Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not among the 100 world figures who attended the memorial ceremony for Nelson Mandela, who died last week at 95.
Netanyahu had serious reasons to stay at home. Israel was a close ally and arms supplier of the white apartheid regime battled by Mahatma Gandhi more than a century ago but only overthrown by Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990.
“The ANC, in common with the international community, was extremely unhappy about the military cooperation between the State of Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa,” Mandela had said, adding that Israel also refused to honour its international obligations to sanction and isolate South Africa for its policies. Although Mandela eventually came to terms with and visited Israel, the relationship remained distant and cool.
Mandela identified with the Palestinian cause and became a close friend of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. His successor president Mahmoud Abbas, naturally, attended the memorial ceremonies. In late February 1990, shortly after his release from in prison, Mandela told Arafat, “There are many similarities between our struggle and that of the (Palestine Liberation Organisation). We (South Africans and Palestinians) live under a unique form of colonialism... (South African) freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Arafat responded, “We are in the same trench, struggling against the same enemies, against apartheid, racism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.” Arafat’s use of the word ‘apartheid’ was prescient because at that time few people had recognised that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians are akin to South African apartheid, communal separation.
Netanyahu certainly did not want to risk criticism of his government which is sealing off East Jerusalem and Gaza and confining Palestinians to isolated cantons in the West Bank comparable to the ‘bantustans’ created by the South African apartheid regime for black Africans.
Believing the Palestinian dream of statehood was being realised, Mandela welcomed the September 1993 Oslo accord. When Mandela and South African President FW De Klerk, his partner in dismantling the apartheid regime, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, Mandela said the award should have gone to Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin.
They, along with Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres, were given the prize in 1994. However, Mandela and De Klerk engineered an end to apartheid while Rabin, Peres and their successors have stepped up colonisation of Palestinian land and imposed their version of apartheid in the Palestinian territories.
On February 15th, 1995, before Mandela became president, South Africa recognised the State of Palestine. When Arafat made his first state visit to that country in August 1998, President Mandela conferred on him South Africa's Order of Merit, Excellence Class. Arafat awarded Mandela the Palestinian Star of Jerusalem.
Mandela visited Israel in 1999 after his term as president ended. He met then Israeli premier Ehud Barak and urged him to revive negotiations with Arafat but Barak did not heed Mandela's advice. Mandela also went to Gaza where, during a meeting with Arafat, he backed the PLO’s use of force to achieve liberation. Mandela stated, “All men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”
Due to Mandela’s backing for the Palestinian struggle and anti-US regimes, he and the ANC remained on the US ‘terrorist’ list until 2008. Negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, brokered by US president Bill Clinton, collapsed during the summer of 2000, leading to the second intifada, an intifada of guns and bombs.
After Arafat's death in November 2004, Mandela hailed him as “one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation, one who gave his entire life to the cause of the Palestinian people... It is with great sadness that one notes that his and his people's dream of a Palestinian state has not yet been realised.”
While Mandela won his people’s freedom and became South Africa’s first black president, Arafat lost the struggle against Israeli occupation. His passing was marked by Palestinians, their allies and friends, including Mandela who remained loyal to supporters of his liberation struggle.
Remembrance events for Mandela have been held across the West Bank and in Gaza. During special service in a church in Ramallah, PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi said that for Mandela, “Palestine was not a question of solidarity or advocacy, but it was (a cause) that he internalised and participated in as one of us. The linkage between South Africa and Palestine that Mandela spelled out was one of shared principles and struggles, primarily for self-determination, freedom, and human dignity.”