South Africans understand catastrophe
We can relate to Palestine experiences, and so should express solidarity with its people on May 15, Nakba Day
HAD we South Africans not defeated apartheid, this year would have marked 67 years of that odious system in South Africa. But incredible mobilisation and international solidarity defeated it, and today, despite our problems, we live in a democracy.
But as we celebrate democracy, Israel marks 67 years of an existence characterised by the brutalisation of the indigenous Palestinian population.
Tomorrow, as Israelis celebrate their “independence”, Palestinians will observe almost seven decades of occupation, colonialism, dispossession and apartheid – referred to as the “Nakba” or catastrophe by Palestinians – marking the destruction of almost 500 Palestinian villages and towns.
The Nakba looms large in the collective Palestinian memory, and even those who did not experience it first-hand “remember” the trauma.
Ali Hamoudi was eight when the Nakba took place in 1948. He painfully recalls: “I remember I had to hide with my family in a cave near my house for nine days. There were seven of us in the cave, and there was not much room to move around. We could hear the Israelis passing by, but they could not see us because the cave is well hidden.”
Their memories are those of terror imposed by Zionist gangs, Palestinian homes set on fire or destroyed, massacres such as that in Deir Yassin, and the flight of hundreds of thousands from other terrorist activities. Ultimately, 700 000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and into refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. They and their descendants remain refugees to this day. Like Jews after the Nazi holocaust, most Palestinians have a personal narrative of loss: a relative killed, families splitting and ending up in refugee camps in different countries – never to be reunited, or homes, orchards, other property and personal effects seized or destroyed.
That eloquent intellectual and defender of Palestinians, the late Edward Said, recalled how his family was turned into a scattering of refugees in 1948: “None of the older members of my family ever recovered from the trauma,” he wrote in The Politics of Dispossession.
On the occasion of the “Israel at 50” celebrations 17 years ago, Said commented: “I still find myself astonished at the lengths to which official Israel and its supporters will go to suppress the fact that a half century has gone by without Israeli restitution, recognition or acknowledgment of Palestinian human rights… the Palestinian Nakba is characterised as a semi-fictional event… caused by no one in particular.”
We South Africans know and can understand the plight of Palestinians. They have nothing to celebrate this week. Their experience of the past 67 years is of restrictions on their movement by checkpoints, road blocks and a concrete wall – worse than the restrictions of our own pass laws. The wall has chewed up large amounts of Palestinian land and made daily life a misery.
For some, a 20-minute journey now takes seven hours to complete. It also cuts off farmers from their land, children from schools, mothers from medical services for their babies, and grandparents from their grandchildren.
Even apartheid South Africa Bantustans were not surrounded by such walls, fences and gates.
In a UN report, Professor John Dugard said Israel was unwilling to learn from South Africa, and observed that human rights violations in the occupied territories are increasing.
The legal expert drew parallels between the Palestine situation and apartheid South Africa saying the “large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed similar practices in apartheid South Africa”.
A South African parliamentarian recently repeated these similarities
“Most Palestinians have a personal narrative of loss: a relative killed, families splitting – never reuniting”
between Israel and apartheid South Africa saying: “I relate to my own children how it felt to live in apartheid conditions, detention without trial, State of Emergency. How we would be woken up at night as kids when police searched our homes. How, as students, we used to throw stones at the police who were shooting at us – like in Palestine today. The response I get from my children is, ‘Mom, why did you allow them?’ This they say without understanding how mighty the army was. I am sure children in Palestine wish… the conditions they live under were history.”
The levels of oppression and brutalisation of Palestinians continues unabated. Who can forget the attack on Gaza just 10 months ago?
Just as the world remembered us in our darkest days, so too should we remember the oppressed peoples of the world. On Nakba Day, May 15, we must express solidarity with 700 000 Palestinians who were forcefully removed from their homes and made refugees 67 years ago. Today, all freedom- and justice-loving people should spare a thought for those who yearn for democracy and justice as they remember the Nakba.
Buccus is a research fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation.