Palestinians have lost a friend and a supporter of their cause with the death of Nelson Mandela.

These sentiments were expressed by several leading Palestinians here and in the Occupied Territories on Friday.

Mandela, who first visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in 1999, was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause and a champion for Middle East peace. He often likened Israel’s behavior to that of the Apartheid regime.

“The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home among compatriots ... The long-standing fraternal bonds between our two liberation movements are now translating into the relations between two governments,” Mandela was quoted as saying.

Mandela also stood by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and regarded its leader Yasser Arafat as a comrade in arms.

“We lost a very good friend of the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people. Throughout his life, he has always been a supporter of Palestinian rights against the aggression and intimidation of the Israeli occupation,” Palestinian Consul General in Jeddah Emad Shaath told Arab News.

“We will never forget how he stood by our side when at times many others let us down and left us to fight our battle alone against the occupation,” he said.

“Mandela was a great leader who spent his life defending the rights of his own people against the apartheid regime that had oppressed the South African people for many years,” said Shaath.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said: “The Palestinian people will never forget his historic statement that the South African revolution will not have achieved its goals as long as the Palestinians are not free.”

He described Mandela as the “most courageous and important of those who supported us.”

Randa M. Dawoud, who works at the South African consulate in Jeddah, said: “His death has come as a shock to everybody in the world, more so because it was unexpected.”

She said that many in the Middle East did not know South Africa, but they knew Mandela.