Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians (review)

Anyone comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with that between whites and blacks in South Africa before the end of apartheid and majority rule is treading on controversial territory, as former president Jimmy Carter found out upon publication of Palestine: Peace not Apartheid in 2006. Carter did not actually describe what the institutions of South African apartheid had been; instead he used "apartheid" in the title for its shock value. Nor was he the first public figure to use that term in reference to the Occupied Territories, although academics preferred "settler society" and "colonialism" as categories for analysis. In Seeking Mandela, two seasoned sociologists who have experienced, studied, and written eloquently about South Africa for decades from within (though they have emigrated to Canada and become Canadian citizens) ask whether there is a valid analogy to be made between these two cases of deeply divided societies, and whether the negotiated settlement of the white-black conflict has any useful lessons for peace making in Palestine.

In the authors' view, if one views the Palestine conflict through South African lenses, it challenges clichés based on "helplessness of the situation," ancient hatreds fueling "endless cycles of violence," a Greek tragedy with a built-in momentum that can't be stopped, and similar deterministic explanations. The authors believe that leaders, political groups, "human agents," make choices, conflict and history, and that includes compromise and peace as well. Almost all informed observers predicted "race war" in South Africa, yet it did not happen. How was it avoided, and couldn't Israelis and Palestinians avoid a similar catastrophe?

The comparison the authors make has two dimensions. If there is a fundamental similarity in the social structures and causes of both conflicts, then the successful management of the conflict and the reforms in South Africa might be a model of how to proceed with peace making and with constitutional changes in Palestine. But even if there do not exist compelling similarities, the shift from violence to peace building in South Africa might have some lessons for peace making between Israelis and Palestinians.

On the first dimension, the authors argue that "differences outweigh similarities."(19) In South Africa, the economy couldn't function without African labor; the Israeli economy has successfully substituted Asian and East European for a lower level of dependence on Palestinian workers. Thus there is no economic reason for integration. A common Christian religion with many overlapping religious groups active in peace and reconciliation united some of the adversaries in South Africa. In Palestine, Islam and Judaism both legitimize and mobilize hostile constituencies in the name of religion. For example, the orthodox religious parties, with 20 percent of the electorate, obstruct compromise over the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) settlements, and the control of holy places – in Jerusalem and elsewhere as in Hebron – are contentious issues blocking peace making. Religion feeds extremism in violence with the cult of jihad, martyrdom and suicide bombing justifying the targeting of Israeli civilians, and violent Israeli counterinsurgency producing lots of collateral (civilian) casualties and collective punishment for Palestinians, whereas both adversaries observed limits to violence in South Africa. Leadership within both adversaries was more unified in South Africa than among both Israelis and Palestinians, where factions constantly outbid one another on security concerns and on violence that undermines negotiations. External support for white South Africa was minimal: the African liberation movement captured world opinion and the regime had no external legitimacy. In contrast, despite on and off pressures upon Israel for peace making, the United States acts as an enabler for the Israeli hard liners' evasions about final status negotiations. Lastly, on the dimension of political culture, whereas " by the mid-1970s, Afrikaners had begun to recognize the impossibilities foisted on them by apartheid,"(83) and they developed moral qualms that disturbed their national psyche, in Israel, "collective guilt toward stateless Palestinians in the occupied territories is either totally absent or overwhelmed by a collective sense of victimhood through Palestinian suicidal attacks...