A Conversation with Na'eem Jeenah on Sheikh Jarrah, Masjid Al-Aqsa, and Israeli Apartheid
Editor’s Note: In the wake of recent events happening in Israel-Palestine, I spoke to Na’eem Jeenah, a South African academic and former anti-apartheid activist. Na’eem is unique in that he is a political analyst, who also has the personal experience of living under apartheid in South Africa, and playing a role in anti-apartheid activism. Below is a transcription of our 90 minute conversation in full. We spoke on the morning of Monday, May 10th. Since our conversation, Israel has begun an intense onslaught of Gaza that has resulted in the deaths of over 100 people.
Hamzah Raza: I am here with Na’eem Jeenah, the Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre(AMEC), the only research institute in South Africa dedicated exclusively to Middle East policy, and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle. Na’eem previously worked for the Freedom of Expression Institute. He also taught at the University of the Witswaterstrand in the Political Studies department, worked for the Congress of South African Trade Unions(COSATU), is the former editor of a community newspaper called Al-Qalam, was station manager of a community radio station in Johannesburg called The Voice, and was also General-Secretary and President of the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa. Na’eem, is there anything else you want to add in about yourself or about your work at AMEC?
Na’eem Jeenah: Our work at AMEC goes beyond the Middle East and North Africa. We cover other places on the African continent, and also beyond the Middle East. We also cover a few thematic areas that are not geographically bound, such as political Islam. We have a book that just came out last year on that. We also cover terrorism. Those are some of the thematic areas that we cover.
Hamzah: Awesome. To start, would you be able to provide a brief summary of what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah right now?
Na’eem: The Sheikh Jarrah events began a few weeks ago. Well not really a few weeks ago, they began years ago in terms of the attempt by the Israelis to take over the eastern part of Jerusalem. They of course control the western part, but the east has been a problem for them. But also under international law, East Jerusalem is part of the West Bank so supposedly part of this Palestinian state, which doesn’t really exist as a state. But it is supposed to be part of that state. Hence as part of the Palestinian Authority(PA) elections, elections in the past have also taken place in Jerusalem. But under international law, Jerusalem is annexed by Israel illegally. It is part of the West Bank and should not be a part of Israel.
With regard to the Sheikh Jarrah situation, the people in Sheikh Jarrah are a mixture of people. They are partly people from Jerusalem, and partly people who are in a sense refugees who were forced out of places such as Haifa or Yafa, ended up in Jerusalem, and now live in that area. The Palestinians of Jerusalem of course have a different status to all other Palestinians. Palestinians in the West Bank have a particular status as far as Israel is concerned, and in the way that Israel treats them. Palestinians in Gaza have a separate status. Palestinians in Israel have a different status. And Palestinians in Jerusalem have their own status.
Palestinians in Jerusalem, unlike most Palestinians in Israel, cannot be citizens of Israel. They are residents. The residency restrictions are quite strong. If they are away from the city for a certain amount of time, they lose their residency. But the policy of ethnic cleansing is not a few weeks old. It has been ongoing for many years to try and cleanse Jerusalem of the Palestinians. So if we consider that while there is an Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, and an Israeli city council and city budget for Jerusalem, 90% of the city’s budget is directed towards Jewish neighborhoods, and only 10% towards Palestinian neighborhoods, even though Palestinians make up about 40% of the population of Jerusalem. Many of the thousands of Palestinians born in Jerusalem have no legal status. So there’s a whole range of disadvantages for Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Regarding the issue of housing, Israel has a whole range of laws about housing, about building, about extending buildings, and all of that kind of thing. In terms of which basically it is impossible for Palestinians to either build in Jerusalem or even extend their homes in Jerusalem. As a result, some Palestinians do. Families grow and they may add a room or whatever the case might be. And the Jerusalem City Council routinely demolishes Palestinian homes, or forces Palestinians to demolish their homes. Hundreds of such homes have been demolished over the past few years. And thousands of people were made homeless as a result of that. So there’s this concerted effort to get rid of Palestinians from Jerusalem. It is to make their lives so difficult that they will throw up their hands in despair and leave.
And then you also have in East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land, about 200,000 Israelis living in the illegal settlements. Of course, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. So that’s the broader context of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Sheikh Jarrah itself has been targeted for a few years now by Israeli settlers to be taken over. What we saw over the past few weeks and that firstly, the settlers launched a court case through which they seek to get rid of Palestinians from these homes in Sheikh Jarrah. There are close to 80 families that are there, and that are under threat of the court basically saying that this is not their home and that they need to move out. Many of these families have been living in these homes for generations...Three to four generations. Sometimes maybe more.
Then a few weeks ago, the settlers decided that, despite the court case that they launched, which was supposed to start today[Tuesday, May 11th] by the way, but has been delayed for 30 days. Despite that, the settlers are just going to do what they think that they should be doing, which is take over those homes. What we saw in the past couple of weeks is the Israeli settlers literally moving into the Palestinian homes, throwing the residents...the occupants of those homes...out into the street, sometimes throwing their possessions out into the street with them, and just moving in.
