Anonymous asked:
What differentiates palestine as it exists today from a bantustan?
unsolicited-opinions answered:
(We’re talking about this post.)
Quite a lot, Anon:
1. Palestinians were never citizens of Israel.
Bantustans were designed to revoke citizenship from Black South Africans. The apartheid regime invented them to legally strip people of rights they already had.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were never Israeli citizens. They were Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian-administered (Gaza) residents before 1967, and neither Israel nor the PA nor Hamas has claimed they’re Israeli citizens since.
No rights were stripped from them.
2. Palestinian leadership was not installed by Israel.
Bantustan governments were handpicked by the apartheid regime to establish a fake sovereignty with total external control.
The Palestinian Authority was created through mutual negotiation (Oslo Accords) and chosen by voters by internationally observed elections. Hamas won an election in Gaza.
Israel doesn’t select Palestinian leaders.
3. Bantustans were inside South Africa.
They were used to exile Black South Africans from citizenship within the country of which they were citizens.
The West Bank and Gaza are not inside Israel. They are disputed, non-annexed territories that were captured in war. The Palestinians are not a domestic population being cordoned off, they are a Self-identifying separate national group seeking independent statehood.
4. Israel never claimed Palestine as a final status.
South Africa wanted the Bantustans to be the final home of their Black population, permanently excluded from the state.
Israel has never claimed the West Bank and Gaza as permanent Israeli territory. Every Israeli government (left or right) has accepted in principle that the territories are subject to final-status negotiations.
Bantustans were the end of the conversation. Palestine is still in negotiation, even though it is stalled.
5. Bantustans had no international support.
Not one country on Earth recognized them. They were seen universally as tools of racial domination.
By contrast, the Palestinian Authority has diplomatic relations with over 130 countries, observer status at the UN, and wide support for eventual statehood.
Much of the international community sees Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as a nation under occupation, not a racial group being excluded from their own country.
6. Palestinians have said no. Repeatedly.
The Bantustans were imposed unilaterally.
The Palestinian Authority has turned down multiple offers of actual statehood, including in 2000 (Barak/Clinton), 2001 (Taba), 2008 (Olmert), and more.
They are not trapped in a fake homeland, they’ve been repeatedly offered a real one and rejected the terms.
Bantustans were fake countries invented to justify racial domination inside a single state.
The Palestinian territories are nationalist entities stuck in a failed peace process.
They are not free. They are not sovereign. But they are not Bantustans. Claiming otherwise erases everything specific about both histories just to make performative bullshit work.
Anon, I get that you meant the question to be rhetorical instead of a prompt to dismantle it’s ignorant point - but if you’re going to try to weaponize historical comparisons…it’ll help if you actually study the history.
What I wouldn’t give for people to get it through their skulls that historical parallels are meant to be a means of actually discussing the similarities and differences between conflicts, not as a short-hand for expressing generic disgust.
When I say “I think there are some similarities between the Irish Potato Famine and the Holodomor,” you should reasonably assume that I’m saying more than merely “these were both very bad and a lot of people died :( ” That would be a completely inane comparison to make for that reason, because it would trivialize both into just being generic “bad things”. The same holds true for literally any conflict, genocide, or legal framework of oppression. You don’t need to say that a system is “just like” Apartheid/slavery/the Holocaust/the Rwandan genocide/etc. in order to say that you think it’s horrific and unconscionable. You can just… say that.
I feel like the underlying assumption of the above rhetoric is simply that people are arguing that Israel itself is not a legitimate nation and the land that is recognized as Israel should be nationally part of Palestine.
Like, I get the feeling that this argument of the differences simply would not be accepted by anyone who thinks the entire Palestinian mandate (excluding any overlap with modern Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon) is supposed to be the nation of Palestine and therefore the formation of the nation of Israel, by its very nature, created West Bank and Gaza "Palestine" as segregation from "their" land and therefore rightful country.
Obviously the reality is that the nation of Israel currently exists, but yeah. I think it's a denial of the first principle of assuming the legitimacy of a country which exists, which is why some people are arguing they are a domestic population being cordoned off (from what is now Israel, but they argue is still also Palestine).
Some people are genuinely arguing a one state solution which is "all of it is Palestine and should be Palestine." And those people will never accept the above differences between bantustan and west bank/Gaza.
Other people, however, are probably just wanting to discuss the occupation (especially of the West Bank), which effectively on the ground is subjecting Palestinians to Israeli laws or military forces without the benefits of any citizenship in Israel.
They are disputed non-annexed territories captured in war
okay, I'll admit my ignorance here, but is the legal understanding just that occupation is when annexation is de facto, but not declared de jure?
I’m not an attorney, but here’s how I understand the legal terms:
- Occupation = Controlling sovereign land but not officially annexing it under law.
- Annexation (de jure) = Declaring the sovereign land part of its own sovereign territory under law.
- De facto annexation = Acting as though the land is under control, but not legally annexing.
So if I understand your question correctly….?
Yes…and no.
Under international law, occupation refers to control over another’s sovereign land without annexation, right?
Some in Israel point out that the West Bank (/J&S) was not under the recognized sovereignty of any state before 1967. And that’s true. It was (de jure) annexed by Jordan after 1948, but that annexation was recognized by only two countries and Jordan has explicitly abandoned any claim on the West Bank (/J&S).
They argue that Israel did not (in the defensive 6-Day War of 1967) seize the territory from any legitimate sovereign.
Big ol’ Charlie Foxtrot, isn’t it?
So by that argument, international occupation law doesn’t really apply and it isn’t an occupation. That’s why it’s frequently referred to as a disputed territory, because that terminology can’t really be disputed.
I don’t know enough about international law to have an opinion on the quality of this argument, but:
I agree with Haviv Rettig Gur that the question of whether or not it’s an occupation isn’t the important part.
The important part is that Palestinians in area C don’t get any say in the government which makes decisions for them. That’s not right and needs to be remedied, somehow.
On the other hand, the Palestinians of areas A and B (and of Gaza) don’t get to vote for their government either. Neither the PA nor Hamas have had elections in nearly two decades, and neither is a competent, functional government which invests in building a nation and serving its people. Neither is a legitimate government.
So Palestinians don’t have a lot of political agency anywhere in the Levant…except in Jordan where they’re the majority.
