a burgeoning bureaucracy, observers to every United Nations Committee you can think of, delegations to countries all around the world, a flag and an anthem and most importantly of all - not one Jew.
It is as racially pure as you could imagine, making South Africa’s apartheid regime pale in comparison.
The 7000 Jews living in Gaza were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses 18 months ago. That they were so evicted by other Jews, supposedly for their safety, is shameful. However given half a chance the Gazan Arabs would have willingly expelled the Jews. They even boasted that it was their campaign of terror and violence that finally forced the Jews to leave. Ethnic cleansing is apparently acceptable where Jews are the victims.
The violence against Jews has been replaced by the killing and intimidation of Gaza’s now exclusively Arab citizenry, as Hamas and Fatah each battle to assert their authority over the other in an internecine struggle that shows no signs of abating.
The people without a land who had been yearning for a land for the last 40 years suddenly found itself in full possession and control of part of that land but just couldn’t bring itself to utter the magic words of independence. Figuratively speaking the jilted bride was left waiting at the mosque.
The occupation had ended, the occupiers had gone but the population acted as though nothing had changed.
There was no rejoicing and dancing in the streets, no hugs embraces and tears among the populace who now found themselves in full control of their destiny and self-determination. Instead the liberated population could not quickly enough destroy, burn and gut, synagogues, schools, houses and infrastructure left behind by the Jews and then turn around and try to destroy each other.
There have been no exciting nation building programs implemented to give new direction and vision to Gaza’s population. Destruction, not creation, has become the buzzword in Gaza.
Sadly statehood is the last thing that Gaza wanted because it would put an end to the claim of statelessness, terminate the claim to refugee status by a large proportion of its population and signal the end of the perpetual financial support received from UNWRA.
Furthermore statehood might be taken to be an abandonment of further claims to any land that formerly comprised the Mandate of Palestine.
The reticence of the Arab League in these circumstances was misplaced. True, Statehood for Gaza would pull the rug from under the feet of this cartel and put pressure on it to end its refusal to recognise or negotiate with the State of Israel. But the League’s policy of silence and its’ failure to intervene has seen Gaza’s population become a killing field of ever growing proportions.
The Quartet however need not have been so coy. It had a different agenda aimed at solving “the Palestinian question” which it considered to be the most intractable problem in the Middle East.
The removal of all Jews from Gaza presented the Quartet with the opening it had been desperately seeking to take a giant step forward in solving this problem. Yet the Quartet faltered dismally in failing to demand that the Parliament in Gaza declare statehood within the boundaries that separate it from Israel and Egypt.
This single act could have been the circuit breaker towards ending 130 years of conflict between Jews and Arabs over the same land.
Instead the Quartet misguidedly focused its efforts on attempting to achieve an overall rather than a partial solution to Arab claims in the West Bank and Gaza in fulfilment of its‘ misconceived Road Map aimed at creating a third State in Mandatory Palestine.
It has now paid the price for its’ folly.
The Quartet’s failure to insist on Gaza declaring its independence has created a void into which Hamas has stepped making it impossible now to achieve statehood in Gaza.
The frantic shuttle diplomacy and endless meetings that seem to never have any outcome other than the accumulation of frequent flyer points for their participants will continue to be held, and the killing and mayhem in Gaza will continue to head the news bulletins.
It is time to call on Jordan and Egypt to play a constructive role in cleaning up the mess in Gaza, which is quickly sinking into the arms smuggling tunnels it has been so busily excavating under its very foundations.
The time for playing semantic word games, holding joint press conferences and grabbing photo opportunities is surely over.
Gaza has all the trappings of a State except declared Statehood.
The Quartet - America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - and the 22 members of the Arab League have allowed this farce to continue for the last 18 months.
Gaza, larger in area than Malta, has a President, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, a full complement of Ministers, a burgeoning bureaucracy, observers to every United Nations Committee you can think of, delegations to countries all around the world, a flag and an anthem and most importantly of all - not one Jew.
It is as racially pure as you could imagine, making South Africa’s apartheid regime pale in comparison.
The 7000 Jews living in Gaza were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses 18 months ago. That they were so evicted by other Jews, supposedly for their safety, is shameful. However given half a chance the Gazan Arabs would have willingly expelled the Jews. They even boasted that it was their campaign of terror and violence that finally forced the Jews to leave. Ethnic cleansing is apparently acceptable where Jews are the victims.
The violence against Jews has been replaced by the killing and intimidation of Gaza’s now exclusively Arab citizenry, as Hamas and Fatah each battle to assert their authority over the other in an internecine struggle that shows no signs of abating.
The people without a land who had been yearning for a land for the last 40 years suddenly found itself in full possession and control of part of that land but just couldn’t bring itself to utter the magic words of independence. Figuratively speaking the jilted bride was left waiting at the mosque.
The occupation had ended, the occupiers had gone but the population acted as though nothing had changed.
There was no rejoicing and dancing in the streets, no hugs embraces and tears among the populace who now found themselves in full control of their destiny and self-determination. Instead the liberated population could not quickly enough destroy, burn and gut, synagogues, schools, houses and infrastructure left behind by the Jews and then turn around and try to destroy each other.
There have been no exciting nation building programs implemented to give new direction and vision to Gaza’s population. Destruction, not creation, has become the buzzword in Gaza.
Sadly statehood is the last thing that Gaza wanted because it would put an end to the claim of statelessness, terminate the claim to refugee status by a large proportion of its population and signal the end of the perpetual financial support received from UNWRA.
Furthermore statehood might be taken to be an abandonment of further claims to any land that formerly comprised the Mandate of Palestine.
The reticence of the Arab League in these circumstances was misplaced. True, Statehood for Gaza would pull the rug from under the feet of this cartel and put pressure on it to end its refusal to recognise or negotiate with the State of Israel. But the League’s policy of silence and its’ failure to intervene has seen Gaza’s population become a killing field of ever growing proportions.
The Quartet however need not have been so coy. It had a different agenda aimed at solving “the Palestinian question” which it considered to be the most intractable problem in the Middle East.
The removal of all Jews from Gaza presented the Quartet with the opening it had been desperately seeking to take a giant step forward in solving this problem. Yet the Quartet faltered dismally in failing to demand that the Parliament in Gaza declare statehood within the boundaries that separate it from Israel and Egypt.
This single act could have been the circuit breaker towards ending 130 years of conflict between Jews and Arabs over the same land.
Instead the Quartet misguidedly focused its efforts on attempting to achieve an overall rather than a partial solution to Arab claims in the West Bank and Gaza in fulfilment of its‘ misconceived Road Map aimed at creating a third State in Mandatory Palestine.
It has now paid the price for its’ folly.
The Quartet’s failure to insist on Gaza declaring its independence has created a void into which Hamas has stepped making it impossible now to achieve statehood in Gaza.
The frantic shuttle diplomacy and endless meetings that seem to never have any outcome other than the accumulation of frequent flyer points for their participants will continue to be held, and the killing and mayhem in Gaza will continue to head the news bulletins.
It is time to call on Jordan and Egypt to play a constructive role in cleaning up the mess in Gaza, which is quickly sinking into the arms smuggling tunnels it has been so busily excavating under its very foundations.
The time for playing semantic word games, holding joint press conferences and grabbing photo opportunities is surely over.
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