It does not appear
that there is a two-state
solution in sight for Israel and
Palestine.
This is because it has long since gone up for most people in the region, the two-state solution is the ultimate form of apartheid that no one in the two populations really want or can live with. It is politicians who invented the theory of the creation of two or more States to be rid of people across history, economy and culture.
The fiction of a multi-state solution was the South African apartheid controlled problem. Although the white population and especially the Afrikaans-speaking residents originally may have wanted to live in splendid isolation in their own country, without interference from black, brown, yellow or ungodly people, they brought great economic boom of the 60s and 70s to a need for still more labor, as the white in reality could not be without.
A distinction is made here between the fanciful theory of apartheid, segregation, which could never move from theory to practice, and the various references to the theory, which took the form of a notion of diversity. It was intended to justify the many abuses that belief differences between people invited to. The theory of separation can not be used when all stakeholders insist on having access to the entire area, which they believe to be associated with.
The black and colored and Indian people in South Africa did not want to have to settle for the limits and geographical handouts and barren lands in the form of 'homelands' as they would belong according to multiple stateless meaning of fiction about the total separation that had long since changed to a claim diversity. The total separation was possibly the original target of apartheid in South Africa, but no one wanted to practice the target met, and no one was able to implement it, just as is currently the case in Israel-Palestine.
Of course there are major differences between the situation at that time in South Africa and present-day situation in Israel-Palestine, but the similarities are so many that it should be considered whether the South African population's final rejection of the fiction of apartheid in 1994 could be an inspiration to those in power in Israel-Palestine, now that the two-state solution is about to its ultimate defeat.
The close cooperation between Israel and South African Defence Forces in the 70s and 80s were important to the way in which those in power at the time handled the armed conflict with the opponents of the regimes, but it has also been very important to the particular degree of ruthlessness that we looks in the current war in Israel-Palestine.
Israel and South Africa felt increasingly isolated from the international community because of world opinion stamping of the two countries as colonial powers. For Israel was opposed not only by the Palestinians but the entire Arab world.
It recalled the situation in South Africa, and the two countries responded by arming themselves to the teeth. Although Israel officially distanced itself from the theory of apartheid, threats from the environment inspired to cooperation on nuclear power and drones and other military hardware. The two countries' soldiers moved freely among each other, and a larger number of white South Africans stayed for a long time in Israel, where they contributed to the military and technological developments.
The conflict in South Africa was not religiously inspired to its foundations, but numerically reminded the relative strengths of the 11 different language groups and peoples on the situation in the Middle East in a wider sense. In South Africa discrepancies between the groups had the same key of ethnic, economic and cultural elements that are present in Israel-Palestine today. In South Africa the conflict only ended when Hendrik Verwoerds increasingly clear sighted successors gradually realized that a democratic unitary state solution was the only way, which ultimately would give all parties the prospect of peace and a decent future. How this insight arose, is the topic of Hermann Giliomees informative and immediately captivating book, "The Last African Leaders (The last Boer leaders) from 2012.
The unitary state solution demanded a showdown with the nationalists who used apartheid theory as a tool for nationalistic dominance, which of course was basically a perversion of apartheid. The theory was conceived in worldly ideologues ivory towers, with amazing performances of separate but equal nations in separate countries. Apartheid evolved contrary to a completely different system of guarded labor camps to which the peoples of slave laborers were referred when they are not working for those in power. The U.S. Southern ideal of 'separate but equal' was in practice for 'Separate and Unequal' in South Africa, as it has now also become in Israel-Palestine.
In South Africa, apartheid was introduced as a practice consisting of four points: 1) a ban on sex between whites and non-whites, 2) separate homes, schools and public facilities, 3) separate electoral lists for blacks and Indians in the white areas, and 4) more or less independent dormitories in the form of 'homelands' for blacks when they were not on forced labor for the whites.
The author of the original Apartheid theory was the sociologist and politician Hendrik Verwoerd, who originally were not of South African origin and therefore were not really was a Boer. He was born in Holland by the Dutch missionary parents, and he grew up in South Africa and elsewhere in southern Africa with the convert's unyielding and uncompromising enthusiasm for a theory of apartheid, which was not developed and not needed to be realized, either by himself, his family, the other white or the other peoples of South Africa. When Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966 in circumstances that are still partially unresolved, the attitude even among influential residents was that "the country is not much longer able to keep to Verwoerd" (Schalk Pienaar). By Verwoerds death the nearly 30-year scheme were sown for a unitary state solution, the result we have been able to enjoy for two decades.
