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A Decade after Mandela's Death, His Pro-Palestinian Legacy Lives On

Former South African president Nelson Mandela (R) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (L) address the media after holding talks on the crisis in the Middle East May 3, 2001. JN/WS/ File Photo
Former South African president Nelson Mandela (R) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (L) address the media after holding talks on the crisis in the Middle East May 3, 2001. JN/WS/ File Photo
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A Decade after Mandela's Death, His Pro-Palestinian Legacy Lives On

Former South African president Nelson Mandela (R) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (L) address the media after holding talks on the crisis in the Middle East May 3, 2001. JN/WS/ File Photo
Former South African president Nelson Mandela (R) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (L) address the media after holding talks on the crisis in the Middle East May 3, 2001. JN/WS/ File Photo

Days after his release from 27 years in prison in February 1990, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela gave Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a bear hug, symbolizing his embrace of a cause his country's governing ANC party continues to champion.
It was a gesture as controversial then as South Africa's support for the Palestinian cause is today, but Mandela brushed off criticism.
Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization had been an unwavering supporter of Mandela's struggle against white minority rule and many South Africans saw parallels between it and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
"We were fortunate that with their support, we were able to achieve our freedom ... My grandfather ... said our freedom is incomplete without the Palestinian struggle," his grandson Mandla Mandela recalled in an interview ahead of the 10th commemoration of Mandela's death.
From Dec. 3 to 5 Mandla Mandela, who is also an ANC lawmaker, hosted a solidarity conference in Johannesburg for the Palestinians.
It was attended by members of Hamas, an organization Israel has vowed to annihilate in retaliation for its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw around 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israeli bombing of Gaza since then has killed more than 15,500 people, according to Gaza's Hamas-run government, and displaced more than three-quarters of the Strip's 2.3 million population.
Last month, the ruling ANC backed a motion in South Africa's parliament to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel until it agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.
"LAND ANNEXED"
"Palestinians still do not enjoy fully their freedom on their land. And instead their land has been annexed more and more, something that we also faced in South Africa," said the ANC's deputy chair of international relations, Obed Bapela.
Israel has disputed the comparison with apartheid as a lie motivated by antisemitism, but many South Africans follow Mandela's lead.
"That's something that he (Mandela) never compromised on and nor should we," poet and author Lebogang Mashile told Reuters.
Some in South Africa's Jewish community criticize the ANC's stance, pointing out that Mandela himself eventually tried to build bridges with Israel.
Historian and author of "Jewish Memories of Mandela", David Saks, noted that Mandela was the only South African president to have visited Israel since 1994 - albeit only after he left office - and that "he received a rapturous welcome from the Israeli public," addressing then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then-President Ezer Weisman as "my friends".
"He pointed the way which things should have gone (diplomatically with Israel), but (they) didn’t go that way," Saks said.

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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the armed group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”