DEARBORN — South African, Canadian and American advocates for Palestine addressed two crowds on Thursday at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and at Byblos Banquet Hall, comparing South Africa’s apartheid past to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and imploring people to be more active in pushing for a just resolution.
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General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches Rev. Edwin Makue (R), Attorney Diana Buttu, who lives in Palestine and litigates on behalf of Palestinians, and Katherine Fuchs, national organizer of the US Campaign to End the Occupation of Palestine, speaking in Dearborn on Thursday. PHOTO: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN |
Buttu was raised in Canada, where her parents sheltered her from their ethnic identity and the political agitation that comes with it.
She became more aware of the conflict as an adult when someone explained it to her by comparing it to South Africa.
She said her level of consciousness and outrage came to a head while at Stanford University in 2000, during the collapse of the Camp David peace negotiations, when an Israeli friend turned to her and said “What is wrong with you people? Your people are incapable of peace. They turned down the best deal ever.”
She said she asked the friend if, under the proposed deal, “Is there going to be a Palestine or is there not going to be a Palestine? Are they going to have freedom? What will happen to Jerusalem? What will happen to the refugees? What about the illegal settlements?”
Her friend’s answer to each question was “I don’t know.”
“With that, I packed my bags and moved to Palestine,” Buttu said.
She spoke of an Israeli “system of laws that must be dismantled,” that allows discrimination toward Arabs, particularly in the Occupied Territories. Displaying a map of the West Bank showing illegal settlements, closed military zones and roads that are off-limits to Palestinians, along with 607 road blocks and checkpoints, she said the laws and structures leave the Palestinians increasingly isolated and unable to travel.
“Not only are they being blocked from being able to move,” Buttu said, “but — similar to what was used in South Africa — Palestinians need permits not only to be able to enter Israel, but to be able to travel within their own territory. And those permits are not handed out readily… The idea is to confine the Palestinians into small places, take as much land as possible, bring more settlers into the territories and facilitate their lives… There is a dual set of laws for people based on religion.”
She showed pictures of the 25-foot high concrete separation wall that divides the Occupied Territories from Israel.
She said the wall does not run along internationally accepted 1967 borders, but reaches deep into Palestinian territory and is being built around illegal Israeli settlements and planned expansion areas of settlements.
“It separates Palestinians from other Palestinians,” she said, pointing to a picture of the wall running in between two Palestinian homes.
Buttu said that anything in the way of the wall’s path gets demolished as the barrier is built.
“Just in the past two weeks, 103 Palestinians have been made homeless in the Jerusalem area simply because of the wall.”
In Gaza, Buttu used more visuals to point out border crossings that have been sealed by Israel, preventing resources and food from entering the territory. She said settlements in the West Bank were expanded at an unprecedented rate after the 2005 evacuation of settlements in Gaza.
When analyzing peace processes and political negotiations, Buttu said, there are specific questions that have to be asked.
“‘Are any of these solutions actually going to address the system of discrimination?’ and ‘Are the Palestinians being treated as equals?'” she said.
Even in the bleakest of times, the 1990 fall of apartheid in South Africa provides hope, she said.
“You have to engage in the same way that people engaged in (fighting) apartheid in South Africa,” Buttu said. “Don’t focus so much on what the leaders over there are doing but focus on what you can do here… Just because there’s a goal keeper, doesn’t mean you can’t score a goal.”
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Rev. Edwin Makue, a civil rights advocate in South Africa since 1982 who’s monitored elections in the occupied Palestinian territories, spoke to activists and students Thursday, comparing South Africa’s apartheid past to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and imploring people to be more active in pushing for a just resolution. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab |
He cited Bishop Desmond Tutu saying in 1989 “If you change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa.”
“It is all intended to contribute to the subjugation of a people by an illegitimate political authority,” Makue said.
He said Palestinians in the Occupied Territories do not vote on Israeli officials, making their intense influence on the territories illegitimate.
“We cannot claim that we as South Africans are free while anyone else in the world does not experience freedom,” he said.
He said that while conditions and outlook are bad, hope for justice is still there, because no one expected apartheid to fall in South Africa when it did.
“It was at the height of the (South African) political conflict that negotiations began,” he said.
Makue worked with small groups of activists during that conflict, distributing flyers and posters in strategic spots, targeting specific audiences. He said the response was stunning.
“People tend to think that there were many more activists than there actually were,” he said, encouraging activists, even when in very small groups, to push for ethical investment through non-violent means like boycott and divestment initiatives.
“We have to learn from that particular era of struggle,” he said.
The will of masses to overcome injustice is “like a tsunami,” he said. “It can’t be stopped. You can build walls. You can build trenches to try to stop the tsunami. That is what is happening in Palestine… Our noble struggle in South Africa has been won. I believe the same can happen by efforts of ordinary people in Palestine… There are international solidarity groups in other parts of the world and we are encouraging ourselves to network with each other. That’s why I’m here today.”
“It is going to be an arduous struggle,” but apartheid can’t last forever, he said.
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Hasan Newash, head of the Dearborn-based Palestine Office. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab |
“I’m old enough to draw lessons from the fall of South African apartheid.”
He said no one at the time expected it to happen.
“When you are in the troth of demoralization, look at that model… That’s why I’m hopeful. I do my part and what happens, happens… Our job is to continue chipping away.”
Working with and contributing to groups like the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation of Palestine to intensify the moral isolation of Israel, is the key to overcoming oppression in Palestine, Newash said.
He said he remembers marches on the South African embassy, where excitement was worked-up “to the point where politicians would want to show up and be arrested.”
“That’s how apartheid South Africa fell.”
For more information on the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation of Palestine, visit www.endtheoccupation.org or email organizer@endtheoccupation.org.
Information on a current campaign to pressure telecommunications company Motorola to end its role in providing Israel with bomb fuses, exclusive communication systems in the West Bank and surveillance in illegal settlements, can be found at www.hanguponmotorola.org.
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