The following year Verwoerds death in 1966, I visited for the first time South Africa as a guest of residents, both in the more extreme northeast (then Transvaal) and the more pragmatic southwest (Boland and Kapstad). To my surprise, it was obvious that the two sites had no real desire or opportunity to practice the spirit of the theory of apartheid, however much talk to the contrary. The country's economy had become dependent on non-white workers.
This is because it has long since gone up for most people in the region, the two-state solution is the ultimate form of apartheid that no one in the two populations really want or can live with. It is politicians who invented the theory of the creation of two or more States to be rid of people across history, economy and culture.
The fiction of a multi-state solution was the South African apartheid controlled problem. Although the white population and especially the Afrikaans-speaking residents originally may have wanted to live in splendid isolation in their own country, without interference from black, brown, yellow or ungodly people, they brought great economic boom of the 60s and 70s to a need for still more labor, as the white in reality could not be without.
A distinction is made here between the fanciful theory of apartheid, segregation, which could never move from theory to practice, and the various references to the theory, which took the form of a notion of diversity. It was intended to justify the many abuses that belief differences between people invited to. The theory of separation can not be used when all stakeholders insist on having access to the entire area, which they believe to be associated with.
The black and colored and Indian people in South Africa did not want to have to settle for the limits and geographical handouts and barren lands in the form of 'homelands' as they would belong according to multiple stateless meaning of fiction about the total separation that had long since changed to a claim diversity. The total separation was possibly the original target of apartheid in South Africa, but no one wanted to practice the target met, and no one was able to implement it, just as is currently the case in Israel-Palestine.
Of course there are major differences between the situation at that time in South Africa and present-day situation in Israel-Palestine, but the similarities are so many that it should be considered whether the South African population's final rejection of the fiction of apartheid in 1994 could be an inspiration to those in power in Israel-Palestine, now that the two-state solution is about to its ultimate defeat.
The close cooperation between Israel and South African Defence Forces in the 70s and 80s were important to the way in which those in power at the time handled the armed conflict with the opponents of the regimes, but it has also been very important to the particular degree of ruthlessness that we looks in the current war in Israel-Palestine.
Israel and South Africa felt increasingly isolated from the international community because of world opinion stamping of the two countries as colonial powers. For Israel was opposed not only by the Palestinians but the entire Arab world.
It recalled the situation in South Africa, and the two countries responded by arming themselves to the teeth. Although Israel officially distanced itself from the theory of apartheid, threats from the environment inspired to cooperation on nuclear power and drones and other military hardware. The two countries' soldiers moved freely among each other, and a larger number of white South Africans stayed for a long time in Israel, where they contributed to the military and technological developments.
The conflict in South Africa was not religiously inspired to its foundations, but numerically reminded the relative strengths of the 11 different language groups and peoples on the situation in the Middle East in a wider sense. In South Africa discrepancies between the groups had the same key of ethnic, economic and cultural elements that are present in Israel-Palestine today. In South Africa the conflict only ended when Hendrik Verwoerds increasingly clear sighted successors gradually realized that a democratic unitary state solution was the only way, which ultimately would give all parties the prospect of peace and a decent future. How this insight arose, is the topic of Hermann Giliomees informative and immediately captivating book, "The Last African Leaders (The last Boer leaders) from 2012.
The unitary state solution demanded a showdown with the nationalists who used apartheid theory as a tool for nationalistic dominance, which of course was basically a perversion of apartheid. The theory was conceived in worldly ideologues ivory towers, with amazing performances of separate but equal nations in separate countries. Apartheid evolved contrary to a completely different system of guarded labor camps to which the peoples of slave laborers were referred when they are not working for those in power. The U.S. Southern ideal of 'separate but equal' was in practice for 'Separate and Unequal' in South Africa, as it has now also become in Israel-Palestine.