Again, this is not entirely new. There are a few houses in Sheikh Jarrah where this already happened a couple of years ago. In this situation, settlers moved in and took over part of the house. So you have a house which is supposedly owned by Palestinians, and has been in that family for generations, but suddenly, half of the house with a wall in between, is now occupied by Israeli settlers. And the Palestinian family that is there is confined to the other half. So this has been the ongoing thing, and what the settlers seek to do through this court case, is to basically get rid of the around 80 families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and take over their homes. This is a 70 year old story. This happened all over Palestine in 1948. So it’s not an entirely new story. But the fact that it is happening in 2021, I think that is quite something.
Hamzah: So this is interesting. If an Israeli settler moves into the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they would be a full citizen of the state of Israel, whereas the East Jerusalemite Palestinians who are living there...They are not citizens of the state of Israel, but they are not also citizens of the Palestinian Authority like other West Bank Palestinians. So what kind of passport do they carry?
Na’eem: They have a very odd status. They don’t have citizenship of Israel. Most of them do not have citizenship of this so-called “State of Palestine.” For many of them, the only thing that they have is a Jerusalem residence card. Hence if they are out of Jerusalem for some time, this creates problems. For example, let’s say you are from Jerusalem and a student and you study in say Sweden, or anywhere else. And let’s say that because of your studies, it takes you more than three years before you come back home. You lose your residence. And you effectively become stateless. So the position of Palestinian Jerusalemites is very tenous.
Jewish Jerusalemites on the other hand, as you say, they are fully citizens. They have full rights as Israeli citizens...Not only Israeli citizens, but Jewish Israeli citizens, which means that they have more rights than Palestinian Israeli citizens.
Hamzah: When these cases are tried in courts, what sort of standing does a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem have? Because they are technically not citizens of the state of Israel.
Na’eem: They have technically proper standing as an appellant to the court. They supposedly have all the rights than an appellant has. The issue however is that even if a court rules properly in terms of the law, that the myriad of laws that exist that tie Palestinians down, and prevent them from exercising their rights is a huge number of laws. I imagined earlier for example about discriminatory laws with regard to housing. So, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, their house may get destroyed and they go to court. And then the court will rule that “Well, it was properly done in terms of the law.” So it might not be just or fair, but it is according to the law. So the laws are really quite restrictive in terms of Palestinians.
Hamzah: And could you also speak to the situation at Masjid Al-Aqsa?
Na’eem: So the Aqsa events started last Friday. Some people are saying that one purpose of the events at Al-Aqsa is to kind of take attention from what’s happening at Sheikh Jarrah and focus it on Al-Aqsa. Whether that is true or not, you had a situation where people were praying. Before that, there were protests in Jerusalem against the forced removals of people from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah. The protests took place in the streets of Jerusalem. The protesters were attacked and beaten down. Some of the protestors might have gone into Masjid Al-Aqsa to try to escape from Israeli police and soldiers. And at night, on Friday night, soldiers went in while people were praying and basically attacked the mosque, and the congregants, and the worshipers who were in the mosque. Tear gas, sound bombs, and rubber coated steel bullets were fired at people causing serious injuries. This continued through Friday night and Saturday night. In a sense, this is still ongoing.
All of this, of course, Jerusalem has a particular status under international law that these actions violate. Masjid Al-Aqsa should technically be under the control of the Jordanian state, not the Palestinian Authority or Israel. So these are violations of international law.
Hamzah: So even the fact that when someone goes to Masjid Al-Aqsa, there are Israeli soldiers who control entry in and out of the place and that the Jordanian Waqf controls internal movements within, is that a violation of international law? The Jordanians seem to only be there by the permission of the Israeli state.
Na’eem: No, so that is an agreement. It is a Palestinian Waqf that reports back to the Jordanians. That is part of an agreement between Jordan and Israel. It is part of an international agreement. This is what is referred to as the “Status Quo” of the holy sites of Jerusalem. These holy sites are ostensibly in control of Jordan, which practically does not mean anything. Israel exerts almost total control over this. You might have today, a statement today coming out from the Arab League meeting in Doha, saying that this is a violation of the “Status Quo,” but that is about it. That “Status Quo” really only exists on paper.
Hamzah: So de facto, Israel is controlling all of Al-Aqsa?
Na’eem: All of Al-Aqsa. All of Jerusalem. All of Palestine. Yes. You can call it a Palestinian Authority and the State of Palestine, but the authority that is in control in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is Israel.
