Middle East crisis fractures SA unity

By Mohammed Allie
BBC News, Cape Town

The current crisis in the Middle East has put the generally cordial relations between Cape Town's Muslim and Jewish communities, both relatively small but influential, under intense pressure.

Generally speaking, Jewish-Muslim relations in South Africa are sweet and sour Muslim scholar Rashied Omar

As Israeli bombs were raining down on Lebanon and Hezbollah rockets were being shot into northern Israel, members of both the Muslim and Jewish communities in South Africa became fired up in their support for the opposing sides.

While the Jewish community was rallying support for Israel, a Muslim-led march to parliament - that included diverse groups such as the trade union federation Cosatu, the Anti-War Coalition and the Socialist Workers' International - was openly condemning Israel and calling for sanctions against the Jewish state.

"Generally speaking, Jewish-Muslim relations in South Africa are sweet and sour. They are sweetened by our local interactions and become soured with every change in fortunes of the Middle East conflict," says Cape Town imam and Muslim scholar Rashied Omar.

Mickey Glass, executive director of the Union of Orthodox Synagogues of South Africa, says there has been long interaction between Muslim and Jewish people in Cape Town.

"It goes all the way back to the 1840s when the chief rabbi in England gave permission for a Muslim sheikh to slaughter meat in the presence of a Jewish person to ensure its kosher status," he says.

"Since then we've always had cordial relations and I don't believe the crisis in the Middle East will damage our relationship irreparably. At the end of it all we're all Capetonians."

'Respectful disagreement'

Religious leaders like Mr Omar and Mr Glass form part of the Cape Town Interfaith Forum, which meets regularly to discuss matters of common concern in an effort to promote dialogue and understanding and even address each others' congregations at formal religious occasions.

That people who were as far apart as the Afrikaner nationalists and the ANC were able to sit around the table and talk is an indication that two groups as distant as Israel and Hamas could one day also sit down and talk Mickey Glass Union of Orthodox Synagogues of South Africa

But their co-operation does not preclude them from disagreeing "respectfully", as Mr Omar puts it, on the thorny issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Prospects for peace in the Middle East have hit a brick wall and the landslide victory in the Palestinian elections of Hamas, branded a terrorist organisation by the US and other Western powers, has added a new dimension to the conflict.

"We don't believe we, in faraway South Africa, can change the situation in the Middle East but perhaps our ability to discuss issues in a mature, respectful way could be a beacon of hope," he says.

Mr Glass agrees that South Africa's experience in bringing a peaceful end to apartheid could yet point the way towards a settlement in the Middle East.

"We can learn that people who were as far apart as the Afrikaner nationalists and the African National Congress (ANC) were able to sit around the table and talk is an indication that two groups as distant as Israel and Hamas could one day also sit down and talk," he says.

Hurtful comparison

Meanwhile, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has joined the debate comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa.

I have seen the humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?" the Nobel peace prize winner asked a conference on the Middle East recently.

"I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.

"I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks; suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about."

But Michael Bagraim, chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, rejects the connection between Israeli policies and apartheid South Africa: "There's no comparison - in fact I find it hurtful," he says.

"At the end of the day what you're saying is you've got a minority in Israel subjugating the Arab population which is not true at all. People in Israel are equal citizens. The reality is that the state is at war."

While the United Nations and many other countries, including neighbouring Arab states, have endorsed a two-state solution in which Palestinians and Israelis live side by side, the rarely aired view of a single-state solution has been exercising the minds of a growing number of analysts and activists.

'Never give up'

Veteran South African journalist Allister Sparks dismisses the two-state suggestion as a segregationist, apartheid solution.

Some see the two-state solution as segregationist and similar to apartheid

He believes the influx of settlers and the consolidation of larger settlements in the West Bank make it impossible for the Palestinians to have a viable state on the land that is left over.

"Like South Africa's Bantustan policy it was a nice idea in theory: to separate rival groups living in one country so that each can have its own national homeland sounds like a moral solution - provided the separation is fair and the homelands are viable," Mr Sparks wrote in the Cape Times newspaper.

For Mr Bagraim, however, the one-state idea is a non-starter.

"Israel is our home and the reality is it's a nation state which the world agreed to. You can't have a one-state solution knowing full well the majority within five to 10 years will be Muslim. Then you won't have a Jewish state," he says.

"Wherever we [Jews] are in the Middle East we get slaughtered and pushed out.

"The reality is that the Jews will never give up their state because of their history."

Secular state

Meanwhile, Mr Omar dismisses the Hamas ideal of an Islamic state saying it would reduce non-Muslims to second class citizens.

It will take lots of negotiations but it's got to be done around the table not at the barrel of the gun Cape Town Interfaith Forum

"For me the ideal state is a just state in which all the citizens are given equal dignity. In this regard I think South Africa has done well, at least constitutionally," he says.

"From my South African experience Christians in our country gave us our space; they gave us our dignity and honoured us as equal citizens and partners in the anti-apartheid struggle.

"This is something Hamas needs to take on board and I believe that will be an indication of whether their struggle is real human liberation."

While Cape Town's religious leaders may disagree about the fundamental around the around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, they are united in their belief that only negotiations will bring about a solution.

"It will take lots of negotiations but it's got to be done around the table not at the barrel of the gun," they say.