In South Africa, apartheid was introduced as a practice consisting of four points: 1) a ban on sex between whites and non-whites, 2) separate homes, schools and public facilities, 3) separate electoral lists for blacks and Indians in the white areas, and 4) more or less independent dormitories in the form of 'homelands' for blacks when they were not on forced labor for the whites.
The author of the original Apartheid theory was the sociologist and politician Hendrik Verwoerd, who originally were not of South African origin and therefore were not really was a Boer. He was born in Holland by the Dutch missionary parents, and he grew up in South Africa and elsewhere in southern Africa with the convert's unyielding and uncompromising enthusiasm for a theory of apartheid, which was not developed and not needed to be realized, either by himself, his family, the other white or the other peoples of South Africa. When Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966 in circumstances that are still partially unresolved, the attitude even among influential residents was that "the country is not much longer able to keep to Verwoerd" (Schalk Pienaar). By Verwoerds death the nearly 30-year scheme were sown for a unitary state solution, the result we have been able to enjoy for two decades.
The following year Verwoerds death in 1966, I visited for the first time South Africa as a guest of residents, both in the more extreme northeast (then Transvaal) and the more pragmatic southwest (Boland and Kapstad). To my surprise, it was obvious that the two sites had no real desire or opportunity to practice the spirit of the theory of apartheid, however much talk to the contrary. The country's economy had become dependent on non-white workers.
In the
two ends of the country families,
instead of two versions of the same unitary state
solution, practiced a more extreme one in the north and a less obvious in the south, where the
so-called Cape nationalists
eventually had a
strong desire to get rid of Verwoerd,
but neither Verwoerds more pragmatic
successors or the
white population as a whole wanted
to give access to any part of South Africa, as in Israel-Palestine today.
In the vast plains of central South Africa, which goes by the name Karoo, there was and is the vast sheep farms and other farms, which was the base for countless families of black farm workers who lived in small cottages around the white owners headquarters. Here fifty families with father, mother and children served a single family of people who would not otherwise have an opportunity for an abundant life if they had to care them selves for their animals and soils. The owners praise apartheid without ever wonder about the paradox of a lifestyle that was based on diversity rather than separation.
The paradox in the state woke the black elite and the group of educated South Africans still called 'colored' that does not have pejorative meaning in South Africa. The black elite and the colored middle class, using all legal and illegal political means, worked against the administrative division of the country and its citizens, while the vast majority of black suffering the daily pursuit of a meaningless apartheid bureaucracy that was the theory leftover, and the effect was only to give the white both in the bag and the sack.
When I came back in 2012 to the rainbow nation, as Desmond Tutu has called South Africa after 1994 the miracle was a fact from Pretoria and Johannesburg over the Knysna to Cape Town and Stellenbosch, despite the many problems that still need to be resolved. It functions as it is also expressed in a postscript by crime writer Deon Meyer, who is the only living Afrikaans-writing author with worldwide distribution.
A major problem that Meyer repeatedly returns to in his books, is the question of identity in a rainbow nation. In many ways, South Africa has a European flavor and a European practice, particularly in the southwestern parts of the country. Embossed and practice comes from the must-dominated apartheid controlled administration; it is not necessarily a mark or a practice that most of South Africa wants to understand and receive, but half of the mixed population in the province of Western Cape speak Afrikaans daily.
In Israel, there is similarly good reasons a European flair, a practice which originated from immigrants from Europe. Not all citizens of an Israeli-Palestinian united state may wish to take this character and this practice. What is the identity of the community after all? What to call the united state? Which language should be spoken? All this gives the reality itself, because people in rainbow nations just do not have choose. In addition to South Africa, there are other successful rainbow nations such as Canada and the U.S., and there would have been many others whose victors after World War I had not been so anxious to break so many successful communities.
It was the black elite in South Africa, which was the main force behind the opposition to apartheid and the peaceful revolution, and it is still the black elite, who have to get used to the responsibility of every citizen in the country. It is also the Israeli and Palestinian elites who must assume responsibility for all citizens of the united state. The responsibility will not be lifted by raising walls and manning checkpoints because those on both sides of the wall are not 'separate but equal'.
In the vast plains of central South Africa, which goes by the name Karoo, there was and is the vast sheep farms and other farms, which was the base for countless families of black farm workers who lived in small cottages around the white owners headquarters. Here fifty families with father, mother and children served a single family of people who would not otherwise have an opportunity for an abundant life if they had to care them selves for their animals and soils. The owners praise apartheid without ever wonder about the paradox of a lifestyle that was based on diversity rather than separation.