Hamzah: And then, we have seen a lot of international support increase in many ways. In the American context, we have seen a sort of tide turning in support of Palestinian rights, that we have not seen in the past. I remember that when Israel bombed Gaza in 2014, I do not think there was a single sitting elected official in the United States Senate or House of Representatives that condemned Israel’s bombing of Gaza. But now, seven years later, we see a small and growing group of progressive Senators and Congresspeople who are willing to condemn Israeli violations of Palestinian rights. Do you think that the global solidarity movement with Palestine has grown in the past few years? And do you think that Palestinians on the ground have become stronger in their resistance? Or do you think that with the collapse of a lot of these Palestinian institutions and the normalization with Israel of a lot of neighboring Arab countries, are Palestinians not in as strong of a place as they were a few years ago? Or even a few decades ago when there was a lot of hope that a lot of hope that Oslo would bring about an end to this impasse and to this occupation.
Na’eem: So I think there are a few questions there. The first is in terms of the global solidarity movement. I think there is a change, but it is a slow incremental change. Perhaps one indication of this is what you just said with lawmakers in the United States. Another, and perhaps this is more important because it is not incumbent on whether they acted get elected or not, is the number of young Jews in the United States who refuse to support Israel unquestioningly as their parents might have. So I think there is this change. I am not sure if we should be certain that it is a change in a trend. In terms of legislators or members of Congress, those change all the time. But also in terms of political sentiment, that also changes. You have Trump in the White House, and that changes things in a different way. You have a specific Prime Minister in the UK and that also changes things in a different way. So you have these ups and downs. And while it may seem that there is a reversal of this in the US, globally, over the past decade, there has been a trend towards more fascist flavored rulers and governors. There is Trump. There are all of these European countries where these far-right countries are winning seats in parliaments and winning elections, whereas 15 years ago, that would have been unthinkable or even laughable.
You have Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India. It is a particular kind of trend. And when you look at it closely, this trend is very pro-Israeli. So I would not say that this change in tone in terms of global solidarity with Palestinians is necessarily an indication of a long term trend. I think we are seeing that, but it is uneven. And what we are also seeing, and this is important, on the ground around the world, there is less of a feeling amongst ordinary people to support Israel as there may have been in the past. While amongst rulers, this is not necessarily the case.
So for example, I used the case of young Jews in the US. This is not only in the US of course, but I think that in the US, there is enough written about these people in the US to be able to point to something. But you see more and more Jews expressing themselves publicly in support of Palestinians, or in the very least, critical of Israel as Israel moves further and further to the right. Many young Jews who have grown up in democratic states feel as though their values do not necessarily align with those of Israel. And it is not just Jews of course. There is a sense amongst many people around the world that the sort of free ride that Israel has gotten in the past should not be a free ride anymore.
That is in a sense talking about individuals. If we talk about the global solidarity movement with Palestine, I think that there have been huge victories and gains made. If we think that the BDS call was made in 2005, so that is 15 years ago. The victories that have been made not only in terms of consumer boycotts, but even divestments and local city councils around the world refusing to deal with Israel, there have been significant gains made in the past 15 years. In the 15 years of Oslo, we didn’t see these gains. It is clear now that Oslo wasn’t intended to provide any such things. So we are seeing significant gains. As those voices of global solidarity with Palestine become louder and make gains in terms of the discourse globally in many different countries, we will see public discourse in many countries shift in support of Palestinians. And we are seeing that already.
Hamzah: And what would that mean for the reality of Palestinians on the ground? Would you say that the trend in terms of Palestinian organizing on the ground has been a positive one? Or has it been a backslide?
Na’eem: When you say on the ground, you mean in Palestine?
Hamzah: In Palestine. Yes.
Na’eem: I think it depends on where we are talking about. In the West Bank, for example, organizations still exist, and there are still civil society groups. The BDS National Committee is located in Ramallah, and very active globally. But at the same time, the repression has increased. And the security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel helps that to a great extent. Even protests that take place in Ramallah, for example, are shut down by the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. So I think there is an attempt to close down that space within the West Bank.
Gaza is a slightly different situation because I think that the spaces that have been closed are political spaces. In terms of spaces critical of the Israelis, of course, it is not as much. But there are no Israelis inside Gaza. They are policing the borders of Gaza. What we have seen in Gaza over the past few years is certainly an uptick in terms of action. On the one hand, of course, there is the armed resistance. We see the formation in Gaza of coordinated activities between the armed factions. So Hamas being the largest of them. But there is also the PFLP, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, etc. So we see them coordinating their activities and attacks on Israel when those take place.
But apart from that, the Great March of Return, which was nonviolent and sustained over a long period of time, is a great indication of the resistance within Gaza that is unarmed. Even though they are cut off from Israel itself and separated, those activities actually did have an impact without weapons. They had an impact on Israel and Israelis.
