History

"The urban terrain, the resilience of Hamas and the people of Gaza, the balance of forces in the region and new warfare technologies posed distinct challenges for the Israeli Defence Forces, who were now fighting on multiple fronts with more ambitious goals than just recovering the hostages: destroying Hamas and then Hezbollah, controlling Southern Lebanon—in addition to making life unbearable for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. It was the continuation of the Nakba—an uncivil war of land expropriation.

In those early days, watching with mounting anxiety the indiscriminate bombing of a defenceless population, I wondered why such an eruption of violence had not occurred in apartheid South Africa. Many had anticipated a similar Armageddon. The States of Emergency between 1984 and 1994 saw the militarization of townships, death squads, chemical warfare, assassinations, torture and detention without trial. During this period, an estimated 20,000 were killed in South Africa, the vast majority black; another 1.5 million died in South Africa’s ‘destabilization’ of neighbouring countries. How, after ten years of civil war, did this culminate in a negotiated settlement, the dismantling of the major planks of the apartheid order, and the first elections based on majority rule? Why does such an outcome—with all its problems—seem so remote when we turn to the plight of the Palestinians and the spiralling violence, internal and external, of the Israeli state? How was it that the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 intensified confrontations rather than making progress towards a two-state solution? Why did Israel abandon the Abraham Accords, which outlined collaboration with Arab states, preferring the disproportionate massacre of Palestinians after Hamas’s incursion?"

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii153/articles/michael-burawoy-palestine-through-a-south-african-lens

#SouthAfrica #Apartheid #Israel #Colonialism #LandTheft #Palestine #Gaza #SettlerColonialism #Afrikaner #Zionism

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