CYRIL’S PALESTINE PLEDGE
Pro-Israel lobby reacts with fury, accusing Ramaphosa of ‘supporting Jihadists’, as pro- and anti-Israel groups face off in SA
● President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday doubled down on the government’s and the ANC’s support for the Palestinian struggle in the Middle East.
Dressed in black and traditional keffiyeh scarves and waving miniature Palestinian flags, Ramaphosa and his colleagues on the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) met as Israel readied for a huge ground offensive into Gaza.
Israel’s mission is to destroy Hamas after the killing of 1,300 Israelis in a brazen raid launched from the Gaza Strip by the militant group last weekend.
The attack on residents of Israeli kibbutzim close to the Gaza border and the ferocious Israeli response have polarised South Africans.
Protest rallies are being held this week in support of Israel while others will back the Palestinians, underlining the deep divide that separates South Africans on the issue.
The government’s stance has drawn a blistering attack from the South African Jewish community.
In an open letter to Ramaphosa carried in the Sunday Times in the form of an advert today (see page 5), the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) said Jews in South Africa were being made to feel like “second-class citizens”.
Last night SAJBD national chair Karen Milner lambasted Ramaphosa - accusing him of supporting militant group Hamas and not Palestinians. “Ramaphosa unashamedly supports Jihadists. He is not expressing solidarity with Palestinians, he is expressing solidarity with Hamas. He is supporting the atrocities committed on innocent civilians, including rape, the burning and decapitation of babies, and hostage taking. This is not resistance,” she said.
However, The ambassador of the State of Palestine to South Africa Hanan Jarrar said her country was “deeply grateful” to Ramaphosa for showing strong solidarity. “This gesture from the ANC underscores the historical and unwavering support from South Africa for the Palestinian people’s quest for self-determination and justice.”
Ramaphosa and the ANC leaders who gathered for a meeting of the party’s NEC were explicit in their solidarity with Palestine.
He repeated the government’s offer to mediate in the crisis.
The meeting took place just hours before the expiry of an Israeli deadline set for more than 1-million Palestinians to move to the south of Gaza in anticipation of a huge Israeli invasion of the north.
By yesterday morning, upwards of 1,500 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, had died in the Israeli air blitz in retaliation for the Hamas raid last Saturday morning.
We are pledging our solidarity with the Palestinians because they have a just struggle and their human rights are being violated as well as their quest for self-determination that we have always supported,” Ramaphosa said.
He said Israel was led by a government that “has in recent times been dubbed an apartheid state”.
“As people and an organisation that has struggled against an oppressive system of apartheid, we pledge solidarity with the Palestinians.”
Ramaphosa said the ANC had always insisted that a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine alongside Israel, was the only answer to the region’s troubles.
His remarks are likely to inflame tensions between the government and South Africa’s Jewish community, which has accused South Africa of abandoning an even-handed approach to the Middle Eastern question.
South African Zionist Federation national chair Rowan Polovin blasted Ramaphosa.
He said: “Ramaphosa and the ANC government have pledged their solidarity with those who deliberately target, murder, burn and abduct innocent women, children and babies. The ANC government continues to side with internationally designated terrorists and despots, and against peace-loving people and democracies.
“We find this morally abhorrent and a betrayal of the values of the South African constitution which promotes peace, tolerance and freedom of religion and belief.”
Milner said the SAJBD was “dismayed” by Ramaphosa’s “inadequate” response. “His statement now are further provocations to the Jewish community. Effectively, he has rubbed salt in the deep wounds of his Jewish citizen and his remarks are beyond comprehension.”
She denied that Israel was an apartheid state.
This week the department of international relations confirmed that two South Africans had been killed in the conflict.
Ramaphosa said the ANC and the government were “deeply concerned” about the at
rocities that were unfolding in the Middle East and had sent condolences to the people of Israel and Palestine.
“We have always made our position clear. We have always been in alliance with the people of Palestine and we support their cause unashamedly, but at the same time, we have also expressed our condolences to the Israelis who have died in this, particularly civilians because even in our own struggle, the issue of civilians was a clear-cut exclusion so we stand firm on those principles because they are inscribed in international law,” he said.
Ramaphosa said the violation of the rights of the Palestinians through the occupation of their land was causing concern and had possibly sparked the latest chapter in a conflict that has raged since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
“The atrocities that are happening now where the residences of people and hospitals in that part of the world are being razed to the floor, pregnant mothers are not even able to give birth in a respectable manner and the worst part is now when the Israeli government now says 1.1-million people must evacuate the northern part of Gaza, having closed all the routes.”
He called on the UN to “make sure the Israeli government is directed at withdrawing this command”.
He said almost half-a-million Palestinians had been displaced, removed from their homes, and have to live in schools and similar buildings.
“South Africa and the ANC stand firm on the peaceful resolution of conflicts and we also stand ready to participate on a neutral basis, as we always do in various conflicts around the world, whether the parties involved share the same position as us ideologically or not. We have always participated in the ending of conflicts with integrity and with neutrality. We are ready to also participate in this conflict.
Ramaphosa said there had been requests from countries “in that part of the world” for the South African government to help and send humanitarian assistance. These requests were being processed, he said.
“We have also had to consider the evacuation of South Africans in Palestine and Israel, and that too is being considered in government. We will soon activate a response.”
More than 120 South Africans were caught in the crossfire with at least 10 still stuck in the deadly Gaza war zone as of Friday.
South Africa’s ambassador to Palestine, Shaun Byneveldt, who lives in east Jerusalem, told the Sunday Times that since the start of the war, 114 South Africans had logged calls for assistance. Since then, 53 citizens had been returned home. Of those, six were in the West Bank and 10 in Gaza.
Last night Byneveldt described the situation in Gaza as “dire” but said South Africans were not in imminent danger.
“We were in the process via the UN to evacuate South Africans who are trapped in Gaza. This is where you are taking evacuation at this time given the particular context we have there of bombings and so on. Gaza is completely under siege and at this point with absolutely no movement – in and out,” he said. Byneveldt said he was not worried about his safety. He said all embassy staff were accounted for.
“The week has been relatively quiet in terms of Jerusalem,” he said.
The Israeli embassy in South Africa said two South Africans had died in Israel, with another reportedly missing.
One of the dead was Marcelle Talia, 65, who was in Israel to visit her daughter who had just given birth.
The board of deputies’ national director, Wendy Kahn, said Talia was shot dead by Hamas operatives on Saturday in Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha near the Gaza border.
In the meantime, his office in Ramallah and the consulate services in Tel Aviv had been compiling a database of all South Africans affected.
“Fortunately, we don’t have huge numbers. The kind of assistance a South African would seek would determine the kind of intervention ... the airport remains open and the other exit would be through the land border crossing into Jordan.
“This is all co-ordinated movement and we manage with the Israelis and co-ordinate movement for whoever needs to leave,” he said.
On Wednesday, pro-Palestine supporters demonstrated outside the Jewish Community Centre in Cape Town, demanding that the government cut ties with Israel.
On Friday, hundreds of Palestinian supporters marched to parliament.
Today the Palestine Solidarity Alliance is holding its annual “Walk for Freedom” in Lenasia, Johannesburg. The organisation said: “Gaza faces a blockade and bombing with close to 1,900 people, including more than 500 children, killed.”
At the same time the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) will host a gathering at an undisclosed venue “to memorialise the mass murder of innocent Israeli civilians after Saturday’s unprovoked attack by an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation”.