Diana Buttu, Eddie Mukue - Stories of Apartheid from South Africa to Palestine (2008)

Eddie Mukue: Good afternoon, friends. I must say that it's a great privilege for me to be here, also in the euphoria of the changes that's happening in the United States at this particular time in our human history. We are privileged and thank the organizers for having us here. I'm made to understand that I am primarily talking to friends of the cause, but we're saying, what is the cause? For us, the essential element of this cause is that we would want to see justice done for the people in Palestine. And when we talk of justice, we are saying that it is evasive. And one of the very important elements of that justice is to have peace. When we talk about peace, we are reminded that we must not shout peace where there is no peace because that makes us a little less than white plastered graves that are rotten on the inside. And there are a lot of people around the world who are saying that things are not that bad. in Palestine. And we're coming to tell you that when we look at international conventions, when we look at resolutions that has been passed by the United Nations, the situation in Palestine has actually deteriorated, particularly in the last couple of years. And we have noticed with appreciation these conventions and resolutions calling apartheid A crime against humanity. And we're saying that what's happening in Palestine at the moment is a crime against humanity. And I want to talk to you a little bit more about my experience of apartheid. that apartheid in South Africa was obviously founded on certain basic principles. One is that religion, and Christianity in particular, was used as a theological justification for the separation of South Africa's people. And we called such theological justification a heresy. And we're saying that what's happening in Palestine and Israel at the moment is also heretic. We are particularly mindful of how separation thrives on group areas, demarcations, and the erection of the war in Palestine in the West Bank as a way of dividing the Palestinian people, not only from the Israelis, but also dividing families. from one another militates very strongly against prospects of peace, but it also militates against the important human spirit of wanting to belong. People are being alienated from their families. They are being alienated from their land. Many wars in the world are fought at the moment because of such struggles for land. It's unfortunate that there are very many churches in the United States that are supporting that separation. in the west bank at the moment it pains me when i share with you that we are not talking here about a campaign but we are talking about people we're talking about children who have to grow up not knowing what tomorrow holds for them children who cannot have a relationship with other children children who cannot play children who do not know what the future holds What apartheid does is that it also then divides people through processes, legislative processes, that tells people that you are not equal. And we're saying that it is important in the world that we live in that we recognize the humanity of other people. And then we are particularly challenged to recognize the humanity of those that may not agree with us. And it is our humble contribution to say that unless there is an affirmation of the humanity and equality of all people in Palestine and Israel, that the prospects for peace, that the prospects for justice will not be realized. And thus, we are participating in this talk, recognizing that the people of America has a very important role to play in that process. America continues to be portrayed and understood as being the power of the world. And we are worried when we do not see the American people taking on that responsibility. We are, however, appreciative of the fact that In our struggles against apartheid South Africa, we have had wonderful support from the government and from the people of America. What was the support that we got? We cry against the violence of the separation that we experienced in South Africa. And America did not come in with weapons of war to try and resolve the situation. Indeed, because of the profound commitment The American people came in and applied sanctions against apartheid. American ordinary people encouraged companies to divest from apartheid or to disinvest. And very importantly, we had the boycotts against those who were promoting that ideology of apartheid, and it made a difference. Here I am today as evidence that the boycotts, disinvestment, and the sanctions that you applied in South Africa do make a difference. And we're saying, let's build on those nonviolent strategies that we know I want to share with you what one of the great leaders in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela, said about Palestine. And I quote, he says that, we know too well that our freedom is not complete without the freedom of the Palestinians. And President Mandela could say that because of the close working relationship that existed between the African National Congress and the Palestinian Liberation But that was not all. We didn't leave it up to the politicians. We similarly have a renowned church leader in South Africa, in the person of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who also made a statement. And Tutu's statement was also made later on by your president, or your