Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2001, page 27

Special Report

 

South Africa’s Apartheid Experience Informs Israel-Palestine Discussion at Durban Racism Conference

 

By Ian Williams

“Chaos” was a word used by many who attended the Durban World Conference Against Racism, which came to an untidy conclusion on Sept. 8. In addition to the logistical challenges, there was the issue itself, one inherently conducive to chaos.

A decade ago, for example, Europe’s Roma often were deliberately excluded from consideration as Holocaust victims, despite their having been prime Nazi targets during World War II. Now that they are under persecution across Europe from post-Communist regimes, they saw the conference as a major opportunity to make their case. And, from the Indian subcontinent, the Dalits tried noisily but unsuccessfully to raise the issue of untouchability. There was an extra irony here, for it was the Indian government which first raised the issue of South African apartheid over 50 years ago. In Durban, however, it managed successfully to evade the issue of the marginalization of hundreds of millions of its own citizens.

Then, of course, there was the issue most Americans think of as “race,” which is the continuing social disadvantages experienced by black Americans as the result of generations of slavery and segregation in the United States. Indeed, many delegations to the conference believed that this, in fact, was the key issue which led the U.S. delegation—and, to a lesser extent, the Europeans and the Canadians—to make so much noise about the Middle East. The suspicion hovering about was that the West’s happiness to conflate anti-Israel statements, of which there were many, with anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic statements, which were not heard, was seized upon as a way to deflect attention from domestic racial issues.

Interestingly, and not much remarked upon in the American press, was the source of much of the anti-Israel sentiment, which was South African NGOs. The South Africans have never forgotten what most Americans never learned, that Israel was the apartheid regime’s main accomplice, in sanctions busting, in arms supplies, in joint training, and even in the production of the “white” atomic bomb.

Armed with this practical demonstration of the nature of Israel’s policies, the South Africans had no cognitive difficulty in recognizing the occupied territories as a series of bantustans, and Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians as a form of apartheid. How else to describe policies that circumscribe land ownership for the indigenous Arabs, or deny them the rights that settlers enjoy?

In any case, it was no surprise when the U.S. delegation walked out, since that was what the Israelis wanted. Less trumpeted, however, was the fact that only the high-level diplomats walked out, and that the U.S. positions remained occupied for the duration.

To a lesser degree, the Canadians and Europeans also joined in on Israel’s side. Representing the EU, the Belgian foreign minister decided that the Palestine-Israeli conflict was “primarily a territorial dispute.” The real issue, of course, was that no one wanted to contradict the U.S.—and disturbingly few are prepared even to gainsay Ariel Sharon, who, ironically, is under investigation by a Belgian magistrate. Indeed, in the absence of the American hard-hitters, the EU played the part of U.S. understudy very well, with continual threats to walk out. Since conference declarations are passed by consensus, this was a fairly potent threat.

During the course of the debate, there were high-profile meetings between Yasser Arafat and Jesse Jackson, with bits of papers signed and repudiated, but there was very little constructive dialogue between the Arab and American sides. The U.S. government and American Jewish NGO delegations seem to have bought the package that criticism of Israel is ipso facto anti-Semitic, and they were glad of the opportunity to see themselves as principled rather than isolationist. Interestingly, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who long has held strong and principled positions on the Middle East conflict, came under the type of attack from which, as former president of Ireland, the strength of the American Irish community seems previously to have protected her.

The final version of the declaration still is under revision, as the various committee chairs check their minutes. Despite American media attention on the Middle East, the final text is strongest on the issue of slavery. It “profoundly regrets the massive human sufferings and the tragic plight of millions of men, women and children as a result of slavery, the slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, apartheid, colonialism and genocide.” Calling them “appalling tragedies in the history of humanity,” the conference specified that slavery and the slave trade were a crime against humanity and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade.

There were no apologies and no “reparations,” however, as demanded by many. The Europeans had their way, instead, so the conference hoped that the underdevelopment caused by the slave trade would be met by “programs for the social and economic development of those societies and the diaspora within the framework of a new partnership based on the spirit of solidarity and mutual respect in the following areas: debt relief, poverty eradication, building or strengthening democratic institutions, promotion of foreign direct investment and market access.”

Although the Palestinians got less, they were more successful than the Israelis—this despite Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior’s crowing that “the entire world rejected with disdain the spirit of hatred that stood behind the Arab attempt to win international support for hatred of Jews and the delegitimization of Israel.”

In fact, of course, no one tried to do that. The final declaration called for an “end to violence and a swift resumption of peace negotiations; respect for international human rights and humanitarian law; and respect for the principle of self-determination and the end of all suffering, thus allowing Israel and the Palestinians to resume the peace process, and to develop and prosper in security and freedom.”

The rest of the world is quite clear about who is violating human rights and humanitarian law. The declaration went on to emphasize its “concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation,” and recognized “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state.”

No wonder Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Nasser El Kidwa was much more measured in his assessment of the conference. “The one thing for sure was that Israel lost,” he said. “Firstly by walking out, but above all, the Palestinians were the only specific case mentioned. All others were generic.”

That point did not escape the pro-Israel groups, who fulminated against only one country having been singled out.

While admitting that the EU position had worsened, El Kidwa did not see it as a triumph of Israeli or American diplomacy. The European countries that seemed to have switched, he pointed out, were often those who had been closely involved with colonialism and the slave trade.

The conference was extended for an extra day, which saw a last-minute attempt by the Arab group to incorporate three disputed paragraphs which criticized “foreign occupation founded on settlements” and urged “the international community to take effective measures to protect peoples under foreign occupation” and declaring “settler ideology…a crime against humanity.”

Even the U.N. press release, in common with much of the press, said explicitly, “The paragraphs targeted Israeli policies.” Well, there is no doubt that they did, even if the state was not actually mentioned. From the beginning, the U.S. and Israel had protested too much against these clauses—in effect pleading guilty to the crimes alleged!

Following a bitter procedural wrangle, the substance of the paragraphs was not put to the vote, but a motion to take no action passed 50 to 38, with 11 abstentions, and with 71 more delegations on the plane or en route to the airport.

Chaotic, inconclusive, and in many ways typical of the issue, each of the groups came away nursing their wounds or celebrating their victories. Many of those delegates arrived in New York just in time for Sept. 11, to be greeted with a form of terror based on equal opportunity hatred, regardless of the religion, race, or color of the targets.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.

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