The Russell Tribunal on Palestine and the Question of Apartheid
Overview
Critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians frequently use the term apartheid—Afrikaans for “apartness.” But is there any merit to the claim that Israel is practicing apartheid against the Palestinian people or is the word without substance and purely provocative? The third session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine recently convened in Cape Town, South Africa to consider this question. Why did Israel’s defenders react so strongly against the Tribunal – a people’s initiative without power in state relations – going so far as to hack its website, but then remain silent after its conclusions were issued? Can the Tribunal’s conclusion that Israel applies a system of apartheid to the entire Palestinian people, including its own citizens, stand up to scrutiny? What is the significance of this finding, and what does it mean for civil society in Palestine and in the Diaspora – and for Israel and its supporters? In this policy brief, Al-Shabaka Program Director Victor Kattan describes what apartheid means under international law, highlights the tribunal’s findings, and explains its significance.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine
The original Russell Tribunal was founded in 1966 by the British aristocrat and philosopher Sir Bertrand Russell to inform and mobilise public opinion against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A second Russell Tribunal was convened on Latin America that focused on human rights violations in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) was established in 2009, just after Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, when over 1,400 Palestinians were killed in what the UN Fact-Finding Mission called “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”1 The RToP’s founders, a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East, were also concerned that the international community had failed to implement the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion on the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory.2
The RToP is not to be confused with a court of law. It is a tribunal of the people. Nonetheless, its proceedings are similar to the preliminary stages of the inquisitorial model of criminal procedure whereby an examining judge actively investigates an accusation to determine whether there is substance to it, before considering whether it merits a trial.3
The jury that gathered in Cape Town for the RToP’s third session from 5 – 7 November 2011 included Stéphane Hessel, a Holocaust survivor, and former French diplomat, who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish member of the African National Congress, who later became a member of the post-apartheid South African government.4 Mairead Maguire, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland, Alice Walker, the African-American author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple, Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman who was the first African-American woman to have represented the state of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Yasmin Sooka, a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission were also on the jury, along with British barrister Michael Mansfield QC and Antonio Martin Pallin, a former Spanish Supreme Court judge. The jury was tasked with assessing whether Israel’s practices against the Palestinian people is in breach of the prohibition of apartheid under international law. The decision to host the Tribunal in the District Six Museum was highly symbolic, as it commemorates the destruction and forced relocation of Cape Town’s multi-cultural District Six community by the apartheid government in the 1970s.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu officially opened the Tribunal with an inaugural address. The 25 witnesses called to appear before the RToP were all experts in their fields. They submitted written statements, which the jury was able to examine beforehand, and during the Tribunal’s public sessions, the experts were asked to give presentations, and in some cases had to answer questions posed to them from the jury.
The Israeli Government was invited to present its case before the tribunal but it chose not to exercise this right and provided no answer to correspondence from the RToP. That fact that Israel did not present its case does not invalidate the findings of the Tribunal as the jury was able to take into account the Israeli government’s position from material which is available to the general public, as well as from the reaction of the South African Zionist Federation.