When Nelson Mandela was freed from his Robben Island jail on February 11, 1991, my household, pals and neighbours adopted the occasion with eager curiosity as they gathered in the lounge of my previous residence within the Nuseirat Refugee Camp within the Gaza Strip.
This emotional occasion passed off years earlier than Mandela uttered his well-known quote “our freedom is incomplete with out the liberty of the Palestinians”. For us Palestinians Mandela didn’t must reaffirm the South African folks’s solidarity with Palestine through the use of these phrases or some other mixture of phrases. We already knew. Feelings ran excessive on that day; tears had been shed; supplications had been made to Allah that Palestine, too, could be free quickly. “Inshallah,” God prepared, everybody within the room murmured with unprecedented optimism.
Although three many years have handed with out that coveted freedom, one thing is lastly altering so far as the Palestine liberation motion is anxious. A complete technology of Palestinian activists, who both grew up or had been even born after Mandela’s launch, was influenced by that vital second: Mandela’s launch and the beginning of the official dismantling of the racist, apartheid regime of South Africa.
Even the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and a few within the Palestinian management of the PLO – which served as a serious disruption of the grassroots, people-oriented liberation motion in Palestine – didn’t utterly finish what finally grew to become a determined anti-Israeli apartheid battle in Palestine. Oslo, the so-called ‘peace course of’ – and the disastrous ‘security coordination‘ between the Palestinian management, exemplified within the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Israel – resulted in derailed Palestinian energies, wasted time, deepened present factional divides, and confused Palestinian supporters all over the place. Nevertheless, it didn’t – although it tried – occupy each political house obtainable for Palestinian expression and mobilisation.
With time and, in truth, quickly after its formation in 1994, Palestinians started realising that the PA was not a platform for liberation, however a hindrance to it. A brand new technology of Palestinians is now trying to articulate, or refashion, a brand new discourse for liberation that’s primarily based on inclusiveness, grassroots, community-based activism that’s backed by a rising international solidarity motion.
The May events of final 12 months – the mass protests all through occupied Palestine and the following Israeli conflict on Gaza – highlighted the function of Palestine’s youth who, by means of elaborate coordination, incessant campaigning and utilising of social media platforms, managed to current the Palestinian battle in a brand new mild – bereft of the archaic language of the PA and its getting old leaders. It additionally surpassed, in its collective considering, the stifling and self-defeating emphasis on factions and self-serving ideologies.
And the world responded in variety. Regardless of a strong Israeli propaganda machine, costly hasbara campaigns and near-total help for Israel by the western authorities and mainstream media alike, sympathy for Palestinians has reached an all-time excessive. For instance, a serious public opinion poll revealed by Gallup on Could 28, 2021, revealed that “… the chances of Individuals viewing (Palestine) favourably and saying they sympathise extra with the Palestinians than the Israelis within the battle inched as much as all-time highs this 12 months.”
Furthermore, main worldwide human rights organisations, together with Israelis, started to lastly recognise what their Palestinian colleagues have argued for many years:
“The Israeli regime implements legal guidelines, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of 1 group – Jews – over one other – Palestinians,” said B’tselem in January 2021.
“Legal guidelines, insurance policies and statements by main Israeli officers make plain that the target of sustaining Jewish Israeli management over demographics, political energy and land has lengthy guided authorities coverage,” said Human Rights Watch in April 2021.
“This method of apartheid has been constructed and maintained over many years by successive Israeli governments throughout all territories they’ve managed, whatever the political occasion in energy on the time,” said Amnesty Worldwide on February 1, 2022.
Now that the human rights and authorized basis of recognising Israeli apartheid is lastly falling into place, it’s a matter of time earlier than a essential mass of fashionable help for Palestine’s personal anti-apartheid motion follows, pushing politicians all over the place, however particularly within the West, to stress Israel into ending its system of racial discrimination.
Nevertheless, that is the place the South Africa and Palestine fashions start to vary. Although western colonialism has plagued South Africa as early because the seventeenth century, apartheid in that nation solely grew to become official in 1948, the very 12 months that Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine.
Whereas South African resistance to colonialism and apartheid has gone by means of quite a few and overwhelming challenges, there was a component of unity that made it almost inconceivable for the apartheid regime to overcome all political forces in that nation, even after the banning, in 1960, of the African Nationwide Congress (ANC) and the following imprisonment of Mandela in 1962. Whereas South Africans continued to rally behind the ANC, one other entrance of fashionable resistance, the United Democratic Entrance, emerged, within the early Eighties to fulfil a number of necessary roles, amongst them the constructing of worldwide solidarity across the nation’s anti-apartheid battle.
Opinion: Crimes of apartheid do not have a statute of limitations
The blood of 176 protesters on the Soweto township and 1000’s extra was the gas that made freedom, the dismantling of apartheid and the liberty of Mandela and his comrades attainable.
For Palestinians, nonetheless, the fact is kind of completely different. Whereas Palestinians are embarking on a brand new stage of their anti-apartheid battle, it have to be stated that the PA, which has brazenly collaborated with Israel, can’t probably be a automobile for liberation. Palestinians, particularly the youth, who haven’t been corrupted by the decades-long system of nepotism and favouritism enshrined by the PA, should know this effectively.
Rationally, Palestinians can’t stage a sustained anti-apartheid marketing campaign when the PA is allowed to serve the function of being Palestine’s consultant, whereas nonetheless benefiting from the perks and monetary rewards related to the Israeli occupation.
In the meantime, it’s also not attainable for Palestinians to mount a well-liked motion in full independence from the PA, Palestine’s largest employer, whose US-trained safety forces preserve watch on each avenue nook that falls inside the PA-administered areas within the West Financial institution.
As they transfer ahead, Palestinians should actually research the South African expertise, not merely when it comes to historic parallels and symbolism, however to deeply probe its successes, shortcomings and fault traces. Most significantly, Palestinians should additionally mirror on the unavoidable fact – that those that have normalised and profited from the Israeli occupation and apartheid can’t probably be those who will carry freedom and justice to Palestine.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
