Middle East Delegation Travellog – Understanding Israel

As part of our Middle East delegation 2011 travellog, Young Fabian Vice-Chair Sara Ibrahim reflects on Israel’s politics.

Over the course of the last few days two distinct strands of thought have emerged: that security is paramount for Israelis and the Palestinians want to be liberated. So much is agreed between the parties: a two state solution is best, that any boundaries should be drawn along the 1967 green line and that the Palestinians need to develop the structures for statehood.

That is not to say there is no dissent. There are groups of Israeli settlers who are living in settlements well outside the 1967 boundaries and on the Palestinian side. Hamas dispute the right of the Israeli state to exist. However, if the mainstream can agree on the essentials, why is peace so elusive?

It seems to all comes down to power and powerlessness. Coming from the UK it has been difficult to understand the heavy security presence that is evident in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank. In the UK the need for 12-foot security walls and check-points manned with armed (mostly) conscripted soldiers seems anathema. So what is Israel’s rationale?

Today I came closer to an answer. This isn’t just a personal discovery but an important matter for the international community to understand before the UN vote on Palestinian statehood this September. Jeremy Leigh, an Israeli academic, told me and a group of Young Fabians that it wasn’t all about the Holocaust. The fact he told me this at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial site, is more surprising. This is because the West and, many Arab states, have interpreted the creation of Israel as some form of consolation prize for the atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish people by the Nazis.

To say that Zionism didn’t exist before this would be a fallacy. The Jewish people have historically been subject to expulsions from areas they had been well established or mis-treatment. There were the Jewish ghettos in Venice, expulsion of the Sephardic Jews in Spain and the exile to Babylon of the original Jewish community in Jerusalem itself. A culture of being outsiders in the states of others has been a reciting motif of the Israeli narrative and consequently its politics.

Without understanding this viewpoint, the Israeli position can appear irrational. It is not.

The apparent excesses of power shown by the Israeli state are borne out of a feeling of powerlessness. Until Israel has genuine grounds to feel free from attack from extremists then it will not have the strength to negotiate a binding peace agreement. We will know that the Israelis feel truly powerful when they relinquish their checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and reduce their army.

One thing is certain – we are not there yet. Until the Palestinians understand the rationale behind the Israeli concerns  - I fear we will not get there.

Sara Ibrahim is Vice-Chair of the Young Fabians and a delegate on the Young Fabian Middle East Trip 2011.

• You can follow updates from our Middle East delegation via Twitter by searching for #yfmep. And find out more about our Middle East programme by clicking here.
• You can view photos from the delegation on the Young Fabian Flickr channel.

“Don’t be a sadack”

There was some interesting discussion at the ACTSA AGM and Annual Conference this weekend. I wrote earlier in the year of the failure of SADC – the Southern African  Development Community – to play a role where most needed in the democratic development of the region. There was amusement in the conference hall when Vimbai Mushongera, Parliamentary and Advocacy Officer of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), told us that Zimbabweans were now using SADC (pronounced ‘sad-ack’) in general language to describe something or someone irreponsible or unreliable; as in “Oi Dave, don’t be a SADC.”

But there’s a serious point within and she was quick to point out that the exclusion of the people and the evasion of accountability of SADC was not helpful to their struggle in Zimbabwe. Nor to comrades in Swaziland. Vincent Dlamini, Deputy Secretary General of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), was clear to the audience that what would be most useful to their democratic fight would be the building and strengthening of organisation-to-organisation relations, be that trade unions, student unions, or NGOs. Unfortunately, he offered little by the way of an update on how the civil society, pro-democracy coalition, SUDF were getting on. Since I met the SUDF back in June, they have seen the acquittal and release from detention of Mario Masuku, leader of PUDEMO, the banned Swazi political party. But there is a long way to go in the fight for multi-party democracy and the end to Africa’s only autocratic absolute monarchy. Tony Dykes, Director of ACTSA, set out not only the importance of pressure coming from below but of the lead coming from Zimbabwe and Swaziland – we in Britain, and elsewhere in the democratic world, must then pick up that lead to assist their struggle.

Good conversation too on how ACTSA can use World Cup 2010 in South Africa as a hook for their campaigning work. You can find out more about what ACTSA do – and, in due course, their work around the world cup – by visiting their website, www.actsa.org.

UPDATE: ACTSA are holding an event at SOAS this Thursday, 5th November, which all Young Fabian members are invited to.

Southern Africa: Democracy and development 7:00 – 8:30 pm, Room G50, Russell Square Campus, School of Oriental and African Studies, Russell Square, London. Featuring Vimbai Mushongera (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions), Vincent Dlamini (Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions).

Email info@actsa.org to reserve a place.

The politics of loyalty (and investing in hope)

Young Fabian International Officer, Adrian Prandle, looks at the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe on the ACTSA youth delegation to southern Africa.