former president, Carter. And in the statement of Tutu, it was important for us to emphasize comparison that exists at the moment between apartheid Israel and apartheid South Africa. Batutu's statement was founded on a remark that was made in 1961 by one of the apartheid presidents called Hendrik Verwoerdt. And Hendrik Verwoerdt said, and I quote, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state. And this was said in 1961 already. So we have no arguments anymore about whether there is an experience of apartheid in Israel or not. It is a matter of fact. But Hendrik Verwoerd was also the ideologue that formulated the apartheid education policy in 1953. And that policy was based on an approach that the African child must not expect anymore than to be a carrier of wood and a drawer of So therefore, there was an ideology within the educational system that perpetuated this inequality and that made sure that the African child do not have any aspirations. Can you imagine what it does to a child when you do not have aspirations? Now let me share with you some of my experiences as a child. When I walk in a park with my father holding my hand, and I want to play on the swing. And my father says, no boy, you can't play on it. It's for whites only. What does it do to my psyche as a child and my perception of other people? That it leaves a terrible psychological traumatic effect in terms of me beginning to accept the other person as an equal. So it is not only the trauma that it creates for the victim of such operation, but also the consequence that it has on the psyche of the oppressor. And we're saying that it's important that we also look at how we can help liberate the Israeli people psychologically from this idea that I am better than another person. If we don't do that, we will perpetually find ourselves in the situation where there's young Israeli boys and girls standing at a roadblock preventing the free movement of people in Palestine and them not being able to understand how the person that they are preventing from moving around freely is experiencing the occupation of their land. We therefore say that it is important that we look at the forms that that separation takes. I had the opportunity in 2005 to visit Gaza, an area where many people cannot go to anymore. When we passed a roadblock Six o'clock that morning, I saw an 18-year-old Israeli child coming out of a tent with him. She was a girl. With an 18-year-old Israeli boy coming out of the same tent and fastening his belt. No matter what they did in that tent. I'm saying that we have an obligation as adults in this world not to deny our young people opportunity to grow up in a family where they know what it means to be loved, what it means to be cared for. And there are very many Israeli youth who are denied that privilege. And we in the civilized world cannot just sit back and allow this to happen. It is imperative that if we call ourselves civil And if we call ourselves parents, that we also look at the effects that the present situation in Palestine and Israel has on the youth in those two. We are very clear that we do not want to get engaged in the ideological and political decisions that need to be taken by the leadership of that country. But we're saying that you can only have dialogue when two parties are prepared to talk to each other. Our present experience in that situation is that there is not enough honesty amongst the parties. for such conversation to happen. I want to conclude by saying that when we look at the companies that are benefiting from that situation of conflict, and I'm not going to name them, you know those companies that operate from the United States. We have an obligation to lobby and to advocate that those companies end the activities that perpetuates the injustices When we look at the rapid development of the settler communities, we are saying that there are things that we can do to prevent such development at the expense of the ordinary people in Palestine. I want to then just relate one last story that I saw on a DVD where the young man who has been growing his olive fields find that the Israeli militia moves onto their land and start cutting down their trees and his father is standing there helpless not knowing what to do and the young man tries to intervene and an Israeli soldier puts his boot on this young man's neck and this young man looks at his father for help and the father cannot help but we can help young people like that from going bitter from going angry because there is a possibility still for us to intervene in whatever manner we find meaningful and for us coming from South Africa We are saying that we never thought that 1994 would happen in South Africa. But because of international solidarity, it has happened. Let me remind you. that when we had our first democratic elections on 27 April 1994, South Africa was still experiencing a lot of violence. When we signed the peace accord in 1991, there were at least 500 people dying per day in South Africa. In KwaZulu-Natal only, there were 10 young people dying every day. And I don't want to play the numbers game, because one death, is one death too many, but we're saying that if it's 500 deaths, If it's 10 young people that are dying, it compels us to do more than what we presently do. And Diana would share with you more of the detail of what's presently happening in this situation. And we are saying that as we celebrate the changes in the United States at the moment, our celebration cannot be complete for as long as the people in Palestine continues to be burdened by injustice, by oppression, and by occupation. I thank you.

