London | Monday
SOUTH Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu accused the Israelis of treating Palestinians in the same way the apartheid South African government treated blacks.
In a commentary published on Monday by The Guardian, Tutu said: ”I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”, Tutu said during a conference this month in Boston, Massachusetts, extracts of which were published as a commentary under the headline ”Apartheid in the Holy Land”.
”I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about,” said the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
”I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?
”If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land?”
The archbishop went on: ”You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal (in the US) and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic.
”People are scared in this country (the US), to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful very powerful. Well, so what?
”The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
”Injustice and oppression will never prevail,” Tutu declared.
”In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil,” he said.
Meanwhile, SA president Thabo Mbeki has urged the Non-Aligned Movement to be relentless in its efforts to find a lasting solution to the conflict in the Middle East.
Speaking at the official opening of the ministerial meeting of the co-ordinating bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement in Durban, Mbeki also stressed that dialogue rather than acts of occupation or terrorism should be pursued to achieve this goal.
Foreign ministers and senior officials from the 115 NAM member states started their three-day meeting in Durban on Saturday to discuss a number of critical issues facing them and to finalise the agenda for the coming 8th NAM summit of heads of state and governments.
The situation in the Middle East has thus far dominated the agenda.
On Saturday the Committee on Palestine met in Durban to discuss the matter.
Their resolutions on future action taken during the three-hour meeting were relayed to the ministerial meeting and will be made public on Monday.
Mbeki on Sunday said self-determination for the Palestinian people was a basic principle of non-alignment.
”The success of the movement in the liberation Southern African should serve as further motivation for the movement to address the outstanding issues of occupation and foreign domination.
”I need not remind you that our brothers and sisters in Palestine are still fighting the scourge of occupation. Our movement must not relent in its support for a just and lasting solution to this conflict. In the true spirit of non-alignment therefore, the path to enduring peace must be taken through dialogue rather than either acts of occupation or terrorism,” Mbeki said.
He said the challenge for the movement in the coming years was to continue to strengthen the unity among its members and enhance partnerships with the G77 and China.
NAM should also actively ensure that the United Nations and other multilateral fora focus on development in a sustained manner. Mbeki said the most important challenge for NAM member states was to acquire the capabilities to successfully compete and benefit from globalisation in a bid to eradicate poverty.
The 115 NAM member states represent two-thirds of the world’s population.
He said the principle of economic equity remained and had to remain fundamental to non-alignment.
Despite promises that current global economic trends would benefit developing countries, there was evidence that the vast majority of non-aligned countries continued to be marginalised.
”Consequently, the challenge ahead for NAM is to find ways and means to strengthen our capacity for united action, responding creatively and expeditiously to the issues facing the movement and the developing world. NAM mechanisms such as the NAM Troika and the co-ordinating bureau should be strengthened and utilised to achieve the movements objectives in multilateral fora on the basis of the agreed positions of the members,” Mbeki said.
He also said he was ”deeply disturbed” by the appearance of strong right wing tendencies, especially in Western Europe.
This was most recently illustrated during the first round of the French presidential elections, where right wing tendencies deeply informed by racist sentiments had emerged.
Mbeki said victory over racism wherever it may occur, the building of a true partnership between the North and the South and respect for the people NAM represented, required unity from the movement’s members.
”Inertia still makes it possible for those who have exclusively decided the fate of the world in the past to work in a manner that says that some are more equal than others,” Mbeki said. – Sapa