And if we look at Palestinians within Israel, on the one hand, there are ups and downs within politics. We saw the Joint List being formed which seemed like a great thing. Now, it is fragmented a bit, which is not as great. But in terms of the general Palestinian population within Israel, and I want to also include East Jeruasalem in here, it seems to be that the levels of action and consciousness have been increasing over the past few years. Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are not only willing to criticize the Israeli state, but also getting involved in actions against the Israeli state. They are getting involved with protests and, right now, supporting Palestinians in Jerusalem. But also in other times, they are expressing support for Palestinians in different places such as the West Bank and Gaza. So we have seen a much more vocal presence of Palestinians within Israel in recent years than there has been in the past. Of course, they make up about 20% of the Israeli population, so that is a significant amount of vocal expression.
As for Palestinians in Jerusalem, the past few weeks has been a good indication of their activities. So I think, in general, among Palestinians and this generation of Palestinians, they were not born when Oslo was signed. I wanted to say the post-Oslo generation, but the impact of Oslo is still upon them so it is not post. But they were not born when Oslo was signed. For them, they are experiencing Hell. So we are seeing the levels of frustration and levels of resistance in many different ways. I think they are certainly increasing among Palestinians within Palestine.
Hamzah: So going to your experience as a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, is there a sort of moment that you would say maps on to where Palestinians are at right now? Would you say that the feeling on the ground and in terms of global solidarity is where South Africans were at in the 70s or the 80s or the early 90s?
Na’eem: Firstly, don’t call me a veteran. The implication of that is that I am old. Former anti-apartheid activist is fine.
Hamzah: [Laughs]. Okay. Former anti-apartheid activist works.
Na’eem: Veteran sounds a bit too auspicious of a word. Look, this is a very difficult question. If you were to have asked me this maybe a few weeks ago, I might have actually been more willing to answer. But over the past few weeks, I have been doing some work on an article that has just been published on the United Nations and Apartheid South Africa. The comparisons in terms of where the struggle is are very difficult to make, and let me explain why I am saying that.
Because we live now in a very different geopolitical world. When the South African liberation movement and the apartheid government came to the negotiating table, it was when the Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was a unipolar world. Pressure on South Africa by its former allies to sort out this problem was quite enormous, including economically. The sanctions were biting.
If you look at the current situation that we are living in now, we do not have the same bipolar world that we had in the 80s, where the South African liberation movement was heavily supported by the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, or by China. We don’t have a situation where a body like the Organization for African Unity(OAU) was fully behind the South African liberation struggle. The Palestinian neighborhood in terms of Arab states have to a large extent sold out the Palestinian struggle. In the midst of what is happening in Jerusalem right now, you are seeing Emiratis posting pictures of themselves having dinner with Israeli settlers. You do not have that kind of neighborhood in Palestine, in terms of states. In terms of ordinary people, that may be a different story.
But in terms of states, what you had in South Africa, was, right until the 90s, is that the states that had recently attained their independence from their colonial masters threw their support behind the South African struggle. The South African liberation movement was able to have military training camps in a good few southern African states and set up political and military offices in those states. You don’t have the same sort of thing right now. Which Arab state or which state at all would be willing to allow Palestinians to have a training base to train their fighters? And from which they could launch attacks against Israel. Or which would allow political offices to be set up?
So in terms of regional support, you do not have that. You don’t have as conducive a situation at the United Nations that the South African anti-apartheid struggle had already from the 50s. The first resolution that came up at the United Nations General Assembly against Apartheid South Africa’s treatment of people who are not White was in the 50s. The Special Committee Against Apartheid as a committee of the UN General Assembly was set up in 1963, long before even you had the Convention on Apartheid. The amount of support that committee received from virtually the entirety of what we now call the Global South-Those states that had just attained their independence-There was virtually entire support from those states. You won’t get that in the UN now. So we are looking at very different periods. It is a very different global situation today.
In South Africa, for example, we had a turning point with the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. It was a turning point where the world took more notice. It was a point where a number of the liberation movements were banned in South Africa. And it was a decisive moment that convinced at least some parts of the liberation movement, such as the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress, to embark on an armed struggle. What happened in Sharpeville? 69 people were killed in a massacre there.
We had another turning point in 1976 with the Soweto Uprising. Students around the whole country then rose up against the apartheid state. It started off as a local protest against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, but then became a national uprising. What happened in Soweto? Depending on whose figures you take, between 200 and 700 people were killed.
You’ve had in Gaza, hundreds and even thousands of people being killed for a period from 2008 until 2014. The number of people killed and injured in that...The number of neighborhoods, not homes, but neighborhoods that were flattened in that was massive. You did not get anything near the amount of global outrage you got in Sharpeville when 69 people were killed.
I am not saying that this means Palestinians are in a worse situation. I am saying that this means that this makes comparisons in terms of timelines extremely difficult. On the other hand, one might say that after 15 years of BDS, many of the gains that the BDS movement has made took the South African struggle decades to achieve. So another of the global phenomena that exist now, that did not exist in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, is the Internet. Social media makes a different kind of organizing much easier in terms of global solidarity.
