The South African solution will not work in Palestine Mondoweiss – Mondoweiss
Posted By admin on August 30, 2022
ANTI-COLONIAL RESISTANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ISRAEL/PALESTINEIdentity, Nationalism, and Raceby Ran Greenstein244 pps. Routledge $128
Human rights organizations Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and BTselem have determined Israels rule of Palestinians meets the criteria for the internationally-designated crime of apartheid, a crime against humanity named after the system of laws that enshrined white-minority rule in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.
A new book by South African-Israeli sociologist Ran Greenstein, Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/Palestine, is a natural source for the similarities and differences that exist between the human rights struggles of Israel/Palestine and South Africa.
Greenstein has previously in his career addressed the history of both the victory for majority rule in South Africa, and the history of anti-colonial resistance in Palestine, including a previous book from 2014, which traces, the small democratic movements overtaken by the momentum of Jewish nation-state nationalism (and the oppression that it required), from the onset of the Zionist project onward.
The purpose of this new book is to observe the differences and similarities in these particular versions of both colonialism and resistance.
One might think these could lead to envisioning how Israel/Palestine could experience a similar transition from an oppressive ethnonational state to democracy, as South Africa did. Yet Greensteins argument is slightly more sobering, concluding that Palestinians do not now have the traction to force a South African solution leading to a peaceful agreement modeled after the framework of majority rule with protections for minorities.
Greenstein explains his reasoning in his concluding chapters (after first taking us through a review of the histories of resistance in South Africa and Palestine). Here, Greenstein critiques the usefulness of settler colonialism as a label and an analytical category when applied to both South Africa and Palestine:
Its strongest point is also its weakest: it is applicable to a great diversity of conditions.
It can be applied to societies in which settlers overwhelmed the indigenous population to the point that it became negligible, no more that 23% of the population in the United States of America (USA), Canada, and Australia [and can be applied to places like] Kenya, Rhodesia, Algeria, Mozambique, and South Africa [where] indigenous people remained the bulk of the population and the main source of labour power.
Greenstein notes that Palestinians are demographically divided into four main groups citizens of Israel, residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, neighboring refugees, and the worldwide diaspora of Palestinians all with different priorities and ranges of activity.
In contrast to white South Africa, which was absolutely dependent on the labor of non-whites, Israel needs nothing from Palestinians except that they mostly leave and never return.
Even with the existence of solidarity between those groups, Greenstein argues that the record shows an inability on the part of these disparate communities to seriously threaten the continuation of the Zionist state and its dedication to Jewish control.
In contrast to white South Africa, which was absolutely dependent on the labor of non-whites, Israel needs nothing from Palestinians except that they mostly leave and never return. Labor from the West Bank (and previously, from Gaza) is useful but not essential.
Greenstein asserts that in the South African case, external boycott pressure against apartheid supplemented the robust power of years of organizing the African and colored workforce, together with a broad civil resistance movement led by the African National Congress.
He says that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign abroad, though admirable and worthwhile, cannot augment missing Palestinian power, and nor can it exert pressure on the Israeli regime on its own.
The Israel/Palestine system meets the definition of apartheid in international law but presents different challenges for the campaign against it than was the case for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The most important of these is the challenge of effecting change from within when the bulk of the forces seeking such change are located without, both physically and conceptually.
In Greensteins opinion, expecting the same results as boycotts of white-ruled South Africa ends up ignoring the most important part of South Africas anti-apartheid strategy: the internal mass struggle to undermine and transform the political system from within.
Greenstein points out that throughout its history, white supremacy in South Africa was a means to ensure white prosperity, using black labour as its foundation. Apartheid was just an institutionalized continuation of that history, and a means of entrenching white domination.
In contrast, Zionist colonization was of the land, not the people.Hebrew labor and the Conquest of the Land were the main slogans during the era of the pre-1948 Yishuv.
Zionist projects meant armed Zionist settlements with Jewish-only workers, Jewish-only enterprises, Jewish-only commercial channels, and Jewish-only land purchases by the Jewish National Fund (ever since 1901) for the Jewish people, all of this being in service of creating a self-sufficient Jewish society that could operate independently of the indigenous Palestinian population, even before the Nakba.
Land bought by the Zionist organization meant tenant farmers were removed. This confirmed the meaning of Zionist immigration to Arabs as dislocation and beggary in their own country, as properties were turned to enterprises, intentionally to the exclusive benefit of Jews.
Understanding the nature of Jewish settlement organized by Zionist organizations makes clear why developing pressure for a resolution by mutual accommodation is elusive, as Zionist doctrines only value Jewish hegemony, as isolated as possible from Arabs, despite PR flim-flam.
Greenstein analyzes the difference as follows:
Israel/Palestine has experienced a different trajectory, producing two distinct ethno-national groups competing over territory and resources, without entering into relations of inter-dependence as was the case in South AfricaPolitical domination was primarily a means to an economic end in South Africa and an end in itself in Israel/Palestine.
There is one function that the population of the West Bank and Gaza serve for Israels biggest new industry world-wide arms and security technology sales. Jeff Halper describes the Palestinians residing there as the test bed for new product development.
The power of Israel to use, at will, a matrix of high-tech surveillance and targeted assasination, is refined and developed when it is used against Palestinian resistance, sumud, and bare human determination, as Mariam Barghouti has reported in her profile of Ibrahim Nabulsi, the lion of Nablus.
Greenstein diagrams the power relations in South Africa and Palestine in the twentieth century that reduced Palestinian resistance to individual martyrs with personal weapons against a technologically modern army, and to various militias that can fire low-grade rockets.
With much of its population exiled from Israel proper in 1947-48, the Palestinian resistance/liberation movement needed to organize in neighboring Arab states. This made the Palestinian resistance beholden to inconstant external allies that Israel had the resources to threaten or co-opt. He wonders if the movement would have done better to have had no support or at least have done no worse.
Outside support ultimately hobbled developing a unified Palestinian-centered front and goals, alternating between Palestinian, pan-Arab nationalist, religious-affiliated, international Communist, and big power politics imperatives.
Fatally, what joint Jewish-Arab organizing that does exist is not a mass movement. Greenstein points out that 100 years ofZionist work forced a rigid Jewish/non-Jewish binary in Palestine, forestalling significant alliances based on other shared interests and identities across that chasm.
A unifying set of articulated goals was one of the strengths of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. When the time came for negotiations there was an agreed set that could be forcefully demanded, with thought-through features of universal respect of rights that enabled white acceptance.
The ANC could offer both the credible threat of making apartheid governance impossible using labor actions and mass mobilizations and credible plans for a multi-racial democracy.
The basic thrust of Greensteins thesis is that something will have to change to end Israeli ethnonationalist domination from the river to the sea. This conclusion is not bright and hopeful. The nationalisms of Palestine and Zionist Israel have no overlap that can lead to foreseeing a South African-style negotiated resolution based on a shared identity between dominator and subjugated.
This conclusion has political implications. The project of Israeli settlement beyond the 1949 armistice lines means the time of the internationally-favored two-state solution is over. In fact, it was never really a serious Israeli goal to begin with.
The now many human rights reports that have found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid have also highlighted how the pressing need for Palestinian freedom and political rights is a direct mirror of the imperative for freedom that animated the anti-apartheid movement int South Africa, including the need to equitably share resources, but without any obvious road to that goal except through bloody cataclysm.
It may seem that Greenstein is indulging in an academic exercise by comparing what South Africa was able to achieve to the struggle of Palestine. But without intoxicating rhetoric and cheer leading, he ventures his consideration of Palestines struggle against its own versions of apartheid and settler colonialism, and whether any common interests can cross the rigid Zionist distinction of Jewish Israeli and Arab Palestinian.
This book is no polemic; it does not aim to argue that the partition in 1947 was wrong, or that the Nakba was a historic crime, or that the occupation is a continuation of that Zionist original sin. Those are all given.
Justice must be accompanied by the exercise of effective pressure in order to realize it. The question then becomes: by what forces?
Rather, the assumption and implicit exploration of the book is that proving the justice of the Palestinian cause will do nothing alone. Justice must be accompanied by the exercise of effective pressure in order to realize it. The question then becomes: by what forces?
One may very well ask at this point what relevance South Africa holds for the future of Palestine? Does Greensteins survey of organizing strategies in both countries matter?
For this author, it seems that the example of South Africa is relevant because it is a case of brutal repression based on race. Concerted pressure and negotiation created a new country based on shared citizenship with multiple identities.
Its worth at least a look at how that happened, considering the suffering built into the alternatives for Israel/Palestine an ugly situation of brutal repression based on ethnicity, and a constant train of martyrs.
This movement needs a newsroom that can cover all of Palestine and the global Palestinian freedom movement.
The Israeli government and its economic, cultural, and political backers here in the U.S. have made a decades-long investment in silencing and delegitimizing Palestinian voices.
