The Palestinian Resistance Isn’t a Monolith
As Palestinians reckon with the genocide being inflicted on them and their prospects for national liberation, it does them a disservice to flatten their political diversity and complex ongoing debates.
Bashir Abu-Manneh is head of classics, English, and history at the University of Kent and a Jacobin contributing editor.
As Palestinians reckon with the genocide being inflicted on them and their prospects for national liberation, it does them a disservice to flatten their political diversity and complex ongoing debates.
It is farcical for US politicians to suggest that Israel is trying to avoid killing civilians in Gaza. Mass destruction and intentional killing is an integral part of the Israeli campaign, intended to break Palestinian resistance to occupation and apartheid.
Israel is meting out lethal collective punishment in Gaza and floating plans of ethnic cleansing to try to restore its security. But peace will not be won without democracy for Palestinians.
Permanent occupation by Israel and the subjugation of Palestinians in a land that is nearly half Palestinian will never bring stability and security.
Israel’s war on Gaza has already resulted in a horrendous death toll, yet Western politicians still refuse to call for a cease-fire. We need mass popular pressure in the US and Europe against the killing and the threat of forced population transfer from Gaza.
Israel has long preferred force to peace, segregation to equality. Its brutal air strikes on Gaza are a continuation of that policy — and will do nothing to bring peace and dignity to civilians on both sides.
The history of the Palestinian novel cannot be separated from the broader political context of the struggle for liberation. As the emancipatory horizon in Palestine has diminished since the early 1980s, literature has shared in the sense of defeat.
Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth captures the revolutionary possibilities of decolonization. Yet the book has been marred by a misreading that ignores Fanon’s socialism and class analysis, and turns the great thinker into a prophet of violence.
By invoking self-defense, Israel changes the conversation from its colonial crimes against the Palestinians to the injuries it has itself incurred as a result.
Israel and its supporters are ramping up efforts to outlaw solidarity with Palestinians in the name of combating antisemitism. But these authoritarian maneuvers can’t hide the fact that Israel is losing the battle for public opinion over its denial of Palestinian rights.
Twenty years ago today, the second Palestinian intifada began in response to a provocation from Israel’s Ariel Sharon after the collapse of US-sponsored peace talks. The brutal Israeli response inaugurated a war on Palestinian society that continues to this day.
Haneen Zoabi is a Palestinian politician in Israel. In an interview, she explains why Palestinian citizens in Israel must connect their struggles to ending the Israeli occupation and the siege of Gaza, and fighting for the right of return and a state for all of the country’s citizens.
Palestinians in Israel are not the kingmakers of Zionist politics. The Joint List leadership should uphold their just national cause and actively organize against their social exclusion. They shouldn’t support coalition governments that oppose it.
Despite Israel’s best efforts, the Palestinians have not disappeared.
Nonviolent struggle against violent occupiers is politically effective. That’s why Israel fears and represses it.
The new play “Oslo” disguises colonial domination as savvy conflict resolution.
Rally against US imperial intervention, but remember Assad’s crimes and be in solidarity with his victims.
Recent events have shown how untenable Israel’s dream of “occupation with security” is.
Supporting Palestinian liberation requires just one thing: upholding the right to self-determination.
Israel and its allies cannot hold back the struggle for democracy, human rights, and self-determination for much longer.