So all of that is to say, Hamzah, that I would find it very difficult to peg the current Palestinian moment to a timeline that gives a parallel with a South African moment. I think the trajectories are somewhat different while foundationally, we may have lots of similarities. But the trajectories are very different, and I think that we have to look at the Palestinian one in its own uniqueness.
Hamzah: One thing I find interesting about Arab states that are normalizing with Israel is that the people of these states are still very supportive of the Palestinian cause even though the governments are not. So would you say that freedom for Palestinians is premised on an end to authoritarianism in some of these neighboring countries?
Na’eem: I am not 100% sure that your contention is correct. One example that I want to use is the UAE. Certainly, of all of the neighboring countries, it is one of the smaller ones. Nevertheless, it is one of the most assertive ones. If you look at the UAE, it is not just the government. The government took a position of normalization. But that was followed in a sense by an attempted normalization, and certainly it was encouraged by the government, but there was a normalization at a people to people level. Following the government position, their embassies for one thing across the world made special attempts to host events with Israeli embassies for example. So they wanted it to be known that the normalization is not just between two governments, but that it is happening between Emiratis and Israelis all over the world.
Then, among ordinary Emiratis, we are seeing on social media that Emirati families are posting themselves hosting settler families. They are taking pictures of themselves in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem socializing with Israeli Jews, and flaunting this socialization quite proudly. This is people to people normalization, which is quite problematic. But as I said, the UAE, in terms of the neighborhood for Palestine, is one of the smaller countries so maybe we shouldn’t use that as a benchmark. I think that certainly, in some of the other countries, particularly not the monarchies, so the republics...I think that in Saudi Arabia, the situation is certainly not as bad as the UAE in terms of people to people normalization. But I think an element of that does exist there. The one monarchy where that does not hold true is Jordan. I think that the Jordanian population to a large extent remains very pro-Palestinian and will not get into this kind of normalization stuff. And that’s partly, of course, because a large part of that population is Palestinian.
But I think that if you look at Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria- all of these countries- their populations, as you stated, are very anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian irrespective of the policies that their governments might take. In some cases, in Jordan and Egypt, for example, normalization has been there for a long time. In other places, normalization is a different kind of animal, such as in Tunisia. And in the Egypt and Jordan category, we should now also place Morocco and Sudan. Algeria also has no normalization and strong objection to any thought within it.
There are differences amongst the regimes, but I think that in terms of people, I think that you are right. Aside from one or two countries, the sentiment amongst the people is very strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.
So to answer your question, because I gave a long introduction to the answer rather than giving the answer, it is a challenging answer because look, democracy has its own challenges. Countries in the region that democratize often, if their ruling elites are less sympathetic to Palestinians, it is quite easy for their discourse and rhetoric to position the interests of their own citizens against those of Palestinians. They can say “We cannot afford to take strong pro-Palestinian positions or to put sanctions on Israel because we have to fulfill our own requirements of education and health and all of that.” Once the discourse goes in that direction, it is not 100% certain how the population will respond.
Let’s say in the case of Egypt, for example, Egypt has been fully normalized for decades. But the Egyptian political and military elite, they still continue to use the rhetoric that they support the Palestinians. They don’t suggest that Egyptians would be better off if they supported Israel. So that normalization remains at a governmental level. So this is my question: If the Egyptian government were to change the discourse and say: “Look at the amount of poverty that we have in Egypt today. Look at our unemployment. If we were to ease up our opposition to Israel...If we were to open stronger links with them, we would be able to create so many more jobs and lift so many people out of poverty in this and that way, etc. So, as ordinary Egyptians, do you want to continue to live in poverty while supporting the Palestinians? Or do you want to first uplift ourselves before we do that?”
I am not 100% sure what the answer would be in that context.
Hamzah: This is also something that I think of in the American context, also. If you poll Democratic voters, they are overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian. Polling has shown over 60% of Democrats support putting sanctions on Israel. But that doesn’t transfer necessarily transfer to 60% of Democrats picking the candidate that is more pro-Palestinian when they go to the polls. I think that partially it is that most American voters care more about domestic issues such as healthcare and the economy. Foreign policy is very low on their agenda. It is probably one of the last things.
Na’eem: Thus far, in much of the world, it has been convenient to Arab rulers to express vocally support for the Palestinian people because it was a means of distracting their populations from their own issues. If they were to suggest that the Palestinian issue is, in the language that you are saying in the US, that the Palestinian issue is a foreign policy issue, and domestic upliftment needs to be more important than foreign policy issues, that is my question. How would the popular sentiment go if that were to happen? And for that, I do not have an answer.
Hamzah: So democracy is not a guarantee in a sense.
