PSA Nakba Statement, 15 May 2026
The Nakba is not a memory but the lived, daily reality of the Palestinian people. What began in 1948 with the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians continues today in the bulldozing of homes in the West Bank, the starvation and bombing of Gaza, the torture of political prisoners, and the criminalization of legitimate resistance, including international activists like those of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Today, Palestinians are forced to endure an ongoing genocide while neighbours Lebanon and Iran suffer the devastation of an illegal war, all orchestrated by a rampantly racist Israeli regime. We, as South Africans, recognize this struggle of the oppressed, wherever they may be, because we have lived it.
The pass laws, the Bantustans, the racialized land dispossession, the military occupation of Black life, these are not unique to South Africa’s history. They are the very architecture of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people. From the separation wall snaking through the West Bank to the network of illegal settlements, from the separate roads and legal systems to the mass detention of children without trial, this is apartheid. We know it because we fought it. And we know that apartheid cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled.
In South Africa, the 1913 Natives Land Act stripped Black people of 87% of the land. In Palestine, the Nakba did the same. Today, settler militias armed and funded by the Israeli state are ethnically cleansing West Bank villages like Masafer Yatta, Ein Samiya, and many others, just as our own people were forced into reserves and “homelands.” The right of return for Palestinians is no different from the demand of millions of South Africans still dispossessed by apartheid.
South Africa’s apartheid regime tortured, detained, and murdered hundreds of political prisoners. It held Nelson Mandela for 27 years. It banned activists, jailed children, and denied due process. Today, Israel holds thousands of Palestinians, including women and children in administrative (military) detention without charge. They are tortured, raped, beaten, starved, and denied medical care.
More depraved is the fact that the perpetrators of these crimes against prisoners are celebrated by the racist Israeli society. While Israelis enjoy total impunity, Palestinians resisting occupation and ethnic cleansing continue to suffer gross human rights violations. This attack by the oppressive Israeli regime and its total disregard for international law has once again been demonstrated by their illegal assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla activists who sail to break the siege of Gaza. These conscientious volunteers have been attacked and arrested in international waters over a thousand kilometres from the shores of occupied Palestine and while denigrated by the hateful Zionist, for us they are the modern-day equivalent of those who spoke against apartheid South Africa in demonstrations across the globe, at the United Nations and African Union, to expose the crimes of the oppressor. It is for this reason that those living under oppression readily honour them as heroes for human rights.
On March 21, 1960, South African police shot 69 unarmed Black protesters in Sharpeville. Today, Israel kills dozens of Palestinians daily in Gaza, at checkpoints, in their homes, in hospitals, in so-called “safe zones.” The genocide on Gaza records over 100,000 dead, many buried in mass graves where bodies were bulldozed into the earth. Thousands lay unrecovered under the rubble of their homes and apartments which were indiscriminately bombed. The world powers did nothing then, just as they do nothing now. Israel continues to bomb and kill Palestinians with impunity, under the guise of a false ceasefire for no other reason except racial domination and because they have the backing of western powers who arm and shield them. Just as we remember Sharpeville, we will not forget Rafah and the countless massacres endured.
In 1976, South African students in Soweto revolted against Afrikaans as the imposed language of oppression. Today, Palestinian children in the West Bank are shot for throwing stones against occupation forces for resisting subjugation. Young people are arbitrarily arrested for posting on social media, for sharing their suffering, their reality and the attacks of settler thugs. And in Gaza, they are bombed in their beds. Yet, the Youth of Palestine, teach us courage. Courage that is now carried forward by students at Columbia, Cairo, the Sorbonne, Cape Town, Johannesburg and universities across the globe. They have challenged the campus authorities and pro-Israel bias, declaring not on our watch. The uprising of students, represent the new Soweto generation, standing firm for justice.
During our struggle the United States and Britain called our activist and leaders, including Mandela a terrorist. Israel was one of the few states that maintained an alliance with the apartheid regime, training security forces, sharing military technology, and legitimizing white minority rule. Today, these war mongering states together with many other European states continue to label the resistance as terrorism while supplying arms to apartheid Israel.
In contrast to these western powers that blindly defend apartheid, then and now, we also recall the valiant support of the global anti-apartheid movements, the unyielding boycott and sanctions campaigns led by the dock workers and trade unionists and the Cuban fighters in Angola that helped break our chains. Today, Palestinians call on the world to Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS). This is a strategy that we must support and actively promote until Palestine is free.
From Gaza to Jenin, from the prisoners’ cells to the decks of the Sumud boats, from the villages of the West Bank to the threatened skies over Lebanon and Iran, the Palestinian people are fighting the same fight we fought. They are fighting for land, for dignity, for the right to return, and for equality. More than this they are fighting against ethnic cleansing and erasure.
This struggle for Freedom, Equality and Justice is not restricted to the Palestinian people alone nor to a single geographic region. It is a cause for all people against the rising tide of fascism and unbridled capitalism. The genocide in Gaza is yet another warning of the Ongoing Nakba, calling on us to Globalise the Intifada.
We will not rest until apartheid falls in its entirety, until all political prisoners are freed, until all children can sleep without bombs, and until every Palestinian refugee returns home.
As we said then, we say now: An injury to one is an injury to all. Free Palestine. End the genocide.
ISSUED BY: Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) Johannesburg, South Africa, info@palestinesa.co.za
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