The horrific images of murder, hostage-taking, and destruction in Israel and Palestine bear witness to an inhuman brutality that deeply disturbs us. We are shocked by the attacks of Hamas on innocent civilians in Israel. We are also shocked by the closure and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which primarily affects a defenceless civilian population. More death, suffering, and a humanitarian catastrophe are the consequences.

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation mourns all the victims of the massacres, bombings, and acts of violence. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims.

The renewed escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine is an expression of the political failure to find a just and lasting peace solution to the conflict that has lasted for decades. This political failure is also a failure of the international community. If the escalation of violence cannot be contained quickly, the conflict threatens to become internationalized with unforeseeable consequences.

Together with our colleagues in the offices in Tel Aviv and Ramallah as well as numerous partner organizations, we have camnpaigned on the ground for years for an end to the logic of violence. The people on both sides of the barriers and checkpoints need peace, social justice, full democratic participation, equal rights, and solidarity. For this to happen, an end to Israel’s occupation policy, which violates international law, and the construction of settlements in the West Bank is just as indispensable as the strengthening of a secular and democratic civil society, towards which we work in both Israel and Palestine.

The first formal talks between the ANC and the apartheid state began in the weeks that followed Mandela’s release, taking the form of a series of personal meetings between South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk and Mandela. This sent a clear signal that much of the early negotiations would be dominated by personalized engagement between the two “big men”, as opposed to a more democratic, collective process — a trend that continued until a final political agreement was reached over three years later.

Even if it did not appear as such at the time, the personalized nature of the negotiations was hugely important for two reasons: it cemented Mandela’s almost supernatural status outside and beyond the democratic collective of the ANC and its allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Communist Party (SACP), and laid the foundations for what were later to become a series of secret negotiations around post-apartheid economic policy involving a select group of ANC leaders and representatives of domestic and foreign capital.

Around the same time, Mandela set off on the first of many foreign trips, during which, as the political and moral symbol of South African’s liberation struggle, he was feted as a hero wherever he went and fawned over by heads of state. While this was to be expected given Mandela’s personal sacrifices and disarming humility, it opened up organizational and ideological space for him to walk back long-held and popular ANC policies such as nationalizing the mines, the financial institutions, and the commanding heights of the economy. It also facilitated his hypocritical and unapologetic acceptance of large amounts of funding for the ANC from the likes of the Suharto military dictatorship in Indonesia and the autocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia.