Photo: Wikipedia Pretoria — International Relations and Cooperation Deputy Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim said on Friday that a resolution was necessary in Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and that the issue was not about whether or not people should boycott Israel.
"There has to be a resolution. I think that whether people go to Israel or not is neither here nor there but the problem arises because of the inability of the Israeli government to resolve or grant the Palestian people ... an independent state," said the deputy minister.
On Tuesday, Ebrahim said that South Africa did not have a policy aimed at boycotting Israel, but that Pretoria discouraged people from visiting Israel because of the latter's continued occupation of Palestinian land.
"We have no policy that says boycott Israel, but we believe that Israel is an occupying power and that we should discourage people from visiting that country," he said on Tuesday.
At a joint media briefing on Friday, following the second Meeting of the South Africa-Vietnam Partnership Forum that was co-chaired by Ebrahim and his Vietnamese counterpart Le Luong Minh, the deputy minister said the real issue was the continued occupation.
"We should not divert from the real crux of the issue that is the continued occupation, the building of settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes," he said in response to a question on the matter.
He had noted criticism following earlier comments.
"The constitutional right of every South African is that they can visit wherever they want to go... The whole question of Israel- Palestine has to be looked at. Of course much of the criticism doesn't seem to address the main issue and the main issue is not whether you go to Israel or not. The main issue is that is there any steps taken by these people to stop the increasing settlement in east Jerusalem. There has to be a move to address the suffering of the Palestinian people," explained the deputy minister.
Minh said that the notion of co-existence in peace was supported.
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, which includes West Bank and Gaza, is seen as the foremost obstacle to peace in the region. Since Israel captured the territories in 1967, the international community, including the UN and international legal bodies, usually refer to the region as the occupied Palestinian territories, something Palestine had continued to reject.
South Africa's foreign policy had always been guided by finding a political solution to the decades-long crisis.
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Interesting thought about the responsibility to bring peace being just the responsibility of Israel; what about the incredibly entrenched and immovable Palestinian Arabs?? Ebrahim fails to consider that the original Palestinians were Greek in 1125 BC and the word "Palestinians" is actually a Hebrew word that means "invaders" [of Israel]. Afterthe Paklestinian Greeks disappeared around 1000BC, and any co-mingled group was again destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II in 604 BC, a new group called Palestinians arose in 110 AD when Roman Emperor Hadrian hated the Jews no less than these Muslims and renamed them as Palestinians to offend the Jews and he called their land Palestine; when Israel came into existence in 1948, Jews stopped calling themselves "Palestinians" and instead called themselves "Israelis". After the Arab states started and lost the 1967 Six Day War, the land that was called the West Bank after Israel's War of Independence, was recaptured by the Israelis; originally the British Protectorate of Palestine was to be divided 78% for an Arab State--now Jordan--and 22% for a Jewish State, with the western border being the Jordan River. See article "Lawrence of Judea" by world renown chronicler Sir Martin Gilbert, who also was the official chronicler of Winston Churchill. In the well documented article, King Saud, Churchill (then head of the British Colonial Office) and his assistant, T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) entered into this division agreement. In 1983, the Oslo Accords was entered into by Fatah and this created the Palestinian Authority; these Accords were amended with the division of the West Bank into three zones. Area "C" an all Israeli area is where all Israeli development has occurred. I guess you cannot believe anything that an Arab ever agrees to, as they signed on in the Oslo Accords, as the Arabs never can keep their word. And the Artabs have not stopped incitement or missiles fired against Israel. THESE ARE GOOD REASONS WHY EBRAHIM SHOULD BE IGNORED, AS HE SUPPORTS THE UNTHINKABLE AS A DOGMATIC BIASED RACIST BIGOT.
Minister Ebrahim,
So sorry to learn about the problems with the SAPS and the mine workers!! Wow !! Your guys mowed them down like flies!! As a Jew (and an admirer of Israel) I cannot believe what I am seeing!! The entire world on the outside of RSA seas you for what you are ... a bigot and a misguided idiot. God help South Africa!!