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Home , Judaization of Jerusalem, Land Day, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan

Al-Shabaka Commentary June 2021

DEFYING FRAGMENTATION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF UNITY: A NEW PALESTINIAN UPRISING By Yara Hawari

The ongoing Palestinian uprising against the Israeli : A Catalyst for Unity settler-colonial regime in colonized did not begin in Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighborhood As in so many Palestinian communities, the residents of of Jerusalem whose residents face imminent ethnic Sheikh Jarrah have been facing ongoing and imminent [email protected] cleansing. While the threat of the expulsion of these expulsions and for decades. Indeed, eight families certainly catalyzed this mass popular in Sheikh Jarrah have long been engaged in mobilization, the ongoing uprising is ultimately an legal battles against the Israeli regime in an attempt to articulation of a shared Palestinian struggle in the wake forestall expulsion, which would serve ’s ultimate of over seven decades of Zionist settler-. goal of the total of Jerusalem.

These decades have been characterized by continuous In late April 2021, the Jerusalem District Court rejected forced displacement, land theft, incarceration, the appeals of residents of Sheikh Jarrah against what economic subjugation, and the brutalization of the courts refer to as the “eviction” of eight Palestinian Palestinian bodies. Palestinians have also been subjected families, ordering that they vacate their homes by to a deliberate process of fragmentation, not simply May 2, 2021. Refusing this order, the families threw geographically — into ghettoes, Bantustans, and their weight onto the “Save Sheikh Jarrah” grassroots refugee camps — but also socially and politically. campaign to protect the neighborhood from ethnic Yet the unity witnessed over the last two months as cleansing. The campaign, which has been recently Palestinians across colonized Palestine and beyond popularized through social media, has attracted mobilized in shared struggle with Sheikh Jarrah has both massive local participation and international challenged this fragmentation, to the surprise of both attention, not least because it encapsulates the the Israeli regime and the Palestinian political leadership Palestinian experience of dispossession. As a result, alike. Indeed, popular mobilization on this scale www.Al-Shabaka.org it has given momentum to other campaigns to “save” had not been seen for decades, not even during the neighborhoods across colonized Palestine from ethnic Trump administration, which oversaw the recognition cleansing and colonization, including , Beita, and of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the normalization . agreements between Israel and various Arab states, and the further acceleration of Zionist settler-colonial Over the last two months, Palestinians across colonized practices. Palestine have been protesting in shared struggle with Sheikh Jarrah, including Palestinians with Israeli Beyond mobilizing on the streets, Palestinians have citizenship in cities like Haifa, , and Lydd. These been using creative forms of resistance against protests and demonstrations were met with violent their subjugation. This includes the revitalization of repression from the Israeli regime, a reaction that is grassroots campaigns to save Palestinian neighborhoods neither unprecedented nor unexpected. Indeed, during in Jerusalem from destruction and ethnic cleansing, the , 13 Palestinian citizens were killed the disruption of the Israeli regime’s economy, and at protests by Israeli regime forces in the deadliest the continuous engagement of a globalized world with crackdown since Land Day 1976. clear messages demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians. 1 June 2021

