Special Session | Apartheid System: What Palestine Can Learn From South Africa ?

The Eighth panel discussion within the monthly webinars of the Jurists for Palestine Forum

Main Information:

• Date: Wednesday 30^th June 2021.
• Time: 7:00-9:00 PM (Jerusalem Time), At 5:00-7:00 PM (London Time).
• Registration fees: For the members of Jurists for Palestine Forum (You are not a member? Register here).
• Location: Online – Participants will be provided with a link prior to the webinar time.
• Last Day to Register: Tuesday 29^th June 2021.

About the panel discussion:

Debates over the question of the Israeli apartheid system have intensified as never before, after several legal studies concluded that Israel is systematically exercising apartheid replicating the same policy used in South Africa. In 2017, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) was forced to withdraw its unprecedented study, titled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid”. Later in 2021, legal voices raised again demanding Israel to completely halt its Apartheid system practiced against Palestinians. As two human rights studies were published, one by the Israeli organization B’Tselem, titled: “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid”. The other by Human Rights Watch, titled: “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”.

In our special event this month, we are creating an interactive dialogue between a legal expert; who lived through the Apartheid era in South Africa and its collapse and was among the first UN actors who warned against the Apartheid System in Israel/Palestine; and activists from the Palestinian civil society in the Palestinian occupied territories (oPt) and inside Israel, to discuss what Palestinians can learn from the South African experience and to ask the following questions (among others) :

• How can Palestinians benefit from labeling Israel as an Apartheid System?
• What steps has South Africa adopted to end its Apartheid system?
• What can Palestinians in the oPt and within the Green Line learn from the South African experience?
• What are the obstacles that are facing (or might face) Palestinians in their fight against Apartheid? And how can they overcome them?
• What does Palestinian civil society need from the international community while its struggle against Apartheid?

The Panel Guests:

In this special interactive debate, we bring together a leading expert on apartheid in South Africa with representatives of main Palestinian civil society organizations in the oPt and Israel:

• Professor John Dugard_South Africa: A Member of Law for Palestine’s Board of Trustees, a professor specializing in international law and human rights law, a Former judge in the International Court of Justice, and a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the oPt. Dugard is a legal expert who lived through the Apartheid era in South Africa. After the fall of apartheid, he participated in the drafting of the Bill of Rights for the new South African Constitution. He is also a senior counsel to the High Court of South Africa. In 2013, he was awarded the Order of the Baobab, South Africa’s highest award for community service. Dugard is a professor emeritus of several universities. He has eight published books and dozens of articles on issues of Apartheid, International Law and Palestine.
• Mr. Shawan Jabarin-West Bank: Director-General of Al-Haq Palestinian Organization for Human Rights, a Member of the Middle East Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch, and a Secretary-General of the International Federation of Human Rights (France) since 2016. He is aldo a member of the International Commission of Jurists (Switzerland). Jabarin holds a master’s degree in law from the University of NUI Galway_Ireland.
• Dr. Hasan Jabareen- Arabs in Israel: A Founder and General Director of Adalah “The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel”, a Lawyer with more than 20 years of experience litigating before the Supreme Court of Israel over cases concerning equality for Palestinians. Dr. Jabareen holds an LLM in International Human Rights from American University Washington College of Law, and a PhD in Law from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published numerous academic articles on the subject of on the citizenship status of the Palestinians.

The discussion will be moderated by:

Dr. Ahmad Khalifa: Assistant Professor of International Criminal Law at Ain Shams University, Egypt, and a visiting professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik in Lebanon. Dr. Khalifa is the coordinator of Oxford University moot court competition in human rights in the Middle East region since 2014. Dr. Khalifa works as a legal expert and a trainer with the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as an expert in comparative criminal law with the United Nations Regional Office for the Middle East on Drugs and Crime.