Former U.N. Rapporteur Assesses Human Rights In Occupied Palestinian Territories

John Dugard, South African jurist and scholar of international law who has been a prominent opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africa and served as U.N. special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, has written a book, “Confronting Apartheid: A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine.”

He provides this assessment: “South Africa’s Bantustans and Palestine’s territorial enclaves: South Africa’s Bantustans were a devious and wicked device designed to exclude black South Africans from participation in the political life and wealth of the Republic of South Africa, but the apartheid regime of South Africa spent millions of dollars on establishing schools, universities, clinics, hospitals and industries designed to provide jobs for black South Africans. The comparison provides further evidence, if evidence be needed, that Israeli apartheid is worse than that of South Africa. The evidence for this is clear, but the West refuses to notice it.”

Dugard argues that the regime in Israel/Palestine has not treated its indigenous population nearly as well or offered anything as good as South Africa did to its black population. He notes that the South African regime made some of its indigenous population reasonably comfortable and contented by withdrawing over the horizon and showering the “independent states” with budgetary support. The Israeli regime, he points out, seeks to do so by making most of their indigenous population unhappy and hopeless by remaining an everyday presence of humiliation. Israel has, he points out, showered the West Bank with roadblocks, night raids and assassinations and Gaza with economic siege and bombs. **