The month of October has been one of travel for me, both inside the country and internationally. Along the way, it hasn’t taken long for the conversation to turn to the region of Gaza, Palestine and Israel. How to make sense of the unspeakable? How to bring an end to the unconscionable?
The Nelson Mandela Foundation has been applying its mind to the intractable problems of this region for many years. Of course, Nelson Mandela himself engaged with the challenges there in the mid-1990s, during a period of concerted peace-making. We have hosted both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groupings at the Foundation in the past. We visited Palestine ourselves a few years ago to get on-the-ground experience. In 2021 we co-facilitated a dialogue on Palestine with the South African and Namibian UN delegations through a UN international platform. Also in 2021, I published a reflection on the similarities between the settler-colonial apparatuses which have obtained in South Africa and in Israel.
Two things seem clear. On the one hand, the underlying cause of violence in the region is the deep-rooted structural injustice which obtains there. Violence in various forms will keep breaking out until the systemic violence is addressed.
On the other hand, the idea that a ‘final war’ against Hamas can be successful and/or will bring peace in the end, is a deadly pipedream. A sustainable peace in the region, as in any geographical context, rests on the work of justice.
And that work, in our view, requires an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, the termination of endeavour to depopulate areas, and a commitment to a United Nations-led negotiation process. What the world needs now is the kind of international solidarity which played such a key role in forcing the apartheid regime to the negotiating table. We need the kind of international solidarity which brought the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the Oslo Peace Accords in the 1990s.
There must be an end to war crimes. Genocide must be averted. The flow of weaponry, which makes both possible, should be stopped.
It is time to make peace.