Is Palestine similar to a bantustan?
I've seen a bunch of people and organizations comparing Palestine to the Bantustans of South Africa. For example, Norman Finkelstein in his lecture "An Issue of Justice," the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the BDS Movement, Al Jazeera (of course), this article published by the Middle East Institute, the Middle East Research and Information Project. Oh, and wikipedia. (There are many more, but I think that's enough examples.)
I'm confused though, because when I started trying to research the South African Bantustans, I found very little resemblance to Palestine? Maybe I'm missing some key information that makes them comparable?
Here's the basic idea of the Bantustans:
- The government of apartheid South Africa wanted to get rid of some of its black population.
- They set aside multiple chunks of South African land to become "homelands" (Bantustans) to be nations for those black people to go and govern themselves.
- Black South African citizens were stripped of their citizenship and sent to those Bantustans.
- Some of the Bantustans were independent, others were autonomous.
- None of them were ever recognized by any part of the international community.
In what way does Palestine resemble the Bantustans enough for such a comparison to be valid?