Apartheid Israel should not be granted African recognition, in the same way that apartheid South Africa was denied recognition.
About the course of many months, the African Union has been twirling in the wind over whether or not to award Israel observer status. President of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat controversially accredited the apartheid state in July last year, upending the continental organization's two-decade-old policy of boycotting the Jewish state and igniting protests from a number of member states, led by South Africa and Algeria, in response to the decision. When the annual Heads of State meeting convened earlier this week in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa, the subject was to be put to a vote on the agenda.
In spite of unsubstantiated claims attributed to the Algerian delegation that Mahamat's decision was about to be overturned, or maybe because it was about to be reversed, the vote was postponed until next year, which in essence means that his decision would remain in effect at least until then. According to the recently elected chairman of the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall, there was concern that the issue might divide the organization, which tends to make decisions by agreement in most cases.
The optics were not in the best of shape. It was scheduled just a few days after Amnesty International, one of the world's oldest and most respected human rights organizations, confirmed Israel's status as an apartheid state following an investigation into the treatment of Palestinians, both those who are citizens of Israel and those who live under Israeli military rule in the occupied territories, in the occupied territories.
Following decades of ostracism of South Africa for its practice of apartheid against its Black majority and solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle against Israeli colonial oppression, African countries' public embrace of an apartheid state in order to maintain dubious unity is unquestionably a step in the wrong directions.
The Amnesty International report painted a bleak picture of Mahamat's initial judgment. Even worse, this is not the first time that Israel's treatment of Palestinians has been referred to as apartheid by international organizations. In reality, Human Rights Watch, another famous worldwide human rights organization, had come to the same conclusion that Israel was guilty of apartheid less than three months before the AU's dramatic U-turn.
In support of his decision, Mahamat pointed out that the vast majority of African nations had recognized Israel and established diplomatic ties with it, and that the vast majority had sought accreditation from the United Nations. According to him, accreditation of Israel would not only be compatible with the African Union's support for a two-state solution in Palestine, but it would also offer the country with a platform from which to advocate for Palestinian rights in the international community.
It is the flaw in his reasoning that it fails to acknowledge the negative consequences of his choice - the recognition of Israel, whose basic premise was not to be "a state of all its residents... [but] the nation state of the Jewish people," as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it. The African Union's decision to grant legitimacy to an entity that, both in declaration and practice, excludes a section of its own population while brutally occupying and stealing the land of another is a betrayal of Africa's own history of struggle against brutal colonial occupation and dispossession, which dates back centuries. The most significant result is legitimisation, as shown by Israeli International Minister Yair Lapid's joy of the accreditation, which he described as "strengthening the fabric of Israel's foreign ties."
Just as it would have been unimaginable for the Organization of African Unity, the AU's precursor organization, to take apartheid South Africa into its fold, it should also be unthinkable for the United Nations to welcome apartheid Israel into its fold. While it is true that Israel was granted observer status by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) prior to the organization's collapse in 2002, the reality remains that this was not the case throughout most of the organization's existence. In reality, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was a vocal opponent of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, drawing parallels with the situation in apartheid South Africa.
Following the end of the 1967 war and the ensuing occupation of Palestinian and Arab territory, which Africa strongly criticized, this was much more the case. According to the OAU Council of Ministers, in 1986, "Member States renew their firm determination not to establish or re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel," which had been severed for the most part in 1973, and described Israel as "a natural and unconditional accomplice of racist South Africa."
A renewed focus on peace efforts, particularly the Oslo Accords of 1993, resulted in the reopening of diplomatic relations with African nations in 1993. However, by 2002, when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was reformed as the African Union (AU), it was evident that Israel had no intention of following its half of the agreement and releasing occupied Palestinian land. Even a decade later, when the Palestinians were accepted as observers to the Organization of African Unity, Israel was remained categorically barred.
Much of the Western world views Israel's legitimacy as the ultimate barometer of international acceptability, and this is understandable. One is continually reminded of the need of not delegitimizing the world's sole Jewish state and of the importance of accepting its "right to exist." States, on the other hand, do not have any rights, much alone the right to exist. It is one of the sine qua nons of state existence for it to be recognized by other nations, and having the right to exist would inevitably involve having the right to recognition, which – as the Palestinians, Somalilanders, and Kosovars can testify – is a right that is difficult to get. Furthermore, despite their pretensions to indestructibility, states are very modern political constructs and may be rather transient in their existence and influence. Did the Soviet Union have a legal right to exist?
Similar demands to refrain from delegitimizing the world's sole Palestinian state are seldom heard in the same context (which Israeli politicians and officials regularly and publicly do). I doubt that there would be much support in the West for the establishment of any number of "world's only" ethnic governments anywhere else in the world, as well. Would the Spaniards, for example, be OK with the existence of the world's sole Basque country?
But, perhaps more crucially, apartheid nations should not be legitimized, much alone granted the right to continue to exist in any form. The fact that the international system of nations is anarchic and that there are several unsavory and terrible regimes should not be used to imply that anything is permissible. The African Union has already expressed concern over Israel's failure to play by the rules in a number of resolutions. Approving a state that has repeatedly violated UN resolutions, one that has an official policy of ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and one that is committed to indefinitely perpetuating an oppressive colonial occupation, will be remembered as an indelible stain on the African Union's and Mahamat's records for a long time.
By : Patrick Gathara
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