Why South Africa feels a deep connection to the Palestinian cause amid Gaza war

Analysis Why South Africa feels a deep connection to the Palestinian cause amid Gaza war
Members of General Industrial Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), civil associations and political parties hold anti-Israel banners during a pro-Palestine demonstration in front of the Israeli Trade and Economic Office in Sandton, Johannesburg, on January 27, 2022. (AFP)
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Updated 23 January 2024
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Why South Africa feels a deep connection to the Palestinian cause amid Gaza war

Why South Africa feels a deep connection to the Palestinian cause amid Gaza war
  • South Africa has lodged a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza
  • The ruling ANC has long acknowledged parallels between the Palestinian struggle and its own fight against apartheid

DUBAI: On Jan. 11 South Africa asked the International Court of Justice at The Hague to rule on whether Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza amounted to genocide. Israel responded by accusing the country of “functioning as the legal arm” of Hamas. 

But South African support for the Palestinians is not a new phenomenon. For years its government and civil society have shown unwavering support for the Palestinian cause, despite considerable geographical and cultural differences.




People raise flags and placards as they gather around a statue of late South African president Nelson Mandela to celebrate a landmark genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on January 10, 2024.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which until 1994 forced Blacks to live in specially designated “homelands.” 

“Today we join the world in expressing horror at the war crimes being committed in Palestine through the targeting of civilians, civilian infrastructure, UN premises and other vulnerable targets,” Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s minister of international relations and cooperation, said in a statement on Nov. 7.

“These actions remind us of our experiences as Black South Africans living under apartheid. This is one of the key reasons South Africans, like people in cities all over the world, have taken to the streets to express their anger and concern at what is taking place in Gaza and the West Bank.”




South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule. (AFP)

Israel launched its military campaign in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which saw Palestinian militants kill some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and take 240 hostage, including many non-Israeli foreign nationals.

Since then, the Israel Defense Forces have waged a ferocious air and ground campaign against Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, killing more than 25,000 Palestinans, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Since the war began, symbols of solidarity have sprung up across South Africa. Street artists have painted murals of the Palestinian flag, billboards have been erected accusing Israel of genocide, and stickers featuring slogans like “Genocide IsREAL” and “#FreeGaza” have been distributed.

“As a South African, one knows oppression, resistance and apartheid,” Leila Samira Khan, a South African lawyer and activist, told Arab News.

“Palestine is intertwined with South Africa’s fight for freedom. I was born in the Netherlands to South African parents in the ’70s and was named after Leila Khaled,” she said, referring to the famed Palestinian activist.




Palestinian children look for salvageable items amid the destruction on the southern outskirts of Khan Yunis in the war-battered Gaza Strip on January 16, 2024. (AFP)

South Africa recalled its diplomats from Tel Aviv in early November. Later that month, its parliament voted to suspend all diplomatic ties with Israel and to close the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria. Israel has since recalled its ambassador.

Then, in December, in a move which thrust South Africa into the international spotlight, it filed its suit against Israel at the ICJ, accusing it of breaching the Genocide Convention. 

“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the targeting of family homes and civilians, the war being a war on children, all make clear that genocidal intent is both understood and has been put into practice,” Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, a member of the South African legal team, said in the ICJ.

“The articulated intent is the destruction of Palestinian life in all its manifestations.”




A group of lawyers and advocates hold placards as they take part in an interfaith protest in solidarity with Palestinian people outside the High Court in Cape Town on January 11, 2024. (AFP)

While the case has irked many Western governments, it has won South Africa praise from nations like Turkiye and Malaysia and groupings like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which have joined the case. 

This championing of the Palestinian cause in South Africa has deep roots that date back to the days when the ANC was waging its own decades-long campaign against apartheid, a system that prevailed from 1948 until the early 1990s. 

Under apartheid, the white minority dominated politics, business, land ownership, and all facets of civic life, while enforcing a system of harsh racial segregation and discrimination that deemed the races “separate but equal.” 

In reality, Black South Africans who lived through that period recall feeling marginalized and like second-class citizens in their own land — feelings not dissimilar to those felt by the Palestinians in the occupied territories.




Black South Africans who lived through apartheid recall feeling marginalized and like second-class citizens in their own land — feelings not dissimilar to those felt by the Palestinians in the occupied territories. (AFP)

“As South Africans we feel deeply connected to the Palestinian struggle,” Thania Petersen, a South African artist based in Cape Town, told Arab News. 

“We understand and recognize apartheid as well as the devastation which comes with dealing and living in a post-apartheid society.”

Meanwhile, even as much of the international community introduced sanctions against apartheid South Africa for its increasingly unpopular policies, Israel continued to supply the white-minority government with weapons and technology.

The ANC’s solidarity with Palestine dates back to the 1950s and ’60s when several African nations were gaining independence after centuries under European colonial rule.

