The following statement was delivered by GOOD Media Officer, Cameron Arendse on behalf of GOOD Secretary-General, Brett Herron at a multi-party press conference hosted by Africa 4 Palestine in Cape Town today.
1 July 2020
GOOD: STATEMENT ON PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
South Africans have a special obligation to share their experiences of apartheid with the world and thereby contribute to limiting the opportunities for such crimes against humanity to occur elsewhere.
The conflict between Palestine and Israel bears great similarities to the apartheid conflict. It contains elements of racial and spatial division, land conquest, inequality, gross violation of human rights and societal militarisation that are very familiar to us.
The GOOD movement supports the so-called two-state solution, peacefully negotiated, that will enable the people of Palestine and Israel to live side-by-side, in mutual respect, in autonomous states.
Israel’s United States-endorsed plan to annex Palestinian land that its settlers have effectively invaded on the West Bank is the opposite of that. It has been labelled illegal by the United Nations.
The plan fragments Palestinian-held land, and denies Palestinians living on the annexed land Israeli citizenship. The word that comes to mind is “Bophuthatswana”, the apartheid Bantustan.
It is a plan which makes no allowance for mutual respect or peace; in fact, it is not a plan but a recipe for violence, insecurity and disaster. It must be stopped.
GOOD believes in the rule of law, applied equally to all people and nations. When people or nations do not comply with the law, be they in Africa, North America or the Middle-East – be they Palestine or Israel – the United Nations must be empowered to rein them in and hold them to account.
Israel’s plan contradicts UN resolutions. The UN needs the support of all good people to be able to assert its authority.
In a globalised world battling a viral pandemic which doesn’t comply with border restrictions, and with radical climate events already occurring due to climate change, accountability is essential for our collective sustainability.
Ends…