The paradox in the state woke the black elite and the group of educated South Africans still called 'colored' that does not have pejorative meaning in South Africa. The black elite and the colored middle class, using all legal and illegal political means, worked against the administrative division of the country and its citizens, while the vast majority of black suffering the daily pursuit of a meaningless apartheid bureaucracy that was the theory leftover, and the effect was only to give the white both in the bag and the sack.
When I came back in 2012 to the rainbow nation, as Desmond Tutu has called South Africa after 1994 the miracle was a fact from Pretoria and Johannesburg over the Knysna to Cape Town and Stellenbosch, despite the many problems that still need to be resolved. It functions as it is also expressed in a postscript by crime writer Deon Meyer, who is the only living Afrikaans-writing author with worldwide distribution.
A major problem that Meyer repeatedly returns to in his books, is the question of identity in a rainbow nation. In many ways, South Africa has a European flavor and a European practice, particularly in the southwestern parts of the country. Embossed and practice comes from the must-dominated apartheid controlled administration; it is not necessarily a mark or a practice that most of South Africa wants to understand and receive, but half of the mixed population in the province of Western Cape speak Afrikaans daily.
In Israel, there is similarly good reasons a European flair, a practice which originated from immigrants from Europe. Not all citizens of an Israeli-Palestinian united state may wish to take this character and this practice. What is the identity of the community after all? What to call the united state? Which language should be spoken? All this gives the reality itself, because people in rainbow nations just do not have choose. In addition to South Africa, there are other successful rainbow nations such as Canada and the U.S., and there would have been many others whose victors after World War I had not been so anxious to break so many successful communities.
It was the black elite in South Africa, which was the main force behind the opposition to apartheid and the peaceful revolution, and it is still the black elite, who have to get used to the responsibility of every citizen in the country. It is also the Israeli and Palestinian elites who must assume responsibility for all citizens of the united state. The responsibility will not be lifted by raising walls and manning checkpoints because those on both sides of the wall are not 'separate but equal'.
On the contrary, it is the aforementioned perversion of a nebulous and meaningless apartheid ideal. Apartheid was an unworkable idea of separation, which in practice was implemented as a misanthropic principle of diversity, which is used to make life miserable for the people who the affluent middle class on one hand still can not do without, and which areas the selfsame affluent middle class still does not want to give up when the toast speeches ended, the sermons are held, and everyday life has arrived.
In South Africa, it was the more pragmatic Cape nationalists, who realized that it did not work in the long run, and they chose to engage with the ANC's Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela who, after generations in exile, isolation and imprisonment nevertheless was able to participate in the unique and charismatic balance between the different ethnic communities and political factions.
The fall of the USSR played a role, because they were supporters of the ANC and the South African Communist Party. It also played a role that whites were significantly minorities and especially the Boers didn’t believe to have any place to go if they were to lose a civil war, but it was vital the good will and the ability to influence their followers, which was characteristic of the individual influential players.
Completely the same conditions do not apply in Israel-Palestine, but the dependence on a pointless and humiliating practice which is equally divided in its conception of apartheid as it was in South Africa, is the same. Everyday requirements for workers who are forced to move in a united state, but without having access to the same state’s amenities, are the same as in South Africa before 1994. This begs the question: Where to find the influential players with the willingness and ability to think about ordinary people's living conditions?
History is full of examples of leaders who in some inscrutable way find a peaceful way out of a hitherto unresolved conflict. This was Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and this is perhaps Mohammad Javad Zarif and Hassan Rouhani in Iran, particularly when good will is impervious to ordinary people's difficulties in everyday life, which are characterized by sanctions and lack of daily necessities.
In Israel-Palestine, we need players who will carry out the democratic united state, if sprouts after all, in a small way can be found in the emerging economic and security cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, who until recently was about to present itself to places like East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
As members of the Semitic language group Israelis and Palestinians have much more in terms of culture and ethnicity than was the case with the ethnic groups in South Africa, and all three major religions are practiced both in Israel and Palestine, despite vociferous claims to the contrary. May the South African example inspire a new miracle in the Middle East.
