Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis And Palestinians

By Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley

The ongoing violence, despair and paralysis among Israelis and Palestinians resemble the gloomy period in South Africa during the late 1980s. Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley show that these analogies with South Africa can be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for two purposes: to showcase South Africa as an inspiring model for a negotiated settlement and to label Israel a "colonial settler state" that should be confronted with strategies (sanctions, boycotts) similar to those applied against the apartheid regime. Because of the different historical and socio-political contexts, both assumptions are problematic. Whereas peacemaking resulted in an inclusive democracy in South Africa, the favored solution for Israel and the West Bank is territorial separation into two states. Adam and Moodley speculate on what would have happened in the Middle East had there been what they call "a Palestinian Mandela" providing unifying moral and strategic leadership in the ethnic conflict. A timely, relevant look at the issues of a polarized struggle, Seeking Mandela is an original comparison of South Africa and Israel, as well as an important critique on the nature of comparative politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2005
• ISBN: 9781592133994

Heribert Adam

Heribert Adam is Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His books include Modernizing Racial Domination (California, 1971) and also with Kogila Moodley, South Africa Without Apartheid (California, 1986). Kogila Moodley is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is editor and co-author of Race Relations and Multicultural Education (1984).

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