What differentiates palestine as it exists today from a bantustan?
(We're talking about this post.)
Quite a lot, Anon:
1. Palestinians were never citizens of Israel.
Bantustans were designed to revoke citizenship from Black South Africans. The apartheid regime invented them to legally strip people of rights they already had.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were never Israeli citizens. They were Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian-administered (Gaza) residents before 1967, and neither Israel nor the PA nor Hamas has claimed they're Israeli citizens since.
No rights were stripped from them.
2. Palestinian leadership was not installed by Israel.
Bantustan governments were handpicked by the apartheid regime to establish a fake sovereignty with total external control.
The Palestinian Authority was created through mutual negotiation (Oslo Accords) and chosen by voters by internationally observed elections. Hamas won an election in Gaza.
Israel doesn't select Palestinian leaders.
3. Bantustans were inside South Africa.
They were used to exile Black South Africans from citizenship within the country of which they were citizens.
The West Bank and Gaza are not inside Israel. They are disputed, non-annexed territories that were captured in war. The Palestinians are not a domestic population being cordoned off, they are a Self-identifying separate national group seeking independent statehood.
4. Israel never claimed Palestine as a final status.
South Africa wanted the Bantustans to be the final home of their Black population, permanently excluded from the state.
Israel has never claimed the West Bank and Gaza as permanent Israeli territory. Every Israeli government (left or right) has accepted in principle that the territories are subject to final-status negotiations.
Bantustans were the end of the conversation. Palestine is still in negotiation, even though it is stalled.
5. Bantustans had no international support.
Not one country on Earth recognized them. They were seen universally as tools of racial domination.
By contrast, the Palestinian Authority has diplomatic relations with over 130 countries, observer status at the UN, and wide support for eventual statehood.
Much of the international community sees Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as a nation under occupation, not a racial group being excluded from their own country.
6. Palestinians have said no. Repeatedly.
The Bantustans were imposed unilaterally.
The Palestinian Authority has turned down multiple offers of actual statehood, including in 2000 (Barak/Clinton), 2001 (Taba), 2008 (Olmert), and more.
They are not trapped in a fake homeland, they've been repeatedly offered a real one and rejected the terms.
Bantustans were fake countries invented to justify racial domination inside a single state.
The Palestinian territories are nationalist entities stuck in a failed peace process.
They are not free. They are not sovereign. But they are not Bantustans. Claiming otherwise erases everything specific about both histories just to make performative bullshit work.
Anon, I get that you meant the question to be rhetorical instead of a prompt to dismantle it's ignorant point - but if you're going to try to weaponize historical comparisons...it'll help if you actually study the history.