Diana Buttu: Thank you very much, and it's a pleasure once again to be speaking at the Palestine Center. It's always a delight to be amongst friends, and I thank the Center for sending an invitation to us today. This tour, I think, this is our first engagement, and so I think this one is, this tour is going to be a very interesting one. We're going to a number of different cities, some big, some small, and it It follows on the heels of, obviously, this election. But I think that more importantly than the election is that this tour will be able to give us an opportunity to really try to cement and make some of the connections that I think a lot of us have known in the past that exist between what Israel's doing and apartheid that existed in the past, and will allow people to sort of make that connection between the two. When I was first, I just want to start a little bit by talking about my own personal experience. The first time, I was, as Catherine said, I was born and raised in Canada. And, you know, you don't really talk about a lot in Canada other than the weather. And that's about it. There's an occasional election, but that's about it. But I remember the first time that I ever traveled to Israel was in 1987. And I was... I was a teenager at the time, very young. And I kind of grew up in a bubble, which Canada is, not really knowing that I was Palestinian and not really being told that I was Palestinian or what any of that meant at all. But at the time I was a teenager and there was a great deal of talk about Nelson Mandela. And apartheid. And so my first trip to Israel, not knowing anything about what was going on there, I didn't know about, this is really embarrassing, but I am going to say this. I didn't know about the plight of the refugees, even though my parents are refugees. I didn't know about the occupation that was going on. So it was a big awakening for me. And I remember the day that I first started to question what was going on in Israel. And again, this is a long time ago. This was 1987, the start of the first Intifada. A friend of mine who is Israeli, I asked her, I said, I don't understand what's going on. What's happening here? And she said, well, you know, you hear a lot about apartheid, right? And I said, yes. And she said, well, it's the exact same thing. And it didn't really make sense to me that this was the exact same thing as apartheid South Africa. But the more that I began to realize what was happening there and the more that I learned about it, the more that I recognized that it was indeed apartheid. And I was fortunate enough about, I guess, I'm trying to think of a year, I think 2003 was the first time I actually visited South Africa. And it was a very emotional experience for me visiting South Africa because the words that my friend had told me back in 1987, that this exactly was apartheid, really struck home to me when I got a chance to visit different areas throughout South Africa, learn and hear people's experiences, and really make the connection that what is going on in Palestine exactly mimics what is happening what used to happen or what had taken place in South Africa. There are obviously a number of distinctions and differences between what the South African apartheid regime did and what Israel is doing. And we can talk about those at a question and answer. But there is kind of a central theme that was taking place that I saw there that I see now in Palestine, which is the idea of not just separation, but as Eddie had mentioned, sort of a theological underpinning to the idea of separation and a belief that somehow or another that one people is better than another. And these are the experiences that I've witnessed in Palestine. Now, I want to just go through a number of different slides and maps just to try to make the point about how this separation, this idea of separation, is taking place. But while I do that, I want to make it very clear that while South Africa was undergoing a process of ending apartheid, What was happening in Palestine has been a process of actually deepening apartheid, all the way beginning from as far back as 1993. So as I go through these slides, I'm going to try to highlight just some of the settlements and what's taking place at the settlements and the checkpoints. I'm going to go through a little bit of the wall and what impact the wall is having. I'm going to take you through a few slides if we have some time on Gaza and what's happening there, and then hopefully be able to open it up for questions. So bear with me. This is the first time that I'm using the PowerPoint presentation, and anybody who knows me knows I'm not very good at this. So the first slide that I'm showing you right now is of the West Bank and with some of the major cities that are demarcated. And as you're going to see, here's the Palestinian population that is coming up on the map. The next slide is that of the Israeli settlements. Now, the Israeli settlements, it's interesting that when you take a look at the settlements, the settlements in their main... purpose have been both to be, one, defined as security settlements, and two, for ideological reasons. In their ideological underpinnings, one of the major things that has happened with the settlements