Africa, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa

Q&A: 'Israel In a Weak Parallel with Apartheid'

Interview with Dennis Davis, High Court Judge in Cape Town

JERUSALEM, Jul 31 2008 (IPS) - In Israel's control of Palestinian movement, Dennis Davis sees a "stark" parallel with the old, apartheid South Africa of which he was an outspoken critic. But Davis, a Justice of the High Court in Cape Town and a prominent member of the South African Jewish community, strongly rejects those who "run from that into an immediate conclusion" that Israel is an apartheid state.

Davis, who was also involved in drafting the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa, recently visited Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of a delegation of prominent South African civil rights activists. In its closing statement, the group said it had not come "to bring solutions, or to spend our time here debating solutions," but that it wanted "to learn, and to witness first-hand the suffering, pain, anger and human rights abuses."

The Israel-South Africa comparison is one that is increasingly used by Israel's critics and by those who question the very legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is a comparison that incenses Israelis and many Jews around the world. But it is also a comparison that some of Israel's leaders have invoked in an attempt to convince Israelis that ceding territory to the Palestinians is vital to the country's future survival.

Davis, who is a former chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and a former head of the Centre for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, spoke to Peter Hirschberg from IPS about the "apartheid" parallel and about the political impotency that he senses on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

IPS: Israel has been accused of adopting policies that are reminiscent of apartheid South Africa. Is this a fair comparison?

Dennis Davis: I think the only issue is with the movement of people. This is remarkably similar to certain forms of influx control (in the old South Africa). And it's so much more sophisticated. We didn't have computers. And the separate roads and separate number plates (for Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank) is unquestionably a more sophisticated form of restriction of movement of the kind that we had. The fact that you've got those definitions at some of those controls, of what constitutes an Israeli and what constitutes somebody else, is not entirely unreminiscent of what we had. I was deeply disturbed by that because I hadn't realised how stark that parallel was.

IPS: So you feel the comparison is valid? DD: It is unfortunate that people now run from that into an immediate conclusion that this is an apartheid state. We met Israel's Chief Justice and what is clear is that there is a pretty relaxed form of (judicial) standing by which Palestinians can petition the High Court of Justice in Israel. That's impressive. That obviously didn't exist in South Africa. And within Israel itself, there aren't zones the way we had group areas (for blacks and whites). Arabs who live here can also vote and have rights of citizenship.

This is not so much a discrimination based on ethnic identity in the broad sense of Arab versus Jew. It does seem to me to be a very intricate form of social control.

IPS: Apartheid was based on racial superiority.

DD: There's no racial superiority here. There's no pervading ideology that confirms the inferiority of Palestinians.

Both sides play the victim. There is tremendous competition over who the victim is. When you have a notion of victimhood what you tend to do is to dehumanise the other. I think there is a lot of dehumanising of the other on both sides. If I was a Palestinian I'd probably be very, very angry. If I was an Israeli who had suffered suicide bombings I'd be incredibly angry as well.

The one group that impressed me most of all was the Parents Circle (made up of bereaved parents on both sides). I was incredibly moved by them. That sort of group and others perhaps are the beginnings of what in South Africa became a much more non-racial movement. In South Africa, the prefiguring of the society in which whites and blacks could live together began a very long time ago. The Communist Party. The trade unions. There's much less of that here. There is such an absence of integration here.

When you separate populations like this and lock them into an almost fatal embrace then there's a dehumanising aspect to it. What's good about the Parents Circle is that it does show there is at least some movement toward seeing the humanity in the other. I look at the soldiers. I look at these kids. It's got to dehumanise them. You can't be policemen at border posts like this, having to question people, and not have your humanity affected. I cry for them.

But I think it's incredibly unhelpful to say you can simply take this to be apartheid and therefore the South African struggle is the same and the South African solution is the same. That's a very lazy form of reasoning.

IPS: One of the problems for Israel with the apartheid analogy is that its own leaders use it, albeit with very different intentions to those who challenge the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has invoked the comparison, warning Israelis that if they don't relinquish the territories they will find themselves in a South Africa-type situation in which a minority of Jews rules over a majority of Palestinians, and that will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

DD: But the paradox of it for an outsider is this: that argument is very compelling but also bizarre, because at the same time that you're making it, you then drive through the West Bank and you are struck by the permanency of settlements. So what worries one is that successive Israeli governments have made it more difficult to get to a two-state solution.

For somebody who really wants the state of Israel not only to exist but to flourish, which is me, I've got to say that I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that they're trying to keep two contradictory balls in the air at the same time. It doesn't work. If you continue to strengthen West Bank settlement for another five years, lord alone knows what will happen. You can't do that and talk the demographic game at the same time.

IPS: When it comes to finding a way to unlock the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can the South African paradigm be applied?

DD: If you are going to work within the paradigm that's being argued at present in Israel, which is the two-state solution, then you are dealing with a divorce, whereas in the South African context you were dealing with a marriage. So in the South African context the entire struggle was about the terms of a marriage, whereas here it seems to be about the distribution of property after the divorce. That inherently puts you in an entirely different business.

But there is one parallel. I really do believe that if an Israeli prime minister had the courage tomorrow morning to say 'Fine, we are going to talk about a comprehensive two-state solution and we'll even deal with the refugee problem through compensation,' then I think what you'd notice in the South African experience is that at some point the momentum is too great to claw it back.

When De Klerk unbanned the ANC in 1990, no way did he say there would be an ANC government. He hoped he could unban the ANC, normalise politics and cobble together a coalition that would enable him to retain power. At some point it became clear to him that he wasn't going to be able to do it. It was too late to put the genie back in the bottle. I think that's possible here as well. But where is this impetus going to come from?

IPS: With Olmert embroiled in a corruption scandal that seems to have ended his term in office, the current Israeli government doesn't have the political will to take such a dramatic step?

DD: No, the government doesn't have the political will. And the Americans (aren't pushing). Unless there is going to be a dramatic change with Obama, if he gets in. And your economy isn't suffering. So where is the impetus to do this? And given the divisions amongst the Palestinians at the moment, Israel could happily see them off for years to come.

This is not South Africa 1985. This is not a situation where you can say, 'Sanctions are biting and the resistance is showing no sign of dying down.'

But it can't work when you reach the point when you're actually suppressing the majority of the population. How ironic it would be if all my (South African) friends who live here will then be living under something they sought genuinely to escape from.

IPS: Another difference between the two situations is that unlike the ANC, Palestinian leaders seem hopelessly ineffective when it comes to galvanising their people around a single vision and crafting a coherent political strategy.

DD: Hugely ineffective. You do not need to persuade me about the quite chaotic nature of Palestinian politics, which strikes you on a visit like this. The most impressive groups are the ones where you go to the villages and they really are dealing only with local politics. Where they have been almost totally left alone by Fatah and Hamas. But it's simply local politics: 'Give us back our field.'

There's no broader vision. There's no sense of political vision. Both Fatah and Hamas are pretending they're totally in control and that the other one isn't. What Hamas is able to show is that if you deal with the social question – not that they've done it very well – you can grab hold. But is there anything that cements and holds the Palestinian people together as the ANC did in South Africa? No.