Pretoria - The EFF in Tshwane has postponed a picket that was planned to take place outside the Israel embassy in Pretoria.
The red berets have been in solidarity with the Palestine people who are involved in a war against Israel.
However, the EFF postponed its much-anticipated protest, saying the Israeli Embassy had protested against it.
Speaking to the Pretoria News yesterday, EFF regional chairperson, Obakeng Ramabodu, said the party still had “issues to work on”.
He said they still needed to process the organising committee.
“The picket has been postponed to next week. We need to process applications and organise ourselves first,” Ramabodu said.
The two Middle Eastern countries have been at loggerheads since more than a week ago after the Palestinian Hamas group launched a surprise military operation against Israel.
Retaliating to the assault, the Israeli military launched a counter operation, initially targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip where 2 000 Palestinian civilians were killed.
The Pretoria News can reveal that the SA governing party, the ANC, is discussing a possible sanction against Israel at its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting currently taking place at Birchwood in Benoni.
According to insiders, some ANC members, during the meeting called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to ban the Israel Embassy “until further notice”.
The ANC has also not hidden its support for Palestine.
Department of International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor confirmed that there were conversations-around that “with caution”.
“It’s an issue that is open to discussion, but I would not like for the government to force an effect in terms of the core issue, which is the people of Palestine,” Pandor said on national television.
Her department condemned in the strongest possible terms Israel’s violation of the Geneva Conventions and the abandonment of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza, by its “intentional denial of food, water, electricity and fuel to the people of Gaza”.
On Friday, Palestinian Ambassador to South African, Hanan Jarrar, compared the “military onslaught” by the Israeli government in her country to apartheid.
She said the Israelis were planning a genocide.
Jarrar also criticised world leaders for turning a blind eye to the “genocidal war” that has devastated the Gaza Strip since the weekend.
The ambassador compared Israel’s occupation of Palestine to apartheid, also accusing the international community of silence while crimes against humanity were taking place,
“More than 17 Israeli human rights organisations have reported that Israel’s actions in the West Bank meet the criteria of apartheid, as defined in international law.
“Apartheid is the root of the problem and the cause of the illness that we urge the international community to address instead of the symptoms. History is repeating itself, and those who remain silent about these ongoing crimes are part of the problem.
“In South Africa, the problem was not that some members of the liberation movement chose armed resistance.
“The problem was apartheid itself. That should also be the case for Palestinians,” Jarrar said.
She added that the international community had an obligation to address the root cause instead of reverting to simplistic statements that demonise, dehumanise or dismiss Palestinian lives and rights and treat only the symptoms of this prolonged injustice.
Jarrar said Israel was planning to wipe out the Palestinian existence.
“What is going on now on the ground is not a war; its genocide committed by the occupying power of Israel against the Palestinian people.
“The Israeli government is trying to show that the people of Gaza have two options: either to die or to be transferred from their own land, and this is the real fear of the Palestinians, because we have an experience.
“In 1948, when Israel did this, Palestinians scattered in refugee all over the world, and they are still scattered all over the world, right to this minute,” she said.
She said there were 7 million Palestinians now living outside of Palestine as refugees without access to their homeland.
“It’s a genocide, ethnic cleansing. There is no other word that can describe this situation right now,” she said.
She said she was grateful to the South African government for their support.
Pretoria News