During its struggle against apartheid, and later once in power, the ANC fostered close ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization. 




A Palestinian man holds a portrait of late Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat and South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela as the national flags of both nations flutter outside the municipality building in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank on January 12, 2024. (AFP)

Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, who spent 27 years in jail for his fight against white minority rule, was even on friendly terms with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

On Feb. 15, 1995, a year after South Africa’s first non-racial elections, which propelled Mandela to power, the newly-minted “rainbow nation” established formal diplomatic ties with the State of Palestine. 

For years, the ANC and the PLO supported each other’s anti-colonial campaigns, trading weapons and consulting on strategies to do away with colonization.

A significant moment that solidified South Africa’s ties and commitment to Palestine was when Arafat met Mandela in Zambia in 1990, barely two weeks after the latter had been released from prison. 

Mandela subsequently visited both Israel and Palestine and called for peace between both nations.




Yasser Arafat, right, greeted Nelson Mandela when the latter arrived at Gaza airport in 1999 for an official visit to Palestine. (AFP/File)

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Mandela said in 1997 during a speech marking International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.

“The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. 

“Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so.”




Pro-Palestinian groups and other civil society organizations demonstrate, in Durban on June 2, 2018 to protest against the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gaza. (AFP/File)

South Africa’s support for the Palestinian cause continues fervently to this day. In the ANC’s latest policy document, published in late 2022, the ruling party emphasized South Africa’s historical ties to Palestine. 

“South Africa and Palestine share a common history of struggle,” the document said, describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and declaring its intention to loosen South Africa’s diplomatic ties with Israel.

“As individuals we feel deeply for Palestinians because we know apartheid, we know what it looks like and we live with the ongoing violence of its legacy,” Petersen told Arab News. 

“We have an obligation to humanity to fight what we know is wrong. As South Africans we will always fight against apartheid and colonialism. Our leaders have always uttered the words that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestine.”

In a recent piece for The Economist, Suraya Dadoo, a South African writer and activist, said: “South Africa’s voice has been the loudest, mainly due to the fact that our liberation history and struggle is most recent, and that the system of apartheid that Israel practices against the Palestinians is eerily similar.

“Settler colonial societies can only exist with the absolute annihilation of the indigenous people or by the complete subjugation of the people and their land. There is no other way they can sustain their existence but through violence.”

While South Africa’s championing of the Palestinian cause is understandable given its own struggle against apartheid, it has been harder to reconcile its support for Hamas. 

After the Oct. 7 attacks, many Arab countries that were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause sought to distance themselves from the militant group. Although it condemned the atrocities, South Africa was slower to do so than other nations.

By contrast, it rushed to condemn the mounting Palestinian death toll in Gaza after Israel launched its retaliatory campaign.

South Africa is one of just a handful of countries that has formal diplomatic relations with Hamas — a group that many nations consider a terrorist organization.

Its openness to relations with Hamas is partly informed by its own history. Indeed, the ANC was itself often considered a terrorist organization before the country made its largely peaceful transition to multi-racial democracy.




A man holds a Palestinian flag as they take part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the High Court in Cape Town on January 11, 2024. (AFP)

South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing acts of genocide against the Palestinians has also exposed it to accusations of double standards, particularly as its government appears to take a softer stance on the misdeeds of other armed actors.

Just a week before making its case at The Hague, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, a Sudanese warlord known as Hemedti, whose Janjaweed militia and its successor, the Rapid Support Forces, is accused of committing acts of genocide in Darfur. 

The RSF paramilitary group has been locked in battle with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April last year, sparking one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, which many fear could destabilize the wider region.

However, Petersen says public opposition to Israel in particular runs far deeper for South Africans, mindful of its past support for apartheid. 

“Palestinians and South Africans are fighting the same fight,” she said. “It is not (a) separate (issue that) Israel was involved with the apartheid government in South Africa and it is not surprising that the Zionist lobby in South Africa benefited from apartheid.”

 


Large Gaza food convoy violently looted, UNRWA says

Large Gaza food convoy violently looted, UNRWA says
Updated 10 min 59 sec ago
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Large Gaza food convoy violently looted, UNRWA says

Large Gaza food convoy violently looted, UNRWA says
  • UN aid official said last week Gaza aid access had reached low point

GAZA: A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks in what aid workers say is one of the worst such incidents in the more than 13-month-old war, an UNRWA aid official told Reuters on Monday.

The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Programme was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom crossing, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer told Reuters.

“This incident highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she said, adding that injuries occurred in the incident.

“⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive,” she said.

WFP and COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency says it does all it can to ensure that enough aid enters the coastal enclave, and that Israel does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.

A UN aid official said on Friday that Gaza aid access had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible.


