South Africa is rapidly making itself irrelevant to the future of the Middle East. In a way, it may not matter at all. We have not been a factor in that part of the world since World War 2. More than 10,000 South African soldiers were taken prisoner by the Nazis at Tobruk in Libya in 1942 and more than 700 were killed in the more successful battle of El Alamein when the British Eighth Army defeated the German general Erwin Rommel.
On Friday the newspapers reported that the government would soon support a motion in parliament to close, at least temporarily, the Israeli embassy here in protest against that country’s bombardment of the Palestinian territory of Gaza following a harrowing attack on Israel on October 7 by Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians killed more than 1,400 Israelis. In retaliation, and claiming to be in pursuit of Hamas in Gaza, the Israelis have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians. The motion the ANC government will support has been moved by the EFF.
It will call on Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire and to commit to binding UN arbitration to bring a “lasting peace”. That is a big ask. The UN has been trying to bring a “lasting peace” to Israel and Palestine and to the wider Middle East for as long as I can remember and there is little reason, however horrific the circumstances, to believe it will happen now.
Apart from the obvious hypocrisy in tolerating the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and subsequent murder of thousands of innocent civilians) and condemning the Israelis in Gaza, the South African position is hopelessly sentimental and intellectually mindless.
The government insists it supports a so-called two-state solution in Palestine and, in pursuit of this, it seems, it will break diplomatic relations with one of the most scientifically and industrially innovative countries on earth.
Is the ANC perhaps in possession of some Palestinian document in which agreement to a two-state solution is written down as a solemn pledge? If it is, why keep it secret?
But while Israel’s aggression now in Gaza is unbearable, the fact is that it has been the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbours, not Israel, that have opposed the two-state solution. Essentially, the two-state solution harks back to the original UN resolution to establish Israel in 1947. It voted at the time to establish a simultaneous Palestinian state, but the Palestinians said no, and they have walked away from it many times since.
So you have to ask, as it readies itself for action, what is our government proposing the Palestinians now do? Is the ANC perhaps in possession of some Palestinian document in which agreement to a two-state solution is written down as a solemn pledge? If it is, why keep it secret?
If not, then what end is the ANC pursuing? It has yet to condemn the terror Hamas unleashed in Israel more than a month ago. And it has never offered any form of condolence to the large local Jewish community. In fact, a draft statement prepared inside the ANC last week — but thankfully never published — would have called the Hamas murders in Israel “unfortunate”.
This is where taking sides in a quasi-religious conflict will take you. The liberal New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof says there is no right or wrong side in this conflict and he is so obviously correct. “Life isn’t that neat,” he wrote this week.
“The tragedy of the Middle East is that this is a clash of right vs right. That doesn’t excuse Hamas’s massacre and savagery or Israel’s levelling of entire neighbourhoods in Gaza … Israelis deserve their country, forged by refugees in the shadow of the Holocaust.
“Likewise, Palestinians deserve a country, freedom and dignity — and they shouldn’t be subjected to collective punishment … whichever side you are more inclined towards, remember that the other includes desperate human beings merely hoping that their children can live freely and thrive in their own nation.”
In a few weeks, Israel’s bombardment has killed half a percent of Gaza’s population. It is enough already and most of humanity, including Israel’s severely tested friends, know it.And it is fine to cry “Stop”. But to walk away from one side of this war with only the fuzziest of solutions in mind to end it, the government is signalling it is not available to the world for serious diplomacy.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.