Throughout this ongoing uprising, violence from regime The strike was organized in response to the attacks on forces has been accompanied by armed Israeli settler Gaza and the struggle on the streets of Jerusalem. It mobs attacking and lynching Palestinian citizens, and saw wide participation and was particularly important raiding and destroying Palestinian homes, vehicles, and for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who reiterated businesses. However, it was the several days of protests once again their connection to — and shared struggle at the al-Aqsa compound that dominated with — Palestinians in Gaza and Jerusalem. It was international media, particularly as this was the site of also, however, a tactic of effective disruption of the successful mass protests in 2017 against the electronic Israeli economy. At 20% of the population of Israel, barriers placed at the entrance to the compound. These Palestinians with Israeli citizenship constitute a large latest protests in mid-May were also met with violent part of the workforce; 24% of nurses and 50% of repression from Israeli security forces who stormed the pharmacists in Israel, for instance, are Palestinian. compound, injuring hundreds of Palestinian worshipers with rubber bullets, gas canisters, and stun grenades. The Israeli construction sector is also mostly made up As a result of this assault and the Israeli regime’s of Palestinians, predominantly from the , ongoing ethnic cleansing attempts in Palestinian but also Palestinian citizens of Israel. On the day of the strike, nearly all manual laborers participated, which “Palestinians are reclaiming a shared meant that the industry was completely put on hold narrative and struggle from for an entire day. Palestinian trade unions also came together ahead of the strike and called on international the River to the trade unions to stand in solidarity with them, and to Mediterranean Sea.” take action against Israeli oppression. This kind of action was demonstrated by dockworkers in the Italian Jerusalem, the government in Gaza retaliated port of Livorno, who refused to load Israeli weapons with rockets targeting the city. Israel responded with and explosives onto ships a few days ahead of the over ten days of heavy bombardment of Gaza, which strike, stating that: “The port of Livorno will not be an ultimately killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children. accomplice in the massacre of the Palestinian people.” Despite claims by the Israeli regime that it was only targeting Hamas military infrastructure, vital civilian Protests continued in the days following the strike, infrastructure, entire residential buildings, and even albeit on a smaller scale and with less media attention. media towers, were destroyed. UN Chief Nonetheless, the strike had lit a spark and the focus Michelle Bachelet has said that these bombardments on on economic oppression became a mobilizing theme. Gaza may amount to war crimes. Building off the success of the strike, several weeks later, a campaign to promote Palestinian economic Disrupting the Israeli Regime’s Economy purchasing power was announced. Dubbed “Palestine Economic Week,” the event stressed that, despite the As Gaza was under attack, grassroots mobilization economic chokehold that the Israeli regime has placed across the rest of colonized Palestine continued. on Palestinians, they still have collective purchasing On May 18, Palestinians called for a general strike in power. This rhetoric is particularly reminiscent of arguably one of the biggest shows of collective unity the First Intifada, in which popular measures like the in years. It was soon adopted by the High Follow-Up cooperative movement and the call to boycott Israeli Committee for and, later, by produce challenged economic subordination and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. But it dependence on the Israeli regime. was grassroots actors who took control of the narrative through various statements in and English calling The Zionist settler-colonial project has deliberately for widespread participation and international support: subjugated the Palestinian economy, which was shattered “Launched from Jerusalem and extending across the by the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, and the world, we call on your support in maintaining this subsequent occupation of Palestinian land. moment of unprecedented popular resistance,” one statement read. 2 June 2021 As the Zionist regime conquered most of the Around the time of the strike, a manifesto titled “The productive and agricultural sectors, it barred Palestinians Dignity and Hope Manifesto of the Unity Intifada” was from most areas of the new economy. This situation published online, laying out a rejection of this enforced expanded to the West Bank and Gaza following the fragmentation: 1967 war, which brought these territories under Israeli military occupation. We are one people and one society throughout Palestine. Zionist mobs forcefully displaced most of our people, stole our A series of “peace” agreements during the Oslo homes and demolished our villages. Zionism was determined Accords of the early 1990s brought Palestinians under to tear apart those who remained in Palestine, isolate us in further economic subjugation, effectively handing over sectional geographical areas, and transform us into different direct and indirect control of the Palestinian economy and dispersed societies, so that each group lives in a separate to the Israeli regime. The agreements also deepened the large prison. This is how Zionism controls us, disperses our social fragmentation of Palestinians in the West Bank political will and prevents us from a united struggle against the and Gaza. While some claimed the economic protocols racist settler colonial system throughout Palestine. would bring economic prosperity to all, in reality, they nurtured Palestinian capitalist cronyism, further The manifesto goes on to detail the various geographic entrenching the wealth gap and class divisions in society. fragments of the Palestinian people: the “Oslo Prison” (West Bank), the “citizenship prison” (lands occupied Palestine Economic Week encouraged various activities in 19481), the brutal siege in Gaza, the system of across colonized Palestine — from Haifa to Judaization in Jerusalem, and those in permanent exile. and beyond — to promote Palestinian local produce and The imposition of this colonized geography on products over Israeli ones that have monopolized the Palestine, characterized by concrete walls, checkpoints, market with their abundance and competitive prices. In gated settler communities, and wired fences, has left this way, Palestine Economic Week put forward a more Palestinians living in fragments separated and isolated holistic notion of colonial domination as intertwined from one another. As the manifesto notes, this has not with capitalism, wherein economic liberation is a key aspect of the broader national liberation struggle. “This uprising has reiterated that the people are the locus of Understanding the Unity in the Unity power through which Palestinian Intifada liberation must and will be Following the May 21 “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas, international media attention was diverted away happened inevitably or at random. Rather, this deliberate from the uprising, and the inevitable discussions on the policy of divide-and-conquer has been implemented by reconstruction of Gaza have since dominated the news the Zionist regime to undercut a united Palestinian anti- cycle. Despite the massive destruction and causalities colonial struggle. But Palestinians have not been passive. in Gaza, though, many Palestinians considered the outcome a victory for Hamas. Over the years, many grassroots groups have made efforts to disrupt the fragmentation, including various It is important to stress however, that the uprising, youth protest movements like the 2011 demand for which began before the bombing of Gaza, goes beyond political unity between the West Bank and Gaza, the Hamas and its victory narrative. As one Palestinian 2013 anti-Prawer demonstrations against the Israeli colleague in Gaza noted to this author: “This time, it policy to ethnically cleanse Bedouins in the Naqab, and felt different in Gaza. This time, we felt as though we the campaign to Lift the Sanctions imposed by the PA were not alone.”Indeed, given the mass mobilization on Gaza. across colonized Palestine and the revival of grassroots connections in the face of enforced fragmentation, this new uprising has been dubbed the “Unity Intifada.”