Were building a powerful challenge to those mainstream norms, and proving that listening to Palestinians is essential for moving the needle.
Become a donor today and support our critical work.
Read the rest here:
The South African solution will not work in Palestine Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss
- Playing for Palestine: Former captain of Israel's youth soccer team explains why he switched nationalities - Ynetnews - September 18th, 2023
- Giant artwork of the Moon to be installed in Palestine's Aida camp - The National - September 18th, 2023
- Palestine wins battle of the Wildcats, downs Prosper Walnut Grove ... - Palestine Herald Press - September 18th, 2023
- Ireland, Israel and Palestine: how politics and history have created a ... - TheJournal.ie - September 18th, 2023
- Aya Khatib, a Palestinian mother of two, begins to serve four years ... - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - September 18th, 2023
- Growing up Palestinian after the Oslo Accords | Israel-Palestine ... - September 14th, 2023
- Pasts That Persist: Perspectives from Iraq and Palestine Peace ... - Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) - September 14th, 2023
- How Labor Shortages Affect Housing And Us & Them Takes Us To East Palestine, This West Virginia Morning - West Virginia Public Broadcasting - September 14th, 2023
- A new vision of Palestine: reviewing 'In the Shade of the Sun' - Mondoweiss - September 14th, 2023
- Increase in the price of vegetables, poultry, and diesel pushes up ... - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - September 14th, 2023
- UNESCO to vote on Ancient Jericho joining World Heritage list as site in Palestine - The Times of Israel - September 5th, 2023
- Reading the Minutes From the Israel-Palestine Oslo Accords Is Depressing - Opinion - Haaretz - September 5th, 2023
- Palestine criticizes U.S. for inaction on Israeli violations in West Bank - Xinhua - September 5th, 2023
- Grandmother still living in hotel 7 months after East Palestine train ... - News 5 Cleveland WEWS - September 5th, 2023
- Biden's press secretary: 'The President will go to East Palestine' - WFMJ - September 5th, 2023
- The fruits of Palestine and their symbolism - Al Jazeera English - September 5th, 2023
- Increase of 2.68% in the industrial production index in Palestine ... - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - September 5th, 2023
- What East Texans think Labor day means while celebrating on Lake Palestine - KETK | FOX51 | EastTexasMatters.com - September 5th, 2023
- Young People Express Solidarity With Palestine While the West ... - The Glasgow Guardian - September 5th, 2023
- Autumn 2023 call to action: join us in Palestine during the olive harvest - International Solidarity Movement - September 5th, 2023
- Michel Martin heads to Israel and Palestine to discuss politics and ... - TheJournal.ie - September 5th, 2023
- King Abdullah and Abbas reject Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine - Arutz Sheva - September 5th, 2023
- Is BRICS really the lifeline Palestine needs? - Al Jazeera English - August 30th, 2023
- Palestine hails Libya's stance of refusing to normalize relations with Israel - Anadolu Agency | English - August 30th, 2023
- Palestine: 1 Dead After Fight Erupts Between Civilians And Security Forces In West Bank Refugee Camp - Outlook India - August 30th, 2023
- The Palestinian leader who survived the death of Palestine - The Times of Israel - August 30th, 2023
- Foreign aid has been a tool of suppression in Palestine - The New Arab - August 30th, 2023
- UK seeking to block ICJ ruling on Israeli occupation of Palestine - The Guardian - August 30th, 2023
- Festival of Radical Thinking: Palestine: From Colonisation to ... - Honi Soit - August 30th, 2023
- Venezuela promotes its diplomatic representation to Palestine from a representative office to embassy - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - August 20th, 2023
- Norfolk Southern riddled with safety issues before toxic East Palestine crash - People's World - August 20th, 2023
- SA out of step with BRICS on relations with Israel and Palestine - Daily Maverick - August 20th, 2023
- The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of ... - Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - August 20th, 2023
- New Palestine Convention on tap tonight; top 5 winners will be on ... - Greenfield Daily Reporter - August 20th, 2023
- New school year starts for some in Palestine while the rest to start ... - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - August 20th, 2023
- Cleveland researchers launch study of long-term health impacts from East Palestine toxic spill, but where is - cleveland.com - August 20th, 2023