is that when I first went in 1987 and I went to see my first settlement, at the time you had to sort of go through a series of kind of dirt roads to try to get to the settlements. Now it's kind of the exact opposite. It's now, in order to get to a Palestinian area, you have to go through dirt roads to be able to get to a Palestinian area, where the idea of the settlements and the roads that the settlements are now occupying are actually taking foremost authority and presence. Again, undermining the theory that Palestinians and Israelis, A, can't live together, and B, if they can't live together, then Israelis have to have superior rights. So on this next slide that you've just seen that I've pulled up, what I've done is I've put on the Israeli closed military areas. And so this is the way the West Bank looks right now. You've got the Palestinian areas that are demarcated in yellow. You've got the settlements that are supposed to be purple. I hope they are purple. And then the closed military areas that that are in the West Bank. Now, there's closures, and you hear a lot about closures and checkpoints and so on and so forth. Now, I want to make it clear that the checkpoints and the closures are not new. This is not new. This is, very interestingly, around the same time that South Africa was going through its period of ending apartheid. was the very beginning of the phases of beginning of apartheid for the Palestinians. The checkpoints that we see now, and you're going to see a bunch of them come up, there weren't as many back in 1994 when the Oslo Agreements were signed. But they were, in fact, there. And the idea behind the checkpoints was simply to do that, which is to demarcate and separate Palestinian from Israeli. Now, as I said, there weren't as many as there are now, but the idea is not a new one. And so what I'm trying to get at is that as South Africa was going through a process of trying to break down these these checkpoints, break down these areas and differences between South Africans. What's actually happening in Palestine is quite the opposite, that we've seen a skyrocketing of these checkpoints and trenches. Here's some trenches. That's what a trench looks like if you haven't seen them. It's going to come up. And so you're beginning to see a picture of the road barrier and the wall. You're beginning to see a picture of what the framework of separation and closure actually is beginning to look like. The solid black line is the wall. And increasingly, you're beginning to see the formation of small cantons and small cantons within the West Bank. Now, these are figures from the UN. This was as of the end of September of this year. There are 607 of these roadblocks. You can go through. I'm going to leave the presentation with summer in case anybody's interested. Now, interestingly is that this chart here actually tracks the number of closures that have taken place in the West Bank since December of 2003 until April of 2008. The interesting thing is there was a U.S. brokered agreement on movement and access, which was brokered in November of 2005. And what you can see is that there's been an absolute increase of 53% since the agreement on movement and access was signed. This was an agreement that was supposed to try to facilitate movement and access rather than try to increase closure. Those are just some of the highlight points. The next slide that I want to take you to is to focus on an area that doesn't really make it into the press a lot, which is Nablus. Nablus is a populated area. It's about 130,000 Palestinians living in it. And there are a number of roads that connect Nablus to one another. These are, as I said, the Palestinian roads. But then there's a few settlements that are in the area. I think it's 14 settlements that are in the area. This next slide that you see is the overlaying both the planned expansion areas of those settlements as well as the Israeli roads. Now those roads are completely off limits to Palestinians. Alongside those off limits to Palestinians, to make sure that they are off limits to Palestinians, are a series of checkpoints around the area. And so you can see how a city that was once a very thriving city has now been completely disconnected from other Palestinian cities. The other point I wanted to get to was the wall. Interestingly, yesterday was the 19th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And instead of seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall, we're now actually seeing the erection of a wall that is twice as high as the Berlin Wall was. The first picture that you see at the top is an actual photograph of the wall as it is in East Jerusalem. The second photo, the one on the bottom, is just an artistic rendition of the wall and other parts of the West Bank. And you can actually see that You know, there's a big debate. A lot of pro-Israel activists will say, well, it's not a wall. It's just a fence. But there's really nothing fancy about it. It consists of there's a fence. Then you've got a ditch. There is a patrol road. Then there's an electronic fence, another ditch, another patrol road, and another fence. Stretching from one end of the wall to the other is an average of about 50 meters. It can expand some places to about 60 to 70 meters. And there's observation towers that are located throughout. Now, this is a wall that the International Court of Justice has deemed as being illegal, and yet there has