Benji Shulman
IT is unfortunate that Dr Pali Lehohla, the former SA Statistician-General, has decided to drag the Palestinians into a debate on the important issue of South African statistics and their measurement in our country. This clouds an important problem and creates confusion for South Africans, especially in cases such as this, where incorrect facts are used.
It is of interest that Lehohla highlights that South Africa has performed poorly, compared with the Palestinians, in the field of supporting statistics. This is not the only area where South Africans fare badly compared with Palestinians.
One example of this is life expectancy. In the early 1990s, there was more co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians thanks to the Oslo Accords (a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements signed between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), in 1993).
As a result, according to the United Nations Human Development Index, Palestinian life expectancy has improved from an average of 68.0 years in 1990 to 74.8 years today. In the same period, South African life expectancy under ANC rule has barely changed over the same period with a minimal increase from an average of 63.3 years to a miserable 64.1 years. At times during this period, it plummeted to as low as 53.4 years. These numbers reflect the poor outcomes of our country’s healthcare, education and police policies.
There are other inaccuracies in Lehohla’s account. He claims that a Palestinian state has existed in the Middle East since antiquity. This is entirely false; there has never been a Palestinian state in the area. Quite the opposite. Jews have lived in that region for millennia including Jewish Kingdoms, which are well established in historical records. For example, we have pieces of pottery with the Hebrew word “David” on them, dating to the time of the Bible.
So how did it come to be called Palestine? Historians agree that around 132-135 CE, the Roman Empire put down a Jewish rebellion in the area we now call Israel. As a result, they expelled much of the indigenous Jewish population, from what was then the Jewish Kingdom of Judea. The Romans renamed the area to Syria Palaestina as a means of trying to de-link Jews from their homeland.
Nonetheless, just because they named the area in that way, it doesn’t mean that there was ever a state there that belonged to the Palestinians. When a Palestinian state was offered, such as in 1948 by the United Nations and a number of times since, it has always been rejected by the Palestinians themselves.
Lehohla misinterprets the statistics around the number of Palestinian refugees, claiming that there are some 12 million around the world. Again this is factually wrong.
In 1948, when the United Nations voted to re-establish the State of Israel, this was rejected by the Palestinians, and instead, the Arab world chose to attack Israel in what is now known as the Israeli War of Independence. This caused a refugee crisis, however, even according to Palestinian sources, this number only amounted to 750 000. During this time, a similar number of Jews were made refugees by Arab countries. So from where does Lehohla get the number of 12 million?
Refugees are supported through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Agency (UNHCRA), which focuses on settling them in other countries thereby removing their refugee status from them and their descendants.
Whereas other refugee groups and their descendants have integrated into the neighbouring societies, the same has not been the case for Palestinian refugees. Instead, they were given an entirely different agency called the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which caters for Palestinians only. Unlike all other refugees, they have not integrated or been welcomed by Arab countries.
Instead, an international special definition that only applies to Palestinians, creates a category of refugee, which is also applied to descendants. This means that multiple generations of Palestinians are considered refugees even those who have citizenship in other countries. Most, however, have simply not been allowed to integrate into surrounding Arab countries, but rather they are forced to live in permanent refugee camps.
According to UNRWA, this accounts for as much as one-third of all Palestinians who are currently living in permanent refugee status in Arab countries and they face significant discrimination. In Lebanon, for example, there are restrictions on Palestinians owning land and from working in certain occupations according to Human Rights Watch. These policies greatly inflate the number of Palestinian refugees and provide no way forward for a solution despite millions of dollars in aid donated to organisations like UNRWA.
The conditions that Palestinians are forced to endure are at the hands of the Arab governments bear far more resemblance to apartheid than anything remotely in Israel.
Despite this fact, this is exactly the accusation that Lehohla makes against the country. Israel is a democracy and a state in which Arab-Israelis are part of the judiciary, the parliament, and even the ruling party coalition.
Anti-apartheid activist Benjamin Pogrund, who was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga, in silver, for his contribution to South Africa's freedom, has written an entire book showing how this is an incorrect analogy.
With a better understanding of what is going on in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, we can start, as South Africans, to work toward being part of the solution and help building on the ground relations so the two sides can understand each other better toward accomplishing peace.
Benji Shulman is a director: Public Policy South African Zionist Federation
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