Ha'aretz, 16th May 2003

Now, It's Your Turn (Interview with Frederik W. De Clerk & Heribert Adam)

by Aviva Lori
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[Excerpts]

Frederik W. De Clerk - "When I was a young man and supported Apartheid the idea was to partition South Africa and to offer to each identifiable nation, with its own language, its own culture, its own royal families, an independence which at the end would form some sort of a confederation as the European Union was once. In other words, in a sense, what Apartheid originally wanted to achieve is what everybody now says is the solution for Israel and Palestine, namely, partitioning - separate nation states on the bases of ethnicity, different cultures, different languages... In our case it could not work because of demographic realities and our totally integrated economy. The majority of the blacks said this is not how we want our rights, we prefer to have our rights in one united country. The white South Africans wanted too much of the land and were not prepared to give up enough in order to ensure that the black nation would be economically viable. Thus, the possibility of partitioning became unachievable and impracticable."

Heribert Adam - "Does the binational concept have a chance in Israel?... I am aware of the fact that at the moment the idea has no chance in Israel, even though in my opinion it could crop up in one of the next stages of the negotiations. But I don't find it illogical at all. Taking into account the fact that your economy is so dependent on theirs and that both economies are in such dire straits today, that dependence makes political independence almost completely unimportant. The Palestinian state that will emerge will not be able to provide even the minimum requirements of the population from any point of view, and certainly not territorially, because there is no hope that the settlements will be evacuated. On this subject I am not optimistic at all, and in the end it will lead to one state, of a binational character. In that case, I would even say: Why shouldn't the settlers stay there and the Palestinian government not be at least as tolerant of them as the Israeli government is toward the Palestinians who live within its borders?"

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