Palestinians remember Mandela as an inspiration

Palestinians mourned Nelson Mandela as their most loyal champion, lighting candles in special prayer services today and holding his picture like a shield in confrontations with Israeli troops.
But the death of the South African leader who famously said that "our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians" also reminded many here of how far they are from establishing a state of their own.
US-mediated talks between Israelis and Palestinians on the terms of such a state have reached their mid-way point and appear bogged down.
"I don't think our leaders or the Israeli leaders or the American leaders will make peace here," Wael Shihadeh, 52, said today while chopping eggplants in the kitchen of a Ramallah restaurant. Palestinians lack a leader of Mandela's caliber, he said.

Palestinian activists have compared Mandela's struggle against apartheid to theirs against Israeli occupation a parallel Israel rejects and some increasingly look to South Africa for help in pressure campaigns against Israel.
Many South Africans also equate the Israeli treatment of Palestinians with their former apartheid regime's abuse of blacks.

Last year, South Africa's government decided that goods imported from Israeli West Bank settlements cannot not be labeled "product of Israel." In 2011, the University of Johannesburg became the world's first to impose an academic boycott on Israel.
In October, veteran anti-apartheid leader Ahmed Kathrada, who was convicted alongside Mandela in 1964, launched a campaign from Mandela's former prison cell for Marwan Barghouti. The Palestinian uprising leader was jailed 11 years ago and is serving five life terms after being convicted of a role in the uprising-related killings of four Israelis and a Greek monk.

Asked about the use of violence by the Palestinians, Kathrada noted that Mandela's African National Congress also turned to it at one point.
"When everything failed, every peaceful method failed, we also had to resort to armed struggle, realizing that the main struggle will be where masses of people were involved," the 84-year-old said by phone from South Africa.