SOUTH AFRICA: COMMUNIST COLLAPSE, INTERPERSONAL TRUST, AND SANCTIONS

For much of the twentieth century, the white Afrikaner establishment perceived communism and, relatedly, the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) as threats to their property, religion, and way of life (Visser Reference Visser and Erik Stolten2007). The threat perception began to change in the 1980s. The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, the apparent failures of the Soviet system, and a more assertive US foreign policy deflated Marxist insurgencies. Concurrently, Nelson Mandela (ANC) and Joe Slovo (SACP) accepted the failures of the Stalinist model and decided to work within a mostly liberal market system (Sorkin Reference Sorkin2013). Consequently, in 1990–94, South African President F. W. de Klerk followed the path of governing parties in Chile, Taiwan, and South Korea by compromising with opponents, legalizing the ANC and SACP, and agreeing to the first-ever multiracial elections.

In ending apartheid, de Klerk emphasized the cessation of Moscow’s ANC support and the decline in Africa’s ideological conflicts, rather than sanctions. He admitted that the sanctions caused serious economic damage, but he claimed that the white minority would have continued to accept economic hardship as long as the alternative was a Soviet-supported ANC government (de Klerk Reference de Klerk1999). Adam and Moodley (Reference Adam and Moodley1993) concurred, stating that “Above all else, it was the change in the Soviet Union that emboldened Pretoria to unban the ANC” (see also Levy Reference Levy1999; Teoh, Welch, and Wazzan Reference Teoh, Welch and Paul Wazzan1999).

Trust among key negotiators was a second factor in the demise of apartheid. In secluded multiday retreats, negotiating teams for the ANC and the National Party developed close professional and human relationships (South Africa History, No date [a]). Key contenders in South Africa moved from a discourse of oppression to one that humanized and legitimated one another. When the April 10, 1993, assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani threatened to scuttle the negotiations, Mandela forcefully rejected violence and embraced reconciliation with white Afrikaners. Similarly, Afrikaner leaders, including President de Klerk, stopped labeling Mandela and other ANC/SACP principals as revolutionary communists and instead accepted them as future leaders of the country.

The willingness by Mandela, de Klerk, and other actors to humanize rather than demonize their opponents—even in the face of continued violence—facilitated often-difficult negotiations to end apartheid and hold multiracial elections in 1994. In this context of improved security and interpersonal trust, the BDS campaign offered additional leverage for reformers. In the run-up to the 1992 white-only referendum to endorse negotiations, de Klerk’s National Party successfully argued that a “no” vote would renew sanctions and the exclusion from international sporting events.

Although the role of sanctions in ending apartheid may be contested, the evidence cautions against relying on them without first, or concurrently, establishing an adequate level of security and mutual trust. Those conditions, which facilitated successful negotiations in South Africa, seem to be lacking in Israel–Palestine.

ISRAEL–PALESTINE: INSECURITY AND DISTRUST

Despite occasional progress in Middle East negotiations, Israeli–Palestinian relations are the mirror image of the security and trust found in the South Africa case. The Israeli establishment does not see a measurable improvement in the security environment. Non-state militants (e.g., Hezbollah) and their state sponsors (e.g., Iran) continue to voice a commitment to destroy Israel. The Israeli government is concerned that territorial concessions will strengthen its enemies, such as when it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and Hamas gained control soon afterward. Israeli angst recently has focused on Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza (Sherwood and Balousha Reference Sherwood and Bolousha2014).

Since 2013, efforts have been made to assuage Israeli security concerns. The newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani began serious negotiations with the United States related to its nuclear program. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) proposed that (1) a US-led NATO force indefinitely patrol a future Palestinian state to interdict weapons and terrorism; (2) Israeli soldiers could remain in the West Bank for up to five years; and (3) the new Palestinian state would accept a police force in lieu of its own army (Rudoren Reference Rudoren2014).

These efforts are only starting points in negotiations, not paradigm shifts similar to Gorbachev’s renunciation of international revolution and the ANC’s acceptance of free markets. They have been followed by less sanguine statements and behavior. Abbas announced a unity government between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestine territory (Schwartz Reference Schwartz2014). Iran rejected the elimination of centrifuges that could enrich uranium into weapons-grade material, the abandonment of its Arak plutonium plant, and the opening of the Fordow plant to full inspection (Dorell Reference Dorell2014). The 2014 military conflict in Gaza highlights the deteriorating sense of security.