3 1. This is often described by international policymakers as “Israel proper” and held to be distinct from Israel’s colonization of the West Bank and Gaza. June 2021

More recently, Palestinian women established Tal’at, a In addition to the brutality in Gaza, Palestinians radical feminist movement that seeks — among many elsewhere throughout colonized Palestine have been things — to transcend this geographic division while subjected to brutal violence and arrests. In the last asserting that Palestinian liberation is a feminist struggle. few weeks, under the Israeli regime’s “law and order” This latest articulation of Palestinian unity follows from operation, thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel these continuous efforts to revitalize a shared Palestinian have been arrested, most of whom are young, working- struggle. class men. The Israeli regime uses these mass arrests as a form of collective punishment to intimidate and Yet much of the international discourse has failed to frighten Palestinian communities. recognize this. Indeed, the unfolding violence in the 1948 territories has often been misleadingly dubbed as In the West Bank, the PA is still committed to security intercommunal violence teetering on the edge of a civil coordination with the Israeli regime, and began arresting war between and , a framing that distinctly various activists involved in the protests. The arrest of separates Palestinian citizens of Israel from Palestinians political activists, especially those critical of the PA, in Gaza and Jerusalem. This assessment fails to describe is not new; it follows a pattern of political repression the reality of apartheid, in which Israeli Jews and in both the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, on June 24, Palestinian citizens of Israel live totally separate and 2021, PA security forces arrested and beat to death unequal lives. Nizar Banat, a well-known activist and critic of the regime. Since then, demonstrations have erupted across In fact, this inherits a decades-old tendency of referring the West Bank calling for an end to PA President to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship as “Israeli Arabs” ’ rule. The protests have been met with in an attempt to disconnect them from their Palestinian brute violence and repression, though this behavior is identity. At best, their situation is portraed in the unsurprising. The PA is notorious for abusing its power mainstream as the unexceptional case of a minority through this kind of violent intimidation. group facing discrimination by the Jewish majority, rather than as the indigenous survivors of the 1948 The -dominated PA in the West Bank has been ethnic cleansing who continue to resist settler-colonial totally sidelined throughout the uprising, particularly in erasure. The failure to recognize the latest protests the face of Hamas’s victory narrative. Yet this uprising within the 1948 territories as a distinct part of a greater, shows more than just the growing irrelevance of the united Palestinian uprising is especially remarkable PA and the struggle for legitimacy and power between considering their aesthetics; most demonstrations were the two dominant Palestinian parties. It has shown that characterized by a sea of Palestinian flags and the sound grassroots and decentralized leadership can develop of distinctly Palestinian chants. organically and outside of corrupt political institutions. It has also shown that Palestinians are hungry for Gaza, too, has slowly been disconnected from the unified mobilization. Palestinian struggle by these mainstream discourses, discussed as an entirely separate issue to that of the rest The momentum for the uprising continues, and the of colonized Palestine. More often than not, the Israeli feeling of unity is building despite the decreased media regime’s continuous bombardment is explained away as and international attention. Something has indeed a war between Israel and Hamas, a distorted narrative changed: Palestinians are reclaiming a shared narrative that deliberately detracts from the fact that Gaza is, and struggle from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean indeed, the linchpin of the Palestinian struggle, as Tareq Sea. In doing so, they are recognizing that they face Baconi argues. one single regime of oppression, even if it manifests in different ways throughout the fragmented Palestinian Unity Against all Odds communities. Ultimately, just as the ones before it, this uprising has reiterated that the people are the locus of While the range of mobilization and the scope of power through which Palestinian liberation must and popular participation witnessed over the last few weeks will be achieved. have been impressive, the cost of this uprising has been, and continues to be, high. 4 June 2021

Yara Hawari is the Senior Analyst of Al- Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network is Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the organization whose mission is to educate and foster University of Exeter, where she taught various public debate on Palestinian human rights and self- undergraduate courses and continues to be an determination within the framework of international honorary research fellow. In addition to her law. Al-Shabaka policy briefs may be reproduced with academic work, which focused on indigenous due attribution to Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy studies and oral history, she is a frequent political Network. For more information visit www.al-shabaka. commentator writing for various media outlets org or contact us by email: [email protected]. including , Foreign Policy, and English. Al-Shabaka materials may be circulated with due attribution to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. The opinion of individual members of Al- Shabaka’s policy network do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization as a whole.

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