been absolutely no movement done to actually make sure that the wall gets removed. The Green Line is just these 320 kilometers, whereas the wall itself is 723 kilometers. So you can see that the wall is not being built on or anywhere near, in some places, the Green Line. But the whole idea is designed to facilitate this idea of separation, the idea of pushing the Palestinians into small cantons and taking as much of their land as possible. Of this total wall, now the wall that you see here is what has been projected, what's being planned. You'll see in a second what's actually been built. You'll see what is being built right now and what remains to be built. Now, on this next slide, this is actual satellite imagery of a place called Qalqilya. Qalqilya is a very populated area. It's one of the closest areas to the sea and to Israeli cities. It's got a population of about 55,000 Palestinians living in it. It's one of the most agriculturally fertile areas in the entire West Bank. And at one point in time, that region supplied about... 70% of the agricultural produce in the West Bank. As you'll see, as on the satellite imagery, the green line has been demarcated. You don't really see it when you're in the satellite or above, but there it is. But what you do see is, if you can see that line that's actually being formed, you can actually see that from above. And that's the wall that has been built around the Qalqilya area. As you can see that in a lot of areas it doesn't actually even match where the green line is but goes into several kilometers into where the green line is. And you'll see the reason why in just a second. Now here's the population of the area of Qalqilya. It consists of the city of Qalqilya as well as a number of villages. And here's the reason why the wall goes so deep into the West Bank in these areas. And it's because of the presence of two Israeli settlements, Zafin in the north and Alfay Menashe in the south. Both of those, as you can see, don't have a combined population of 7,000 people. And yet, because of the presence of those people, of close to 7,000 Israeli settlers, there's been a number of things that have happened. One is that the wall goes in very deep into the West Bank. And two, is that the wall goes around not only the settlement of Alphae Manasseh, but around the planned expansion areas of those areas. Now here on this next slide, you're seeing some of the barriers that exist. Some of them are, the red ones are are gates that have no access for Palestinians. The green ones are gates that allow for restricted access for Palestinians. And what restricted means is that they're allowed to go through the gates only with a permit twice a day for two hours a day. So the gates are open only two hours a day. You can go... across the other side, you can fertilize your land, you can do pretty much agricultural permits you can get, but you have to come back and the gates are only open two hours in the afternoon. There's a couple of gray ones up there that you can see. Those are only for seasonal access when it's the olive harvest. But basically you can see what has happened with this wall is that the idea of separation has been taken to new limits and new heights, which is not only to separate Palestinian from Israeli, but to make sure that the separation actually goes around not only the settlements, but the planned expansion area of those settlements. As you can see, those are the planned expansion area of the settlement of Al-Faymanasheh. I wanted to just highlight very quickly some of the things that are going on in the Jerusalem area. Sorry, just a second. Here we go. The yellow areas that you see here, again, are the Palestinian communities within the Jerusalem area. The gray area that's just come up on your map is what Israel defines as its municipal boundaries. As you can see, it defines its municipal boundaries well within Palestinian territory. This is, again, in violation of U.S. The U.S. has condemned this. What I'm going to show you here is some settlements that existed in 1987. This is when I first went to Palestine. Here are the settlements that existed in 1987. And I'm going to fast forward to what the settlements look like today in that area. But it's not just stopping there. There's also some additional planned settlements that are going to be built. and the wall that's going up as well. And what you can see from this picture is that where the wall itself is being built, if you can take a look around here, The same theme as the earlier slide, which is it goes around the settlements, brings as many of the settlers in, and not only goes around as many of the settlements as possible, but tries to accommodate for the planned expansion areas of those settlements. These are some of the checkpoints that are in place in the Jerusalem area. And again, here's some of the planned expansion areas of those settlements. Now, here's an interesting thing. There's something else that we don't usually talk about or has been underreported, I guess, in terms of how it is that the process of separation gets maintained. It's not just a simple question of closure and of walls and of permits, but also of roads. And one of the newest tools that Israel is using is to try to create roads that are for Israeli use only. It's kind of an abhorrent concept when you think about it. But those are some of the roads that you see that have come up. Now, because the U.S. administration