Whereas progress on Israeli security is mixed, building interpersonal trust among the parties has barely begun. The Netanyahu government refuses to directly negotiate with the Hamas-led government in Gaza, relying instead on third-party intermediaries, such as US Secretary of State John Kerry, to negotiate with the PNA government in the West Bank. However, Kerry himself is not trusted by 64% of Israelis and 53% of Israeli Arabs, according to a March 2014 poll (Phillips Reference Phillips2014). Another poll released in December 2013 found that 47% of Palestinians and 48% of Israelis have no confidence that a peace agreement can ever be reached. Notably, 10% of the Israelis and 20% of the Palestinians shifted their positions to support a proposed agreement when informed that the other side would sign it (Kurtzer-Ellenbogen Reference Kurtzer-Ellenbogen2013).

Instead of nurturing mutual trust, however, leaders of Israel and Palestine expend their energy on framing the other as morally illegitimate. When Israel released 26 Palestinian prisoners on December 31, 2013, PNA officials could have responded positively by ensuring that released prisoners no longer bear arms against Israel and even showing contrition to the Jewish victims’ families. Instead, the Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qaraqai, declared that “Israel is a murderous state and these prisoners are freedom fighters” (BBC News 2013). Similarly, when Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a unity government, Israel could have urged Hamas to follow Fatah’s example to renounce violence and form an internationally legitimate government in Gaza. Instead, Israel condemned Fatah’s association with the “terrorist” Hamas and canceled scheduled peace negotiations (Schwartz Reference Schwartz2014). After the final collapse of negotiations, Palestinian and Israeli envoys at the UN Security Council each claimed that the other was fostering oppression and hatred (Donath Reference Donath2014).

With this relative absence of security and trust, the BDS campaign likely will play a constrained or even negative role in bringing the different sides together. Rather than encouraging Israel to negotiate, it may reinforce competing anti-oppression narratives in which the moralistic BDS campaign against Israeli “persecution” meets a countercampaign alleging implicit or explicit “anti-Semitism” (Fishman Reference Fishman2012).

THE LIMITS OF ANTI-OPPRESSION DISCOURSE

It is plausible that the anti-oppression discourse that surrounds the BDS movement can lead to one of three outcomes. First, the accused humbly accepts the charge of oppression, which leads to a more just and equal relationship between former oppressors and victims. When one party has suffered a great injustice, as Palestinians and Israeli Jews each credibly can claim, some contrition and redress might be a necessary precursor for future cooperation. This ideal scenario, which played out in South Africa, has not taken hold in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

In the second case, the oppressor accepts the charges but the other party remains fixed as a victimized accuser to gain long-term moral and material advantage over the denounced oppressor (Torpey Reference Torpey, Berg and Schaefer2012). Steele (Reference Steele2006), a black conservative, described a strategy by African American leaders to successfully “manipulate white guilt” since the 1960s to achieve a “moral power…over whites.”

Israel and Palestine currently practice this style of discourse—and not only with one another. Israel has used its moral advantage against countries that historically persecuted Jews, with Germany being the most well-known example. For many Jews, Germans remain frozen in the immoral role of perpetrator, without legitimacy to criticize Israel. These Jews “will never forgive Germany for the Holocaust; in their view, Germany has a permanent obligation never to criticize Israel” (Dempsey Reference Dempsey2011). This is the Erbschuld phenomenon in which guilt is bequeathed to the next generation, obliging it to earn moral or material redemption. ^{Footnote 1} Similarly, Palestinians have used their narratives of victimhood to garner symbolic and material benefits—if not from Israel, then from other countries and international bodies (e.g., the European Union).

The third case is when the accused refuses to accept the charge of persecution and may even level countercharges. Turkey has long admitted that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died during their deportation by the Ottoman government in 1915–16 and recently expressed “condolences” to the victims’ descendants. However, the Turkish government continues to reject Armenian charges of deliberate “genocide”; some Turks, including Yusuf Halaçoğlu of the Nationalist Movement Party, countercharge that prior to the deportation, armed Armenians killed 128,000 Ottoman Muslims (Republic of Turkey 2011; Today’s Zaman 2014).

Moralistic charges and countercharges are especially intense in Israeli–Palestinian relations, in which the Manichean narrative erodes the space for internal discussion and dissent. This is apparent in the Palestinian-run educational system, which has long been criticized for strongly nationalist and anti-Israel discourse, with little room for different views (Schwartz Reference Schwartz2013).

