MEDIA STATEMENT: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON CALLS FOR PEACE IN GAZA STRIP

The Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation is greatly troubled by the grave atrocities that are perpetrated against the people of Palestine.

The Chairperson of the committee, Mr Supra Mahumapelo, is calling for peace in the Gaza Strip. He said: ‘We are concerned about the well-being of the people of Palestine as Apartheid is being practised by Israel in its continued occupation of the Palestinian territory.’

He added: ‘This cuts deep to us as South Africans as the discrimination, racial oppression and violent attacks by Israel settlers that we are witnessing against the people of Palestine is nothing short of apartheid, exactly what we endured in this country under white domination.’

According to Mr Mahumapelo the root causes of the current violence must be noted. He said the lack of recognition of the rights of the people of Palestine is the main reason for the retaliation that is happening at the moment and the people of Palestine can no longer be silenced.

Mr Mahumapelo said
the committee calls for all parties involved in the conflict to exercise utmost restraint and seize the opportunity for peace to avoid loss of life and damage to property. Furthermore, Mr Mahumapelo calls for the international community and international bodies, particularly the United Nations to apply what is contained in its Charter to ‘take enforcement measures to maintain or restore international peace and security’.

According to a report by “Human Rights Watch, the laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land, has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by their identity to varying degrees of intensity’.

Mr Mahumapelo said Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of internat
ional humanitarian law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Source: Parliament of South Africa