Na’eem: Not necessarily. I think, for example, in Tunisia, they have had relations with Israel over the years in many different kinds of ways. But in Tunisia, there is a strong feeling. But Tunisia also has some serious socio-economic problems that result every now and then in protests. But it is a democracy as compared to Egypt. Certainly, even on the Palestinian issue, the feeling on the street has impacted the politicians. And we certainly have a situation in Tunisia where there is a generation of politicians, many of whom come from a sort of human rights background. I am not saying that it will go in the wrong direction. But I am saying that it is not certain.
Hamzah: And could you also speak to the recent Human Rights Watch Report that recently is an apartheid regime? I would also be interested in your perspective on that as someone who lived under apartheid in South Africa.
Na’eem: So one thing that Human Rights Watch is insistent on saying is that they are not saying that Israel is an apartheid state or that Israel is an apartheid regime. And the reason for that is because they say that apartheid state and apartheid regime are not legal terms, and that their report is a legal report. So what they are saying is that Israel has been engaging or imposing acts of apartheid against the population between the Jordan River and the Meditarranean Sea. So that is basically against everyone living in what was Mandate Palestine. They are saying Israel is imposing apartheid in the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza. The understanding of what is apartheid is from the Convention of Apartheid from 1976.
My perspective is that the Apartheid Convention is an extremely important document. It is an important document because of what it talks about in terms of racial discrimination and making those acts criminal. But another reason why it is important is because it recognizes that apartheid is not merely something that happened in South Africa, or southern Africa. The convention does not have a single reference to South Africa. It has one reference to southern Africa because the convention is referring to South Africa, Namibia, and what was then Rhodesia.
It has one reference to southern Africa, but it is clear that what the convention is about is about certain criminal acts. It is not about a particular regime or a particular state. The move to speak about Israel as apartheid, and hitching that to the convention, I think is very important because this is an international law instrument that is not restricted to any particular country. So the Human Rights Watch position is coming from that perspective. In terms of the convention and in terms of the Rome Statute, the Rome Statute also mentions apartheid, and again, it is not about South Africa. In terms of these international law instruments, the various acts that they talk about in this 200+ page report that Israel carries out are apartheid.
For many South Africans, this is clear. And it has been clear for decades on two levels. The first level is that of acts and actions mentioned in the convention. But also for us as South Africans, there is a more personal appreciation if I can use that term. We have a more personal appreciation of apartheid because we lived under a system that was apartheid. In fact, it called itself apartheid. No one else today would call themselves that, but we did. They designed a system of racial discrimination and called it apartheid. So for many South Africans, whether you are talking about people such as Nelson Mandela to Desmond Tutu to young activists who have never been to Palestine, what they see and hear of what is happening in Palestine is just painfully real.
I will give you another example, Hamzah, of a South African Jewish woman. She writes about this in her autobiography. I can get you her name later. She was involved with feeding schemes--Operation Hunger type stuff. She went to Israel because she is a Jewish woman and Israel is a so-called Jewish state. She wasn’t involved in any of the liberation movements as such. She was a kind of social activist. She writes in her autobiography that she went to Palestine, not as a young girl, she goes in her 40s. She writes how when she came to a checkpoint, it reminded her of what Black people faced in South Africa. It reminded her of what Bantustans meant for Black people in South Africa, and how Israel had different regimes of control for Palestinian people.
So, even for South Africans who were not really politically involved, but their eyes were just open to the realities of what was taking place in this country, when they look at the conditions that Palestinians live in, there is an immediate kind of identification. You don’t have to talk about international law or political theory. There is an experiential kind of identification to say “I recognize this.” For many South Africans, it is actually “I recognize this. And it is much worse than my experience.”
So certainly, for South Africans, seeing, hearing, and reading about the Human Rights Watch report is not that controversial. For ordinary South Africans who may not know the details of the Apartheid Convention, it is not that controversial. For those who look at it more carefully, certainly there is the legal basis on which the report is premised, which is certainly valid. But there is also the experiential basis which the report does not want to go into, which is correctly so I believe.
So for South Africans, it hits home very much. Of course, the apartheid analysis, both from the perspective of comparing Israeli policies to South Africa, which is older in terms of the discourse, and assessing the Israeli policies against the Convention Against Apartheid, which is slightly newer, these realities have been going on for decades. And many South Africans and Palestinians have written about it from both angles, including the legal apartheid convention. One of the big reports on this was the South African Human Sciences Resource Report from the early 2000s, which was a report of international law experts from around the world. And the conclusion was that Israel was carrying out acts of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid based on international law.
So what Human Rights Watch said is not new. What is new is that it is being said by an organization such as Human Rights Watch. They are a kind of mainstream human rights organization that prides itself on having access to the corridors of power in many Western states including the US, and because of that, it is extremely careful not to make statements that it thinks might be viewed as radical or too extreme or too much on the edge. So it is significant that they came out with the report rather than such a report exists.