Majority of South Sudanese will be food insecure next year: UN

Majority of South Sudanese will be food insecure next year: UN
Updated 18 November 2024
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Majority of South Sudanese will be food insecure next year: UN

Majority of South Sudanese will be food insecure next year: UN
  • Almost 7.7 million people will be classed as acutely food insecure, according to the IPC, an increase from 7.1 million people the previous lean season
  • More than 85 percent of returnees fleeing the war in Sudan will be acutely food insecure from the next lean season in April

Juba: Almost 60 percent of South Sudan’s population will be acutely food insecure next year, with more than two million children at risk of malnutrition, data from a United Nations-backed review warned on Monday.
The world’s youngest country is among the globe’s poorest and is grappling with its worst flooding in decades as well as a massive influx of refugees fleeing the war in Sudan to the north.
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review estimated that 57 percent of the population would be suffering from acute food insecurity from April.
The United Nations defines acute food insecurity as when a “person’s inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger.”
Almost 7.7 million people will be classed as acutely food insecure, according to the IPC, an increase from 7.1 million people the previous lean season.
“Year after year we see hunger reaching some of the highest levels we’ve seen in South Sudan,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in South Sudan.
“When we look at the areas with the highest levels of food insecurity, it’s clear that a cocktail of despair — conflict and the climate crisis — are the main drivers,” she said.
More than 85 percent of returnees fleeing the war in Sudan will be acutely food insecure from the next lean season in April.
The data also found that 2.1 million children are at risk of malnutrition, compounded by a lack of safe drinking water and sanitation.
“Malnutrition is the end result of a series of crises,” said Hamida Lasseko, UNICEF’s representative in South Sudan, adding the agency was “deeply concerned” that the numbers would increase if aid was not stepped up.
In October, the World Bank warned widespread flooding was “worsening an already critical humanitarian situation.”
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said earlier this month that 1.4 million people had been impacted by the flooding, which had displaced almost 380,000.
Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world’s youngest nation has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence and economic stagnation as well as climate disasters such as drought and floods.
The country also faces another period of political paralysis after the presidency delayed elections by two years to December 2026, exasperating international partners.
South Sudan boasts plentiful oil resources but the vital source of revenue was decimated in February when an export pipeline was damaged in neighboring war-torn Sudan.


Israeli strikes kill 18 Palestinians in Gaza, some in attacks on tents, say medics

Israeli strikes kill 18 Palestinians in Gaza, some in attacks on tents, say medics
Updated 18 November 2024
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Israeli strikes kill 18 Palestinians in Gaza, some in attacks on tents, say medics

Israeli strikes kill 18 Palestinians in Gaza, some in attacks on tents, say medics
  • Israeli military targets include tents housing displaced families, say medics
  • Victims were ‘ripped apart into fragments’, says survivor

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 18 Palestinians on Monday, including six people who were killed in attacks on tents housing displaced families, medics said.
Four people, two of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian zone, while two were killed in temporary shelters in the southern city of Rafah and another in drone fire, health officials said.
In Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza, medics said an Israeli missile struck a house, killing at least two people and wounding several others. On Sunday, medics and residents said dozens of people were killed or wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a multi-floor residential building in the town.
The Israeli military, which has been fighting Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza since October 2023, said it conducted strikes on “terrorist targets,” in Beit Lahiya.
An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed five people and wounded 10 others, medics said. Later on Monday, an Israeli air strike killed four people in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, they added.
There has been no Israeli comment on Monday’s incidents.
In Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives of Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike on tents housing displaced families sat beside bodies wrapped in blankets and white shrouds to pay farewell before walking them to graves.
“My brother wasn’t the only one; many others have been martyred in this brutal way — children torn to pieces, civilians shredded. They weren’t carrying weapons or even know ‘the resistance’, yet they were ripped apart into fragments,” said Mohammed Aboul Hassan, who lost his brother in the attack.
“We remain steadfast, patient, and resilient, and by the will of God, we will never falter. We will stay steadfast and patient,” he told Reuters.
The Israeli army sent tanks and soldiers into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, early last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas militants waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, said the hospital was under siege by Israeli forces and the World Health Organization had been unable to deliver supplies of food, medicine and surgical equipment.
Cases of malnutrition among children were increasing, he said, and the hospital was operating at a minimal level.
“We receive daily distress calls, but we are unable to assist them due to the lack of ambulances, and the situation is catastrophic,” he said. “Yesterday, I received a distress call from women and children trapped under the rubble, and due to my inability to help them, they are now among the martyrs (dead).”
Israel said it had killed hundreds of militants in the three northern areas, which residents said was cut off from Gaza City, making it difficult and dangerous for them to flee. The armed wings of Hamas and militant group Islamic Jihad said they have killed many Israeli soldiers in anti-tank rocket and mortar fire attacks during the same period.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 43,800 people have been confirmed killed since the war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people in attacks on communities in southern Israel that day, and hold dozens of some 250 hostages they took back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.


