In face of UN ‘blacklist’, is South Africa softening on Middle East?

STEVEN GRUZD

Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comments that the peace plan reminded him of a “Bantustan type of construction”, and the fierce comeback from Jewish communal groups, South Africa has further nuanced its position.

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) published a “blacklist” of 112 (mainly) Israeli and international companies operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, following a 2016 UN HRC resolution, leading to rising temperatures. It includes Israel’s major banks and its water, railway, and telephone utilities. Some international companies named are Motorola, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin criticised the list as “shameful”, recalling “dark periods in our history”. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the list’s publication was “the ultimate surrender to pressure exerted by countries and organisations interested in harming Israel” and was “a stain … on human rights itself”.

The Israeli Embassy in Pretoria said, “We are confident that states and companies will not lend legitimacy or cooperate in any effort to discriminate against Israel or advance BDS.”

Rowan Polovin, the national chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, said the organisation “strongly condemns [this] discriminatory and shameful measure”.

“This ‘blacklist’ is a long-running measure that has been brewed in the United Nations, and is carefully designed to target and discriminate against these companies through boycotts and punitive action,” Polovin said. “[It] is consistent with the UN’s history of anti-Israel bias, and won’t promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The HRC, which sits in Geneva, Switzerland, and generated the “blacklist”, has a standing agenda item on Israel at every meeting. Its many members who are far less democratic than Israel escape this singling out. They also routinely object to country-specific resolutions, shielding rights-violating governments. Condemnation of Israel, however, is routine and regular by the HRC.

This year, its membership includes countries with notorious human-rights records such as Afghanistan, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, and Venezuela. In 2017 and 2018, every African country supported or abstained on anti-Israel resolutions, with the notable exception of Togo.

The HRC’s unfair anti-Israel bias was one of the reasons for the US walking out of the body in June 2018.

UN Watch, a non-governmental organisation fighting anti-Israel invective at the HRC, said, “Dictatorships initiated this blacklist not because they care about human rights, but to divert attention from serial rights abuses committed by council members like Venezuela, Libya, and DR Congo, by scapegoating the Jewish state.

“Doing business in disputed territories has never been prohibited under international law, nor, until today, subject to a UN blacklist,” UN Watch said. “Curiously, out of more than 100 territorial disputes in the world today, including Tibet, Kashmir, Crimea, Western Sahara, and Northern Cyprus, the UN chose to blacklist only companies doing business in Israel’s disputed territories.”

Palestinians and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement naturally welcomed the list with glee. Human Rights Watch said it “should put all companies on notice: to do business with illegal settlements is to aid in the commission of war crimes”.

Meanwhile, is South Africa adopting a more moderate tone on the peace plan? The plan was discussed in the UN Security Council (of which South Africa is a non-permanent member in 2019-2020) on 11 February. There, ambassador Xolisa Mabhongo, South Africa’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, said, “the people of occupied Palestine … tend to be ignored when their own destiny is being decided upon”.

Trump’s plan, though despised by its detractors, is pragmatic. It acknowledges the reality that Israel exists. The Jewish state isn’t going away, and needs to safeguard its security in a rough neighbourhood. Repeated rejections of any compromise for a century has shrunk the territory a putative state would ever control.

South Africa dismisses the new thinking in the Trump plan. “Flagrant violations of international law at the expense of what is deemed political reality or expediency,” Mabhongo said, “undermines the rule of just law and the global multilateral system.”

He noted that South Africa’s position is in line with “AU leaders [who] reaffirmed the continent’s solidarity with the people of Palestine for their inalienable right to self-determination”.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was present at the council debate. He has repeatedly attempted to use the UN to push unilaterally for recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state.

Noting that the Trump plan had shone the spotlight on moribund negotiations, Mabhongo advocated for both sides to hammer out a solution themselves. “The security council must support the necessary environment for Israel and Palestine to come together, as equals, to resume the peace process,” he said.

South Africa is pushing for concerns to come back onto the table. “All final-status issues, including illegal Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem, and the right of refugees to return to their homeland, must be in line with international law.” These conditions are anathema to the current Israeli government.

Mabhongo noted that 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in captivity, and as president “demonstrated that, what for some had seemed to be intractable and unrealistic, was solvable. May this be a lesson in finding peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

It looks like the struggle will continue in the boardrooms and chambers of international organisations for some time yet. And while South Africa remains firmly in the Palestinian corner for now, its statements hint that it might aspire for a role as referee.