Hamzah: I actually find this interesting because from years ago, the African National Congress and the South African government have made this apartheid analogy to Israel. This is something that South Africans are very familiar with. And even when you were talking about the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, I am not sure if you did this intentionally, but you called it “forced removals.” And the apartheid government in South Africa, when they would kick people out of areas for White people to move in, the official term they would use is “forced removals.” You also faced forced removals when you were young...Right?
Na’eem: Not in the same kind of way. I never lived in an area that was subsequently declared a different area for a so-called racial group. I always had lived in areas that had already been declared Indian. My closest to anything of that sort was that I lived for a while, from age three to about six, in an Indian township known as Lenasia. And at age six, when my parents had to register me to go to school, none of the schools in Lenasia would register me because my parents were Indians from the province of Natal. We were not allowed to live in this province where Johannesburg was. So we literally had to move back to Durban, which is in the province of Natal, so that I could go to school. I did not experience the forced removal thing. There were different kinds of underlying laws that led to forced removals. One and perhaps the most pervasive was the Group Areas Act, which in terms of the act, different areas were delineated for different so-called racial groups. So if you were Black, for example, and lived in an area that was declared White, or if you were African and lived in an area that was declared Indian, or Indian and lived in an area that was declared Coloured, you were then given notice that you had to move into your own group area. And if you did not move, then you were then removed. And the removals were often quite violent. People’s possessions were sometimes thrown out onto the street. And in some instances, such as District Six in Capetown and Sophiatown in Johannesburg, houses were demolished and new houses were put up for the Whites that would then be moving.
The Group Areas Act was one, but there were also other acts that resulted in forced removals taking place. Areas that were declared Black spots and not for the use of certain groups, of course this never happened to White people, these people would be forcibly removed and literally dumped into some other area. So for us, it is a very personal kind of experience.
But let me also say, Hamzah, that the term eviction also has a sort of gloss of legality attached to it. So news reports talk about how the Israeli Supreme Court will decide on these evictions. But what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah doesn’t even have that facade of legality. When people were removed in South Africa under the Group Areas Act, there was a law. Of course, it was unjust. I am not saying that it was right. But it was a law. There was some legal process. That is why you cannot call what is taking place in Sheikh Jarrah evictions. There is not even a facade of a legal process. We didn’t have in South Africa the kind of situation where White people just decided “Ok this Black suburb is ours. We are just going to go in and forcibly remove people ourselves, throw them on the street, and take over the house,” or “We’ll go move in and take half the house, and leave the Black family half the house.”
This is the reality of what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah. Settlers are going into people’s homes and throwing them, and sometimes their possessions, out onto the street, and moving into the house. And they are being protected by the Israeli security forces, even though the court has not ruled on it. As long as the settler makes a claim, that claim seems to be valid. We did not have this kind of case in South Africa. So in a sense, the forced removals that we are talking about in Sheikh Jarrah are at a completely different kind of dimension and on a different level to the forced removals that we are talking about in South Africa.
Hamzah: This is another thing that I find interesting. In many situations where I speak to South Africans, they will not only say that Israel is an apartheid state. But they will say that it is much worse. They will say we never had forced removals like that of what is going on in Sheikh Jarrah right now. They are just on a higher magnitude than that of a place like District Six in Cape Town. And even in the worst days of apartheid, we never saw walls like the apartheid wall that we have cutting through the West Bank. We never saw Apartheid South Africa drop F-16 missiles or blockade two million people in a Black township like is happening in Gaza right now.
So it is interesting that, from a legal perspective, apartheid does not mean to be like South Africa. But if we were to make that comparison, Israeli apartheid is even worse than South African apartheid.
Na’eem: Absolutely. In terms of policies, how those policies are implemented, and the repression that supports those laws. That is what we had in South Africa. We had a whole range of laws. We had a whole range of institutions to support those laws. And we had a very powerful repressive machinery to support it. In terms of all of those, Israel is much more.
The laws are worse. How those laws are implemented is worse. And that repressive machinery is much, much worse. On that third point, we never had in South Africa fighter jets or helicopter gunships flying over our townships and dropping bombs...Never! This is despite the fact that in its day, the South African arms manufacturing industry was pretty advanced. South Africa was manufacturing some of the most advanced helicopter gunships in the world. We never saw those in our townships. We never saw tanks in our townships. This is routine in the West Bank and Gaza. Dropping bombs from planes and drones is routine. It happened this weekend again. Tanks and soldiers in the West Bank are not just in the equivalent of our townships, but also in cities. It is routine in Palestine. So at all of these levels, the Palestinian experience under apartheid is much heightened, much more intense, and much worse.
Hamzah: And the final question I have is...I have heard you make this statement many times that I find very intriguing. You say that the Palestinian Authority actually has less power than the Bantustans that existed in Apartheid South Africa. So could you speak to that also?