Hamas political office has not moved to Turkiye from Qatar, Turkish source says

Hamas political office has not moved to Turkiye from Qatar, Turkish source says
Updated 18 November 2024
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Hamas political office has not moved to Turkiye from Qatar, Turkish source says

Hamas political office has not moved to Turkiye from Qatar, Turkish source says

ANKARA: A Turkish diplomatic source dismissed on Monday reports that Hamas had moved its political office to Turkiye from Qatar, adding that members of the Palestinian militant group only visited the country from time to time.
Qatar said last week it had told Hamas and Israel that it will suspend efforts to mediate a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal until both show willingness and seriousness. Doha also said media reports that it had told Hamas to leave the Gulf Arab country were not accurate.
NATO member Turkiye has fiercely criticized Israel over its offensives in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon and does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Some Hamas political officials regularly visit Turkiye.
“Hamas Political Bureau members visit Turkiye from time to time. Claims that indicate the Hamas Political Bureau has moved to Turkiye do not reflect the truth,” the diplomatic source said.
Later on Monday, Hamas dismissed the reports as “rumors the (Israeli) occupation is trying to publish from time to time.”


Schools closed in Beirut after deadly Israeli strike

Schools closed in Beirut after deadly Israeli strike
Updated 18 November 2024
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Schools closed in Beirut after deadly Israeli strike

Schools closed in Beirut after deadly Israeli strike
  • Sunday’s strikes hit densely populated districts of central Beirut
  • Six people were killed in the strikes

BEIRUT: Schools in Beirut were closed on Monday after Israeli strikes on the Lebanese capital killed six people including Hezbollah’s spokesman, the latest in a string of top militant targets slain in the war.
Israel escalated its bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds in late September, vowing to secure its northern border with Lebanon to allow Israelis displaced by cross-border fire to return home.
Sunday’s strikes hit densely populated districts of central Beirut that had so far been spared the violence engulfing other areas of Lebanon.
Six people were killed in the strikes, according to Lebanese health ministry figures, including Hezbollah media relations chief Mohammed Afif, the group and Israel’s military said.
The strikes prompted the education ministry to shut schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area for two days.
Children and young people around Lebanon have been heavily impacted by the war, which has seen schools around the country turned into shelters for the displaced.
Israel widened the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon in late September, nearly a year into the conflict in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
In support of its Palestinian ally, Hezbollah launched low-intensity strikes on Israel after the attack, forcing about 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes.
With Hamas weakened but not crushed, Israel escalated its battle against Hezbollah, vowing to fight until victory.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,480 people have been killed since October last year, with most casualties recorded since September.
Israel says 48 soldiers have been killed fighting Hezbollah.
Israeli strikes have killed senior Hezbollah officials including its leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September.
The group’s spokesman Afif was part of Nasrallah’s inner circle, and one of the group’s few officials to engage with the press.
Another strike hit a busy shopping district of Beirut, sparking a huge blaze that engulfed part of a building and several shops nearby.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said the fire had largely been extinguished by Monday morning, noting it had caused diesel fuel tanks to explode.
It also reported new strikes early Monday on locations around south Lebanon, long a stronghold of Hezbollah.
Israel’s military told AFP it had hit more than 200 targets in Lebanon over 36 hours, including in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s main bastion.
Lebanon’s military, which is not a party to the conflict, said Israel “directly targeted” an army center in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing two soldiers.
Israel’s military said about 20 projectiles crossed from Lebanon into Israel, and some were intercepted.
Lebanon last week said it was reviewing a US truce proposal in the Israel-Hezbollah war, as Hamas said it was ready for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Ongoing war on Gaza
So far, however, there has been no sign of the wars abating.
The Israeli military kept up its campaign in Gaza over the weekend, where civil defense rescuers said strikes on Sunday killed dozens of people.
Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping in northern Gaza near the border, Israel on October 6 began an air and ground operation in Jabalia and then expanded it to Beit Lahia.
On Sunday, Gaza’s civil defense agency said 34 people were killed, including children, and dozens were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a five-story residential building in Beit Lahia.
“The chances of rescuing more wounded are decreasing because of the continuous shooting and artillery shelling,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Weighed down with backpacks, many like Omar Abdel Aal were fleeing, often on foot, through dusty streets.
“They bombarded the houses and completely destroyed Beit Lahia,” he said.
Israel’s military said there were “ongoing terrorist activities in the area of Beit Lahia” and several strikes were directed at militant targets there.
“We emphasize that there have been continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from the active war zone in the area,” the military said.
The United Nations and others have condemned humanitarian conditions in northern Gaza, with the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees last week calling the situation “catastrophic.”
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846, a majority civilians, figures that the United Nations consider reliable.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.