Meeting with Munjodzi Mutandiri, an activist in the MDC who works at the Johannesburg desk of the NCA, a pressure group  fighting for a democratic constitution in Zimbabwe, and Chiedza Gadzirayi, International Relations Secretary of ZINASU, the Zimbabwe National Students Union, gave an enlightening insight into the state of affairs in Zimbabwe since Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC entered the government.

Loyalty to political leadership is a fascinating topic (this isn’t going to be about Gordon Brown and his Cabinet by the way). There were some very direct parallels between the attitudes of these two passionate young Zimbabweans and those in Labour’s youth movements here – Young Fabians included. Though of course fighting our campaigns in the UK doesn’t result in you being a political prisoner in jails unchanged since the colonial 70s, sharing space with real criminals, as Chiedza had devastatingly experienced. Does loyalty to leaders, structures and hierarchies, and the institution itself (Labour and the MDC in this case) help young people in getting their views on the agenda? Or does it simply merge them into the status quo, stymieing their healthy radicalism and innovation? Does such loyalty help or hinder political careers? And at what stage should young people have the confidence to stand up and say this isn’t working?

In terms of the Labour movement in the UK, perhaps the least contentious question to deal with is that of political careers. This is a generalisation, but I think it is fair to say that within Labour’s youth movements, loyalty to leadership and policy is more likely to get you up and running, and as such is practised more than it is rejected.

I have no reason to think that the views of Chiedza and Munjodzi were career-oriented and every reason to think they were passionate for their cause(s). However, something is causing a difficult contradiction in the story they tell of Zimbabwe in 2009.

It’s a story of ZINASU’s relationship with the MDC – for whom they had actively campaigned – breaking down as the MDC became effectively a ruling party and the subsequent vacuum in ZINASU’s position on the party and the new government. As they make little ground in their campaign for the reinstatement of students expelled from university for political reasons and their push for measures that will lead to the reopening of the 29 of Zimbabwe’s universities (about two thirds of the total) that are closed, Chiedza tells of a ‘relationship really turned sour’ with the MDC.

The Education ministry is one still controlled by a ZANU PF minister reluctant to engage. And there is understanding but frustration that Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s hands are basically tied with no money in the economy and Robert Mugabe retaining greater power and a bullying approach to the new members of the government. But at the same time, relationships with civil society are already ‘very strained’, says Munjodzi. There are criticisms that Tsvangirai is betraying certain values and showing too much willing to defend Mugabe. Despite a background in the unions and in campaigning on constitutional reform, he is not living up to expectations.

Nevertheless, both comrades were clear that they still had confidence in Morgan Tsvangirai as leader of the democratic cause and a firm belief that MDC Congress would vote him out of office if it came to the point where such action was necessary.

I’m less sure. But when your struggle has got this far, it is no surprise that an investment in hope finds its way to the forefront and the question of when to stand up and say ‘this isn’t working’ is left for another day.

From the past to the future via ‘ubuntu’

Three Young Fabians are currently taking part in a delegation organised by ACTSA to southern Africa. Here Adrian Prandle, International Officer on the Young Fabian Executive, writes about the connection between what has gone and what is coming and an African philosophy.

Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa, is the coming together of contrasts. From the grim history of the – now closed – prison block to the modern splendour, pride and ambition of the Constitutional Court which opened in 2004.

The personal testimonies of former prisoners were told through a tour of the blocks – Number 4, Old Fort and the Women’s Wing – which had incarcerated Winnie Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and others over the years. The poor conditions and the discriminatory processes felt real and wrong as brave, brave people stood up for what they believed in. Political prisoners were mixed in with serious criminals and racial segregation meant more severe discomfort and treatment.

South Africans are extremely proud of their constitution and the Constitutional Court demonstrates in its architecture the balance between learning from history and looking to the future. What appears at first glance to be a very modern building, in fact incorporates some of the remaining prison structures with the combination of old and new symbolising the importance of learning from the past but moving on optimistically. It’s grandly carved front doors detail the articles of the constitution in the nation’s eleven spoken languages – plus sign language and braille. The constitutional court is for everyone we were told. It is made up of eleven judges, again with reference to the languages, and there is much pride that this includes two judges with disabilities, signifying that no-one is excluded in today’s South Africa.

Talking to young South Africans and Zimbabweans afterwards offered an insight into their passion and innovation in promoting democracy and youth particpation. Some, under the ‘Democracy Begins In Conversation’ vehicle ran Radio Con Hill which sought to facilitate young people’s engagement with, for example, constitutional court judges. They explained the philosophy of ‘ubuntu’ as being about humanity, solidarity and cooperation; about understanding that if you have something then somebody else doesn’t and you should share. The youth leaders offered their disappointment at the occasions in recent history when this spirit of Africanism had not been at the forefront of all their countrymen’s behaviour. Rafael, the young activist from Zimbabwe’s MDC party, expressed his willingness to die for the cause of democracy if that was what President Mugabe had in store for him and his colleagues. But he was optimistic that change was happening one way or another: “We have sown the seeds – one day it will grow.”