Israeli academic institutions and Jewish organizations now may be walking the same path of intolerance. A pro-BDS op-ed, published by Ben-Gurion University professor Neve Gordon in the Los Angeles Times on August 20, 2009, led to “a donor-revolt against post-Zionists” at Israeli universities. In December 2010, the Council for Higher Education issued a declaration stating that faculty members’ calls for a boycott of Israel were not acceptable (Gordon Reference Gordon2009; Seliktar No date).

In the United States, the leading Jewish American student organization, Hillel, prohibited local chapters from collaborating with speakers or groups that “delegitimize” or “apply a double standard” to Israel. This criterion excludes even the progressive group J Street, which supports the existence of Israel but criticizes settlements and occupation in the West Bank (Goodstein Reference Goodstein2013). In 2014, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted to deny admission to J Street (Paulson Reference Paulsen2014).

Although the rhetoric of victimhood potentially offers gains to one party at the expense of another, it alone does not provide the grounds for mutual trust and cooperation. This article proposes alternative strategies for Israelis and Palestinians that more closely reflect South Africa’s path to a negotiated resolution.

CAMPAIGN FOR LIBERAL PEACE

During the early 1990s, sanctions may have contributed to concessions from the South African government—but only in conjunction with an improved security environment and interpersonal trust among negotiators. Despite increasing sanctions in the 1980s, the white-minority regime strenuously resisted reform. It finally conceded when security and trust sharply improved in the early 1990s, after the opposition made a credible case for rejecting a communist revolution and embracing racial reconciliation.

Similar to South Africa in the early 1980s, the current Israeli government resists major concessions, citing external security threats and the lack of trust among negotiating parties. In this context, the BDS campaign seems to be increasing—not decreasing—Israel’s sense of vulnerability. Leading Israeli politicians, including the prime minister, have reacted pugnaciously, framing the BDS campaign as an attempt to delegitimate and destroy the Jewish state—reactions that resemble Pretoria’s attitude before the Gorbachev era.

A more effective campaign for peace would focus on improving mutual security and trust. PNA officials could respond positively to Israeli concessions, including reconciliation between released prisoners and victims’ families. Israel could expand rather than restrict educational opportunities for Palestinians (Eitan et al. Reference Eitan, Tatarsky, Maimon, Sela, Alyan and Tzafrir2013; Skop Reference Skop2013). Both sides could send negotiators to multiday retreats, which were successful when used in South Africa. These and similar measures would generate a more positive climate for Israeli concessions, as well as greater justification for Western sanctions if the Israeli government is intransigent.

Ultimately, meaningful negotiations require political actors to transition from the anti-oppression paradigm and to treat one another as legitimate partners. In South Africa, SACP leader Joe Slovo moved away from long-held tenets on the working class’s ultimate and complete triumph. He brokered key compromises with the Afrikaner establishment, including guarantees of property rights and an interim unity government with all major parties participating. Slovo, Mandela, de Klerk, and other leaders were able to negotiate at least a temporary model of collaboration and cooperation (see South Africa History No date [b]).

In contrast, anti-oppression campaigns that offer few prospects for compromise or collaboration are less likely to induce concessions from the target state. Anti-oppression discourse may rebound and erode credibility by suggesting that the accuser is not negotiating in good faith. In Japan, for example, the accelerating South Korean demands for apology and reparations have poisoned the once-warm public attitudes, spurring anti-Korean nationalist movements (Kitano Reference Kitano2013; Chosun Ilbo 2012). Meiji University professor Yasuaki Onuma argued that continued criticism “is turning off even those Japanese who have been relatively sympathetic toward South Korea” (Yoshida Reference Yoshida2014).

A just peace based on liberal-democratic principles requires that the status of victim—and the moral and material benefits that it confers—be temporary at most. Any regime that designates one group as morally superior and another as inferior undermines the principles of individual equality and liberty, thereby endangering the country’s liberal-democratic character. Theories predict peaceful coexistence and cooperation among liberal-democratic regimes (Owen Reference Owen1994). However, governments locked into the victim–oppressor paradigm can become mired in acrimony, such as between democratically elected governments in Israel and Palestine, Armenia and Turkey, and South Korea and Japan. ^{Footnote 2}