CAPE TOWN: Barely two weeks after he was released from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela flew to Zambia to meet with African leaders who had supported his fight against South Africa’s apartheid system of forced racial segregation.
One figure stood out among the men in dark suits eagerly waiting to greet Mandela on the airport tarmac: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, wearing his black and white checkered keffiyeh headdress, had traveled to see the newly freed Mandela.
He grabbed Mandela in a bear hug and kissed him on each cheek. Mandela smiled broadly. It was confirmation of the solidarity between two men who considered their peoples’ struggles for freedom to be the same.
South Africans continue to support the Palestinian cause, and the country has taken the rare step of bringing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice because of its war in Gaza.
South Africa is not a diplomatic heavyweight and is geographically far from the conflict. But its ruling African National Congress, which Mandela led from an anti-apartheid liberation movement to a political party in government, has retained its strong pro-Palestinian stance even after Mandela died in 2013.
“We have stood with the Palestinians and we will continue to stand with our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, said at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town in October, days after the Hamas attack in southern Israel spurred the war on Gaza. Mandla Mandela, an ANC lawmaker, wore a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh around his neck as he spoke to a large crowd.
Nelson Mandela regularly raised the plight of the Palestinians. Three years after apartheid and white minority rule was dismantled in South Africa and Mandela was elected president in historic all-race elections in 1994, he thanked the international community for its help. He added: “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Mandela and South African leaders after him compared the restrictions Israel placed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with the treatment of Black South Africans during apartheid, framing the two issues as fundamentally about people oppressed in their homeland. Israel provided weapons systems to South Africa’s apartheid government and maintained secret military ties with it up until the mid-1980s, even after publicly denouncing apartheid.
The ANC has consistently criticized Israel as an “apartheid state,” even before the current war. International rights groups have also accused Israel of the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and that “resonates strongly with South Africa,” said Thamsanqa Malusi, a South African human rights lawyer.
Malusi said many in the South African government experienced the oppression of apartheid and that could help explain its decision to lodge the case against Israel at the UN’s top court.
While Mandela, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning statesman, also reached out to Israel in an attempt to foster a peaceful solution, anti-Israeli rhetoric in South Africa has strengthened over the years, sometimes seeping into everyday life. For example, the ANC’s youth wing pressured South African grocery store chains to drop Israeli products and threatened to forcibly shut them down if they didn’t.
Israel’s assault on Gaza sparked renewed solidarity with the Palestinian cause in South Africa. Thousands have marched in support of Gaza in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and buildings in the Cape Town neighborhood of Bo Kaap were adorned with pro-Palestine graffiti in the weeks after the war broke out.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — the current leader of the ANC — has criticized both Israel and Hamas for what he calls atrocities committed by both sides in the conflict. But he also appeared in public wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestine flag, even as he offered condolences to Israel over the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, leaving little doubt where South Africa’s sympathies lie.
ANC officials, including Mandla Mandela, hosted three Hamas officials in South Africa last month, including the group’s top representative in Iran. They attended a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death before a statue of the former South African President at the seat of government in a nod to his historic connection with the Palestinian cause.
On Wednesday, the eve of the court proceedings, Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah crowded around another statue of Mandela, waving Palestinian and South African flags and holding signs that read: “Thank You South Africa.”
The Hamas visit to South Africa was not welcomed by all, though.
South Africa’s main opposition party has said it considers Hamas a terrorist organization, as do the United States and European Union, and support for Palestinians in South Africa has complicated racial connotations. Black and mixed-race South Africans, brutally oppressed under apartheid, have been at the forefront of the support for Palestinians. Support is not as pronounced among South Africa’s white minority.
South Africa’s ANC-led government says it is taking a morale stance in its genocide case against Israel, first seeking an order for Israel to stop the assaults in Gaza that have killed more than 23,300 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
But the case has given rise to accusations of hypocrisy: The ANC has itself ignored international court orders.
The ANC government refused to arrest then-Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir when he visited South Africa in 2015 while the subject of a warrant on allegations of genocide by the separate International Criminal Court. South Africa has also retained strong ties with Russia and President Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, overlooking an ICC indictment against Putin for alleged war crimes in relation to the abduction of children from Ukraine.
Nelson Mandela’s support for Palestinians endures with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
https://arab.news/nmhxc
Nelson Mandela’s support for Palestinians endures with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
- South Africa’s long-held support for the Palestinian people can be traced back to the time of Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary claims it took control of a strategic western town
A victory there by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, would mark a strategic loss for Sudan’s military in its war with the paramilitary force as the territory is home to the headquarters of the 18th Infantry Brigade.
The Sudanese army didn’t immediately comment on its social media channels on whether it lost Al Nahud to its rival.
Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Khalid Ali Aleisir said on his Facebook account on Friday the RSF committed crimes against defenseless citizens in the town, looting their properties and destroying public facilities.
The RSF said on its Telegram channel Friday that it destroyed vehicles belonging to the army and seized their weapons and ammunition during the battle for Al Nahud. The paramilitary group also claimed that it managed to secure the city’s facilities and markets after defeating the army.
The war erupted on April 15, 2023, with pitched battles between the military and the RSF in the streets of the capital Khartoum that quickly spread to other parts of the country.
RSF attacks in Al Nahud have killed more than 300 unarmed civilians, the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union said on Facebook on Friday. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify that figure.
The Resistance Committees of Al Nahud condemned the RSF attacks, which it said began Thursday morning.
“They invaded the city, stormed residential neighborhoods, terrorized unarmed civilians, and committed cold-blooded murders against innocent civilians whose only crime was to cling to their dignity and refuse to leave their homes to the machine of killing and terror,” the Resistance Committees said Thursday on Facebook.
An army loss of Al Nahud would impact its operational capabilities in Northern Kordofan state, according to the Sudan War Monitor, an open source collaborative project that has been documenting the two-year-war. Al Nahud is a strategic town because it’s located along a main road that the army could use to advance into the Darfur region, which the RSF mostly controls.
Al Nahud also shelters displaced people fleeing from Al-Obeid, Umm Kadada, Khartoum and El-Fasher — the provincial capital of North Darfur province, according to the Darfur Victims Support Organization.
Meanwhile, in North Darfur, the fighting has killed at least 542 people in the last three weeks, though the actual death toll is likely higher, according to UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk. This figure includes the recent RSF attacks on El Fasher and Abu Shouk displacement camp, which killed at least 40 civilians.
“The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” said Türk i n a statement on Thursday.
Türk also mentioned “extremely disturbing” reports of extrajudicial killings committed by RSF, with at least 30 men in civilian clothing executed by the paramilitary fighters in Al Salha in southern Omdurman.
“I have personally alerted both leaders of the RSF and SAF to the catastrophic human rights consequences of this war. These harrowing consequences are a daily, lived reality for millions of Sudanese. It is well past time for this conflict to stop,” said Türk.
The war in Sudan has killed at least 20,000 people, but the real toll is probably far higher. Nearly 13 million people have fled their homes, 4 million of them streaming into neighboring countries.
Half the population of 50 million faces hunger. The World Food Program has confirmed famine in 10 locations and warns it could spread further, putting millions at risk of starvation.
Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh
TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Friday handed down lengthy prison sentences against former officials, including former Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, a senior figure in the opposition Ennahda party, on charges of facilitating the departure of jihadists to Syria over the past decade.
TAP state news agency quoted a judicial official as saying that the sentences are for 18 to 36 years, and apply to eight people.
West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault
- Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada
JENIN: On a torn-up road near the refugee camp where she once lived, Saja Bawaqneh said she struggled to find hope 100 days after an Israeli offensive in the occupied West Bank forced her to flee.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in the north of the territory since Israel began a major “anti-terrorist operation” dubbed “Iron Wall” on Jan. 21.
Bawaqneh said life was challenging and uncertain since she was forced to leave Jenin refugee camp — one of three targeted by the offensive, along with Tulkarm and Nur Shams.
“We try to hold on to hope, but unfortunately, reality offers none,” she said.
“Nothing is clear in Jenin camp even after 100 days — we still don’t know whether we will return to our homes, or whether those homes have been damaged or destroyed.”
Bawaqneh said residents were banned from entering the camp and that “no one knows ... what happened inside.”
Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada.
In early March, it said it had expanded its offensive to more city areas.
AFP footage this week showed power lines dangling above Jenin’s streets blocked with barriers made of churned-up earth.
Wastewater pooled in the road outside the Jenin Governmental Hospital.
Farha Abu Al-Hija, a member of the Popular Committee for Services in Jenin camp, said families living in the vicinity of the camp were being removed by Israeli forces daily.
“A hundred days have passed like a hundred years for the displaced people of Jenin camp,” she said.
“Their situation is dire, the conditions are harsh, and they are enduring pain unlike anything they have ever known.”
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders in March denounced the “extremely precarious” situation of Palestinians displaced by the military assault, saying they were going “without proper shelter, essential services, and access to health care.”
It said the scale of forced displacement and destruction of camps “has not been seen in decades” in the West Bank.
The UN says about 40,000 residents have been displaced since Jan. 21.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said the offensive would last several months and ordered troops to stop residents from returning.
Israeli forces put up barriers at several entrances of the Jenin camp in late April, AFP footage showed.