- I was Israels most senior diplomat. I urge Australia to recognise the ... - August 14th, 2023
- Benjamin Netanyahu's Judicial Reform Is About Supercharging the Occupation of Palestine - Jacobin magazine - August 14th, 2023
- Academic Freedom and Palestine: Threats and Trends - Arab Center Washington DC - August 14th, 2023
- Fadwa Tuqan was the fearless voice of Palestine in times of strife - Middle East Monitor - August 14th, 2023
- East Palestine Eagles drive thru dinner | News, Sports, Jobs - The Review - August 14th, 2023
- From Afghanistan to East Palestine and Hawaii, Biden's pattern of ... - Washington Examiner - August 14th, 2023
- Palestine boy who received life-changing prosthetic in Michigan returns home to Gaza in emotional farewell - CBS News - August 14th, 2023
- Palestine: Enhancing the safety of women journalists in the ... - International Federation of Journalists - August 14th, 2023
- Norfolk Southern announces plans to open permanent field office in East Palestine - CBS News - August 14th, 2023
- Increase in the prices of vegetables and fruits brings up consumer ... - WAFA - Palestine News Agency - August 14th, 2023
- The Palestinian Leader Who Survived the Death of Palestine - August 1st, 2023
- Weaponising water in Palestine | Israel-Palestine conflict - Al Jazeera - August 1st, 2023
- The Palestinian Leader Who Survived the Death of Palestine - Foreign Policy - August 1st, 2023
- 'I owe it to the citizens' East Palestine mayor talks about his ... - News 5 Cleveland WEWS - August 1st, 2023
- Young Americans Are Swinging Toward Palestines Cause - July 26th, 2023
- Israeli forces are increasing attacks on healthcare workers in Palestine - July 26th, 2023
- The Palestine Red Crescent Society Warns of the Serious Attacks ... - ReliefWeb - July 26th, 2023
- Meaning of Solidarity in the Time of a New Palestine - CounterPunch - July 26th, 2023
- UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine: Israel has turned all of Palestine into 'an open-air prison' to further annexation plans - Mondoweiss - July 16th, 2023
- Pakistan, Palestine and the World Court - Human Rights Watch - July 16th, 2023
- Navigating The Complexities Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict OpEd - Eurasia Review - July 16th, 2023
- Officials with New Palestine approve annexation of land for future ... - Greenfield Daily Reporter - July 16th, 2023
- It is time for Ireland to lead the way on Palestine, says TD - Anglo Celt - July 16th, 2023
- Contested Statehood and Jurisdiction: Palestine and the Mangisto ... - EJIL: Talk! - July 11th, 2023
- Jordan, Palestine to boost trade and investment - Arab News - July 11th, 2023
- Good to help: East Palestine getting state-of-the-art fire truck in wake of train derailment - WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland - July 11th, 2023
- Concession stand open in East Palestine | News, Sports, Jobs - SalemNews.net - July 11th, 2023
- UN condemns Israels use of excessive force in attack on Palestine - The Guardian - July 7th, 2023
- Israel-Palestine: What the raid on Jenin signals about the future of the conflict - Vox.com - July 7th, 2023
- Israel/Palestine one of the few Middle East areas getting less stable - GZERO Media - July 7th, 2023
- What the raid on Jenin says about the future of Israel and Palestine ... - The Guardian - July 7th, 2023
- Visit of Secretary (CPV and OIA) to Palestine - Ministry of External Affairs - July 7th, 2023
- Nour Odeh discusses Why and How Israel Invaded Jenin Palestine - WMNF - July 7th, 2023
- In Dialogue with the State of Palestine, Experts of the Human Rights ... - OHCHR - July 7th, 2023
- Reporting and Proposal Development Officer - Palestine - occupied ... - ReliefWeb - July 7th, 2023
- WATCH: UK MP Jeremy Corbyn grabs hand of Jewish reporter when asked to condemn Palestine militants recruiting teens - Firstpost - July 7th, 2023
- India urges to prioritize unimpeded delivery of aid to Palestine - Prensa Latina - July 7th, 2023
- Interview: 15 Years Of Jewish Solidarity With Palestine - The Maple - July 7th, 2023
- Jenin in Ruins but What Does it Mean for the Israel-Palestine Conflict? - News18 - July 7th, 2023
- Group says they will continue to support East Palestine - Mahoning Matters - July 7th, 2023
- Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years - July 5th, 2023
- Mexico Has Fully Recognized the State of Palestine - Jacobin magazine - July 5th, 2023
- Israel-Palestine Conflict: China Mounts Offensive In The Heart Of Middle East; Looks To Resolve Worlds Deadliest Fight - EurAsian Times - July 5th, 2023
- Believe it or not, justice will prevail in Palestine - Al Jazeera English - July 5th, 2023
Comments