Democratic Palestine : 18 (ص 16)
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- Democratic Palestine : 18 (ص 16)
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Gaza and Soweto
Overcrowded shanties line unpaved streets; a newborn baby dies due
to lack of adequate health care facilities; racist soldiers charge into a
group of youth; schoolchildren are lulled by a third-rate educational
curriculum devoid of any truthful reference to their own history and
culture; meanwhile, thousands leave home at dawn to work in the
colonizers’ enterprises.
This is daily fare for Palestinians of
the occupied Gaza Strip and Africans
living in Soweto, outside Johannes-
burg, South Africa. Both are victims of
settler colonialism’s ultimate develop-
ment. Dispossessed of their land and
other means of independent livelihood,
they are forced to sell their labor power
cheap - to the colonizers. ‘Israel’ and
South African settler colonialism
represent a particularly ruthless form
of capitalism. Applying racist laws and
fascist repression, they escape paying
Palestinians and Blacks, respectively,
wages that provide a minimal standard
of living. With the profits of this super-
exploitation, the regimes provide extra
welfare to the settler population,
increasing its cohesion across class
boundaries. This single fact is the main
explanation for the abject living condi-
tions and oppression shared by Gazans
and Sowetans.
The comparison between Gaza and
Soweto was recently made in a report
on the Gaza Strip, published by the
West Bank Data Base Project, headed
by Meron Benvenisti, Israeli researcher
and former deputy mayor of Jeru-
salem. The report called Gaza ‘Israel’s
Soweto’ due to its booming population,
appalling health conditions, deteriora-
ting economy and increasing depen-
dence on ‘Israel’.
NO SPACE TO GROW
The total area of the Gaza Strip is
140 square miles. Of these, 43.6 have
been declared ‘state lands’, i.e.,
reserved exclusively for use by Israeli
Jews. On this one-third of the Strip,
there are something over 2,000 Zionist
settlers in 18 settlements; some use their
settlement only for weekend farming or
recreation. In contrast, 525,000 Pales-
tinians live in the remaining 96.4 square
miles. Their population density is 5,440
persons per square mile, one of the
highest in the world.
The majority of Palestinians living in
the Gaza Strip today are refugees from
the 1948 occupation of Palestine; 69%
of them live in eight refugee camps.
Israeli occupation policy bears direct
responsibility for inhuman overcrowd-
ing. Despite population growth, the
camps cannot be expanded, and resi-
dents are forbidden to enlarge or even
renovate their houses. Some have been
fined for plastering a wall or changing a
window. ‘Illegal’ additions are simply
demolished, as happened with 35 shel-
16
ters in Shatti camp in 1983. This is not
merely application of zoning laws, but
a deliberate part of the occupation
policy designed to control the popula-
tion. The problem is compounded by
the Zionists’ practice of demolishing
the houses of families of ‘suspects’. In
one week of the spring of 1983, six
houses were bulldozed, leaving 55
people homeless because members of
the family were wanted or imprisoned
(but not tried).
The result of all this is 10-20 persons
living in small corrogated iron or mud
huts built with the help of the UN in the
early fifties, for families less than half
their present size. In the largest camp,
Jabalia, there is an average of six per-
sons per room.
REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN
COUNTRY
Like Gaza Palestinians, and most
Black South Africans, the people of
Soweto are refugees in their own
country. Soweto grew into an over-
crowded ghetto with a population of
one and a half million as a direct result
of apartheid. In the forties and fifties,
Blacks were forced out of Johannes-
burg and whole neighborhoods razed to
the ground, pushing thousands into
Soweto. Under Pretoria’s Bantustan
policy, Black South Africans have no
permanent residence rights outside their
assigned ‘tribal homeland’. Thus,
Sowetans rent their houses from the
government. Recently, in one of its
fake ‘reform’ gestures, the Botha
government offered Sowetans 99-year
leases on their houses, but only a
eal had enough money to pay for
this.
Also in accordance with apartheid,
residents must carry a pass showing
they have the right to be in Soweto, or
travel to work in Johannesburg. For
others, special permission is needed to
enter Soweto, just as the Israeli occu-
pation authoritites do their best to iso-
late the Gaza Strip, unless it comes to
Gazans doing menial work in ‘Israel’.
An average of 14 persons live in the
four-room matchboxes that crowd
Soweto’s streets. Only one out of every
five houses has electricity. Most do not
have an indoor toilet. The most extreme
crowding is found in the hostels for
migrant workers who leave their fami-
lies in the Bantustans, where there is no
work, for eleven months a year to work
in Johannesburg where they are for-
Children in Jabalia - هو جزء من
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