Israeli forces launched a military offensive in the West Bank last month to try to crush Palestinian militants, Hamas, which it blamed for a series of suicide attacks that have killed dozens of Israelis. About 2000 people, mostly Palestinians, have died in the conflict in Gaza.
Speaking in Pretoria, South Africa, Mbeki asked the South African public to mobilize against Israel so that it "does pay a price for the position that it is taking"
In an address to students at the University of South Africa, Mbeki rejected calls for the government to recall its ambassador to Tel Aviv, saying South Africa needed to “engage” with Israel to find a “just solution” to the conflict.
He added: “It is not the responsibility of government to mobilise people. We must mobilise ourselves.”
Mbeki had last week also said that South Africa's own experience, in which tens of thousands of people died in the apartheid struggle, had shown that an oppressed people fought because they had "nothing to lose but their servitude", not because they were told to fight.
His words:"The rulers of Israel are repeating the costly mistakes made by the captains of apartheid in our country”
"Everything that has happened in the Palestinian territories in almost two years says, in action, that the Palestinians and especially the youth are ready to march against tanks and armoured cars because it is no longer possible for them to live as a dispossessed people.
"The attempt to search and destroy so-called agitators and terrorists in their midst, in the belief that these are the instigators of the rebellion, without whom the rebellion would cease, is to live in worse than a fool's paradise”
Most South Africans have historically supported the Palestinians and they are believed to include the late Nelson Mandela and Nobel peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
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