With almost stunning speed, the South Africa analogy has become part of the Israel-Palestine debate. A reference to Israel’s “apartheid” that a few years ago would have sounded shrill now seems almost commonplace. Jimmy Carter deserves much credit, and never backed down from his book’s accusing title. But note carefully: Carter referred to the apartheid in occupied Palestine, not in Israel proper.
Beyond rhetoric, the South African model is gaining traction as a blueprint for liberation. Palestinian intellectuals raise it as an alternative to the two-state “peace process” going nowhere. Left of center Israelis make ominous references to the “Nelson Mandela scenario” Israel will face if it continues to thwart creation of a viable Palestinian state. There seems an assumption – held by both those who fear it and those who would welcome it — that the agitation for a non-racial democratic state for all its citizens in all of historic Palestine might actually succeed. Didn’t apartheid collapse with stunning rapidity, after years of successfully flouting international sanctions? Might not Israel succumb to similar pressures?
Of course anything could happen. But if one considers the situation logically rather than romantically, and pays attention to the actual strengths of the contending parties, it seems clear that the South African analogy is more a cudgel to hammer at Israel’s standing in world opinion than a viable path towards justice for the Palestinians. It gives no pleasure to say it, but the South African scenario belongs on the same shelf as the Palestinian rejection of partition in 1947, or the Arab states who risked a war they were unprepared to fight in 1967: instances of maximalist bravado, grounded in a severe misjudgment of the balance of forces, leading to a very poor result.
The likenesses between South African apartheid and today’s Israel now seem obvious, and hardly need reiteration: millions of Palestinians are subject to a regime of occupation, without citizenship rights. A hostile, race-obsessed government controls their movement, their legal place of residence, their access to education, what roads they may use, where they may work, etc. What possibly besides the passbook and “homelands” system comes to mind when one reads of Israel’s telling a Palestinian woman that she can’t finish her degree at Bethlehem University because her legal place of residence is Gaza.
But the analogy begins to break down when one looks at the broader networks of support for the two systems. The United States was hostile in principle if not necessarily in practice to South African apartheid. Israel by contrast, is formally beloved in Washington, and Americans have helped subsidize its occupation of the conquered territories for two generations. This inescapable fact ought to loom large for those weighing whether the South African analogy is a viable route to Palestinian self-determination.
For a straightforward comparison, consider these statistics:
Number of ethnically Afrikaaner billionaires in the United States in 1985: Zero
Number of ethnically Afrikaaner US senators: Zero
Number of major American newspapers owned by ethnic Afrikaaners: Zero
Number of American television networks founded by an ethnic Afrikaaner: Zero
Number of ethnic Afrikaaners who are chief executives of major media enterprise: Zero
Number of ethnic Afrikaaners who were editor in chief of major American publishing houses: Zero
Number of ethnic Afrikaaners who held tenured positions in history, sociology, or political science at Ivy league universities: Zero
This list would not be different in Europe. And obviously Israel benefits from an entirely different level of active soft-power support. South Africa was never widely reviled in the United States. The Reagan administration, worried in the 1980’s about Soviet/Cuban advances in southern Africa, adopted a policy of “constructive engagement” towards Pretoria, strategic cooperation and efforts to shield South Africa from sanctions legislation emanating from the Congress. But in 1986 Congress passed stiff sanctions anyway, by a margin sufficient to overcome a veto from the popular Reagan. While some Americans defended South Africa on grounds of realpolitik there was virtually no one outside the political fringes who mounted a forthright defense of apartheid. (Interestingly apartheid’s South African ideologists defended the regime not on the basis of white racial theory, but as the only possible means for the cultural and political survival— "the right to exist" — of South Africa’s white tribe.)
But Israel benefits from levels of support in the United States that South Africa never did. South Africa could be isolated by sanctions—it was kicked out of the Olympic Games as early as 1964. Far from facing sanctions, Israel recently demonstrated that it can summon 10-1 votes in the US Congress to squelch investigation of its war crimes.
The good news is that Israel has a fallback position which the Afrikaaners lacked: a pullback to its 1967 borders. Large numbers of Israel’s supporters in the US favor such a retreat, and are ashamed or angered by Israel’s present conduct. Many more would tolerate such a pullback even if they wish to avoid it. The same can be said for thousands, perhaps a million, of Israelis—including those who, often at great cost to themselves, protest and document and fight against the occupation. Almost none of them favor the dismantlement of Israel. Treating Israel as South Africa means, essentially, throwing these people under the bus, which would be as politically impractical as it would be morally dubious.
It is now apparent that only outside pressure will persuade Israel to negotiate seriously about a viable Palestinian state: Israel’s population must begin to feel some of the pain it inflicts on Palestine. So here some elements of the South African analogy – the boycott and divestment strategies –actually do make sense. But to become more than an exercise of catharsis for a sliver of the Left, those tactics must be exercised –as they were in the case of South Africa– in support of goals where there exists an international consensus: the end of the occupation, justice for the Palestinians, and the continued existence of Israel between secure and recognized borders. Otherwise, with no support from Israelis or from liberal American Jews, it would be doomed to fail.
While the balance of international political and economic forces may be the most decisive reason why the South Africa analogy in its pure form is inapt, there are other important distinctions between the two situations, and they too point towards two states rather than a unitary state as the more realistic goal. Among them are:
1) Terrorism. Though it carried out armed struggle, the ANC never struck soft civilian targets, but raided police stations and power generators. It makes a huge difference in the legitimacy of what is, in the end, a political and not a military battle.
2) Shared religion: the Mandela generation of ANC leaders were raised in missionary schools, which both molded their outlook and ultimately made them believable as negotiating partners who promised that whites had an entirely legitimate place in the next South Africa.
3) Luck: the Berlin Wall fell at the same time South Africa was beginning to really suffer from economic sanctions, while the government was in the early stages of negotiating with Nelson Mandela and the ANC leadership. Communism’s collapse had a dual fortuitous effect: it made the white South African leaders more secure about the radical threats they faced while at the same time undermining the principle rationale they used to justify South Africa in western capitals.
4) The Mandela factor: I didn’t notice this at the time (I was one of those who worried more about Soviet advances in southern Africa than apartheid) but the Mandelas –Winnie also—were extraordinarily charismatic people, who had a transformative effect on almost whomever they came into contact with. Winnie, banned after the 1976 Soweto riots to an isolated white suburb, managed to comport herself like a queen and became dear friends with the wife and children of a right wing Afrikaaner with many government contacts. Nelson of course was famous for inspiring something approaching love among his jailers, as well as deep personal admiration from his negotiating partners. Has such a Palestinian emerged? I don’t know of one.
All these were instrumental in turning South Africa away from the bloody train wreck that a great many anticipated. Every situation is different of course, but it is not clear to me what the Israelis and Palestinians have that could play a role similar role. It’s fortunate they have a potential alternative to a unitary state.
