Roadmap to solidarity – Johannesburg Declaration vows to dismantle Israel’s settler-colonialism
Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor at the Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine in Sandton, South Africa on 10 May 2024
Nurah Tape reports in The Palestine Chronicle on 13 May 2024:
Delegates at the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine have declared that they “will be unrelenting” in their mobilization to pressure governments to sanction Israel which has subjected the Palestinian people to 76 years of ongoing genocide, colonialism and apartheid.
“The war prosecuted for decades by Israel and its genocidal enablers is not only against the Palestinian people, it is against humanity as a whole,” the Johannesburg Declaration on Israel’s Settler-Colonialism, Apartheid and Genocide, issued at the conclusion of the conference on Sunday in Johannesburg, stated. “But the Palestinians and the people of the world have not been silent.”
The Declaration said these voices have been amplified in multilateral institutions, in international courts, by those of our political leaders and governments with conscience.
It noted “The relentless efforts of the Government of South Africa at the International Court of Justice stand out in this regard. These efforts must include the prosecution of all Israeli war criminals. We will be unrelenting in our mobilization to pressure governments to sanction Israel.”
The delegates, from more than a dozen countries, engaged in robust discussions from May 10 to 12 at the Sandton Convention Centre to discuss critical issues such as boycotts, divestment and sanctions; interfaith activities and campaigns; actions in the legal spheres; and how to support Palestinian political prisoners.
Apartheid in South Africa
“We, inspired by, and many of us having been part of, the global Anti-Apartheid Movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa and Namibia, now rise, as the continuation of that movement, to confront the settler-colonialism and apartheid of Israel and its backers,” the Declaration said.
The delegates vowed, “to ensure Israel and those complicit in its genocide are held accountable, to support the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people, for the restoration of their rights to freedom, dignity, self-determination, return, resistance, as guaranteed by international law.”
They said they “rise with a determination for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire to end Israel’s genocide, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, ending settler and military terrorism in the West Bank and lifting the siege on Gaza.”
The declaration pointed out that “the extent of the Gaza carnage is still being revealed as mass graves are discovered.”
Israel, it said, “is deliberately murdering children and women; women who create, sustain and defend life. We oppose Israel’s reproductive genocide. Israel is destroying Gaza’s environment and infrastructure to make it uninhabitable.”