Na’eem: Yes. So in the South African case, what the apartheid regime wanted to do was dilleneate these entities which it fictionally referred to as independent states. This was their scheme of grand apartheid. It would create these entities, create governing structures for these entities, and then all Africans would have their citizenships transferred to these entities, leaving the rest of the Republic of South Africa White, with a sprinkling of so-called Indians and so-called Coloureds. In terms of that, they wanted to create the impression on the international stage that these actually were self-governing territories and that they actually were independent states.
So these states were able to have their own foreign policy. They were able to have their own police forces without interference from South Africa. They were able to have their own armies without interference from South Africa. They were able to have their own media, radio stations, etc. They were able to have their own education systems, and it was even desegregated in the case of Bophuthatswana. So they had a whole range of powers that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have. The security forces of these Bantustans were often trained by the South Africans, but the South Africans did not interfere in how they operated.
So in Transkei, for example, every now and then, you would routinely have coups. And the South Africans would not interfere. Sometimes, you would have coups in which the person in power was sympathetic to the African National Congress. The best example of this was when General Bantu Holomisa was the last so-called President of Transkei, and in a sense, used his power to allow levels of underground activity to take place. So you had a sense of independence and power that the Bantustans had which the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have. At the same time, South African didn’t have a Qalandiyya type checkpoint that separated these Bantustans from the rest of South Africa. In fact, there were no real borders. So these entities existed on the map. On the map, it was good to show the international community that these are our independent homelands. This one for Twsana people. This one for Xhosa people. In reality, one could go on a road and drive in South Africa, pass through Bophuthatswana, back through South Africa, and then through Bophuthatswana, three or four times, and not know that one is changing countries.
Also, in terms of the understanding between these Bantustan authorities and South African security forces, it was neither routine nor accepted that the South African security forces could just march into the Bantustans and do whatever they wanted. They would go in if they were invited by the Bantustan defence forces. But there was that level in which there was an attempt to show them that they were in a sense a state.
But of course, correctly so, except for Israel, none of the rest of the world recognized these entities as sovereign entities. Israel regarded Bophuthatswana as a sovereign entity. Bophuthatswana had an unofficial embassy in Tel Aviv, even. But no one else in the rest of the world did. But in the case of the Palestinian Authority, which has less power, no independence, no control over its own resources, whether you are talking about water or air or any of those things, the international community is quite happy to recognize it as a state. So we should be asking the question of why is it that the international community is so happy to recognize Palestine as a state when in terms of any political science definition, it is not a state. Why is the rest of the world willing to recognize it as a state when it didn’t recognize the South African bantustans as states? There must be an explanation for that.
Hamzah: This is also another thing that we have seen in terms of the one-state reality we have seen on the ground for a while. And I remember when we spoke in Johannesburg many years back, you said something that really stuck with me. You said that anyone who analyzes the issue knows there is no two-state solution. And now in the US, we have seen that even liberal Zionist groups such as J Street, they have moved towards speaking of a sort of “confedaration model.” I see it as them grappling with the impending reality of the one-state solution while still holding on to the Zionist project. Would you be able to speak to the inevitability of the one-state solution in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories?
Na’eem: Yes. So that kind of confederation model is also another kind of fiction. It assumes that you will have states in that kind of confederation. There is no intention by Israel and there hasn’t been for decades for there to be a Palestine state...If there has ever been. But there certainly has not been for the past few decades. What they want is something that is called the “State of Palestine,” but does not have the powers of a state. It is less than what a Bantustan was in South Africa...Basically the kind of thing that Trump has in his so-called plan. They want an entity that is governed by Israel, but that is called a state for political reasons. That is what it is.
The reality is what we have is a de facto single state. You have an authority that is based in Jerusalem-the Israeli government-that runs that entire system, but that imposes different regimes of governance and control over different parts of that state. So Israel[referring to the land within the 1967 borders] has a particular kind of regime of control within it. And that regime within Israel includes Palestinian citizens of Israel being able to vote for particular members of the Knesset. Then you have another regime of governance and control in Jerusalem. And then you have a different one in the West Bank. And then you have another one in Gaza. So there’s four regimes of control, but it is one state.
And there is one political authority that controls that one state. There is no difference in the political authority that controls that one state. There is no sharing of the authority in some areas between the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. There is one state and one authority, with the Palestinian Authority being an authority to whom security is outsourced, and which carries out municipal responsibilities in some parts of the West Bank, and in Gaza. So the notion of those who put forth a two-state proposal, and do it in any kind of seriousness, meaning that they know what they are talking about, is not a notion of a Palestinian state, but of an entity that is subservient to the Israeli state. It is an entity that is part of the Israeli state, but that has been given the title of “State of Palestine.” That is all it is. It is less than a bantustan. It is definitely not a state.
Hamzah: Before we conclude, do you have anything else to add in?
Na’eem: No, I have spoken too much.
Hamzah: No, not at all. This was amazing. Thank you so much.
Na’eem: Thank you.