has in some cases pressured the Israeli government that it has to be a little bit kinder towards the Palestinians, what Israel has gone about and done is created some roads for Palestinians. These are inferior roads that connect Palestinian areas only to Palestinian areas. And in some cases, there's some tunnels and so on and so forth that are also used. And the idea being that what they want, what is intended to do is formalize the process of separation between the two peoples. And that's the Jerusalem slide. I'm just going to end that quickly. This is kind of just summarizing all of this in a nutshell. You can see where the settlements are, the closed military areas and the bases, the nature reserve areas. Now, nature reserve areas are considered off limits for Palestinians. They don't believe in nature. There's the wall. The areas that are between the wall and the green line that are similarly, Palestinians who live there have to get permits to actually be in those areas. The roads that I was talking about that are primarily used by settlers. And you're going to see some of the checkpoints, I think, come up now. And here's the system of closures. So that's kind of what the West Bank looks like today. Yeah, there it is without all of that stuff. That's what the West Bank looks like today. Now, what I want to do in the last slide, because I know we're running out of time, is to just take you very quickly in to see what the Gaza Strip looks like. I think it's very important to focus on the Gaza Strip, because if you've ever focused on any of Israel's actions in the past, it has always appeared to me that the Gaza Strip is a test case for what goes on in Israel. in the West Bank. Here was the Gaza Strip in August of 2005. This is just before the Israeli disengagement, where the Israeli government withdrew from the settlements. Now, here is the Gaza Strip as it looks today. It should come up very quickly. No settlements, but there is a system of... There's a perimeter that exists around the Gaza Strip, including a no-go zone that exists in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. And basically the intent of this no-go zone is to try to make sure that Palestinians are not able to go anywhere, that they're not allowed to get anywhere near the northern part of the Gaza Strip. There's a number of different crossings that are in the Gaza Strip. But yet, despite the fact that there are all of these crossings that are in place, what you're going to see is some of the data in terms of what has happened since Israel has actually withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Now, it's important to keep in mind that although Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it didn't cease its control over the Gaza Strip. And so everything that Gaza needs is still imported in by Israel. requires permission by Israel, whether it's medical supplies, foodstuffs, so on and so forth. So here's the first one. Erez is generally the crossing for people, and you can see that the figures from back in 2005 to what it is current day, how there is virtually no movement of Palestinians going into Gaza. The second is Karni, which is the more important one. Karni is the crossing point that allows for imports and exports, including medical supplies, humanitarian supplies. You can see how it's completely tapered off. And then the third one is Rafah Crossing, which is where Palestinians travel to go to Egypt and to the rest of the world. Here's the statistics. So basically, the point that I wanted to show you with this slide was to show you where it is that we're going and where this is all taking us. And the idea of separation that Israel has instituted is eventually going to take us to this, which is to try to confine the Palestinians in two tiny little spaces, control the Palestinians, and basically ensure that its economic dependence and survival rests upon Israel. Now, I want to use just this last minute to say that there's a bit of a difference between what happened in South Africa and what is going on in Palestine, and that difference is that what is happening now in Palestine is actually sanctioned by the U.S. and by the international community, meaning that There's been little, if any, impact of protests and so on and so forth on the international community. In fact, they've done virtually nothing to ensure that even their own agreements are adhered to when it comes to Israel. But more importantly, in terms of solutions and what we're talking about, long-range solutions, one of the things that is most interesting is that When you hear people from the United States and from Israel talking about potential solutions, the potential solution that they're talking about is simply a repackaging of some of the slides that we're seeing here, and it's not an actual ending of this. And this becomes very important now that... that Obama has been elected as president. He's been elected as president, and he's not going to be handed a peace agreement when he comes into office. There isn't going to be a piece of paper that he's going to reside over and have a nice little signing ceremony. Instead, he's going to be faced with this reality. And the question becomes whether his administration is actually going to do anything to change this or whether they're going to continue the institutionalized framework of making sure that what the solution is actually begins to look more and more like this.