The Israeli offensive began two days after a truce came into effect in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli military and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Two months later, that truce collapsed and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza, a Palestinian territory separate from the West Bank.
Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, violence has soared in the West Bank.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 925 Palestinians in the territory since then, according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry.
Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes
- Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza
- In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP.
AFP footage in the aftermath of a strike on Bureij camp showed Palestinians searching for casualties in the rubble of a flattened building.
“They gave us no warning, no phone call — we woke up at midnight to smoke, rubble, stones, and shrapnel raining down on us,” said Mohammed Al-Sheikh, standing among collapsed concrete slabs.
“We pulled out martyrs — bodies and limbs from under the rubble.”
Another six people were killed in a strike targeting the Al-Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, civil defense official Mughayyir added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defense agency reported.
Across the Gaza Strip, at least 21 other deaths were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Israeli government says its renewed campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge it puts them in mortal danger.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of the ceasefire which had come into effect on January 19.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the “verge of total collapse.”
“This situation must not — and cannot — be allowed to escalate further,” its deputy director of operations, Pascal Hundt, said in a statement.
Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid
- “Until when will life be like that? We’re slowly dying. We haven’t eaten bread for a month and a half,” said Abu Arar
- Aid groups have warned that Gaza’s civilian population is facing starvation
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Screaming in anguish as the desperate crowd crushes them against a barrier, young children and adults frantically wave pots and pans at charity workers, begging for a portion of some of the last food aid left in Gaza: Rice.
The chaos at the community kitchen in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Friday was too overwhelming for Niveen Abu Arar. She tried and tried, but the 33-year-old mother of eight didn’t get to the front of the crowd in time. She left with her pot empty, and her eyes full of tears.
“Until when will life be like that? We’re slowly dying. We haven’t eaten bread for a month and a half. There is no flour. There is nothing,” said Abu Arar, whose ninth child, a 1-year-old boy, was killed in an Israeli strike near their home at the start of the war in 2023. “We don’t know what to do … We don’t have money. What do we get for them?”
She cradled a toddler in her lap as she spoke. With no milk to provide, she poured water into a baby bottle and pressed it into her youngest daughter’s mouth, hoping to stave off the baby’s hunger pangs.
With Israel blocking any form of aid — including food and medicine – into Gaza for the past two months, aid groups have warned that Gaza’s civilian population is facing starvation.
Israel has said that the blockade and its renewed military campaign aim to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages it still holds and to disarm. Aid groups stress that blocking humanitarian aid is a form of collective punishment and a violation of international law.
Israeli authorities didn’t immediately respond when asked about accusations that starvation was being used as a weapon of war, but in the past they have accused the Hamas militant group governing Gaza of stealing aid.
In an emergency call with reporters on Friday to discuss Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, aid groups described a territory nearly out of food, water and fuel, with prices for the meager supplies remaining skyrocketing beyond the reach of many.
With nearly the entire population reliant on humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations, warehouses are empty, community kitchens are closing down, and families are skipping meals.
A 25-kilogram (55-pound) bag of flour now goes for 1,300 shekels ($360), said Ghada al Haddad, Oxfam’s media coordinator in Gaza.
“Mothers in Gaza now feed their children one meal per day, dinner, so they don’t wake up and complain they are starving,” she said.
Amjad Shawwa, the director of the Palestinian NGO network, said that more than 70 of their community kitchens inside Gaza would close within the week if the Israeli blockade continues.
Israeli airstrikes have also taken out large swaths of Gaza’s agricultural land and livestock, making it nearly impossible for the territory to produce its own food, said Gavin Kelleher, a humanitarian manager with the Norwegian Refugee Council who recently left Gaza. Even fisherman have been targeted, he said, killed in small fishing boats by Israeli naval forces.
“Israel has engineered a situation where Palestinians cannot grow their own food or fish for their own food,” he said.
Kelleher, whose organization coordinates the provision of shelter to Gaza, said that not a single aid group has any tents left to distribute — as 1 million people inside Gaza remain in need of shelter given the devastation caused by the nearly 19-month war.
In Khan Younis, Mustafa Ashour said he had walked for an hour to get to the charity community kitchen, and waiting for another two hours before he managed to get food.
“The situation is hard in Gaza. The crossings are closed. It’s a full siege,” said Ashour, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah. “There is no food. There is no water. There are no life necessities. The food being sold is expensive and very little.”
As for Abu Arar and her family — left without a handout from the charity kitchen — another family in a neighboring tent took pity, and shared their own meager portions of rice.
Keller of the NRC said that if Israel continues its blockade, “thousands of people will die, there will be a complete breakdown of order, telecommunication networks will come down and we will struggle to understand the situation because it will be unfolding in the dark.”
