Two South African winners of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday urged Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate peace, with former archbishop Desmond Tutu comparing the regional crisis to apartheid.
Their comments came as Pretoria condemned Israel’s ground offensive into the Gaza strip and several prominent South Africans of Jewish descent called for the country to cut ties with Israel.
“It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis rooted to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control,” Tutu said at a news conference on this year’s annual summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners to be held in Cape Town in October.
Criticism of Israel from South Africa is not new, but the Jewish state is always outraged by any comparison of its policies toward Palestinians with the racist apartheid system.
Fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African president F.W. de Klerk said Israel and the Palestinians needed to work for peace.
“For the Israelis and Palestinians, the lesson to be learned from South Africa is that there is no dispute which cannot be resolved by meaningful negotiation if there is the will on both sides to negotiate,” said De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, who is to cohost the summit with Tutu.
The feisty cleric, who won the prize in 1984 and has drawn the apartheid analogy in the past, said the latest flare-up in the Middle East crisis was the result of a void in global leadership.
“Yes, we condemn those who fan the flames, who launch the missiles against Israel, but missiles do not justify Israel’s excessive response,” he said.
“As an old man, my appeal to my fellow laureates and peacemakers is to step into the leadership void, to make your voices heard from all corners of the globe, to advocate or pressure your government and institutions to cajole, to persuade,” Tutu said.
Speaking on the day former president and peace prize winner Nelson Mandela would have turned 96, Tutu said helping to overcome what he called “the greatest peace challenge of our times” would be a fitting tribute to the late South African leader.
Mandela died on Dec. 5 last year, but his birthday is commemorated internationally as Mandela Day.
South Africa’s African National Congress government, which came to power under Mandela, issued a strongly worded condemnation on Friday of the latest Israeli military action in Gaza.
“South Africa is gravely concerned that the illegal ground invasion, which had been rejected by the international community, will continue the endless killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, especially vulnerable groups — the elderly, women and children,” the government said in a statement.
In a letter to the Cape Times, more than 50 prominent South Africans of Jewish descent said: “We believe the time has come for the South African government to sever all links with Israel, including trade and investment, and to expel Israel’s ambassador and recall ours.”
The signatories included academics and anti-apartheid activist and renowned cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, who draws under the name Zapiro.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian supporters protested outside the Israeli embassy trade office in Johannesburg, calling for a boycott of Israeli goods and chanting: “Hey, hey Israel, how many kids have you killed today?”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS