MAX SALTMAN
Palestinian activists Muna el-Kurd (c) and Mohammed el-Kurd (r) after being released from an Israeli jail, on June 6, 2021. Israeli military forces arrested the twins due to their activism to prevent their family’s home in East Jerusalem from being forcibly seized by Jewish settlers. (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images).
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2021, p. 59
Waging Peace
International attention toward Palestine has receded following the May cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but the situation on the ground remains active. On June 3, the Arab Center Washington DC hosted a panel of experts via Zoom to dissect “the newly energized and unified activism by Palestinian youth.”
Amjad Iraqi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and editor at +972, noted the incendiary nature of recent Israeli actions. Israeli police made the mistake of “touching Jerusalem” by firing on worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque during the holiest night of Ramadan. Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah also centered the city in the current wave of demonstrations and activism. Jerusalem, Iraqi said, was “the beating heart” of the movement in May, even though mainstream news coverage focused on Gaza.
Iraqi further stated that the Palestinian general strike on May 18 was a unique show of unity. While strikes have taken place before, nearly every segment of Palestinian society took part in the one on May 18, including Palestinians living within Israel’s 1948 borders.
The strike was primarily led by younger activists who grew up amid the broken promises of the post-Oslo Accords era, Iraqi noted. Equality and coexistence, he said, were ideas “sold” to Palestinian youth but never delivered upon. “As time went by, that idea we were sold was totally erased,” Iraqi said.
As just one example, Iraqi pointed to openly discriminatory legislation passed by the Knesset in recent years, such as the nation-state law of 2018, which removed Arabic from its traditional place as the second national language of Israel, and defined the “right to national self-determination” as “unique to the Jewish people.”
Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer living in Ramallah, noted that the absence of foreign reporters due to the pandemic and the open nature of TikTok have allowed Palestinians to center themselves within the media narrative. “We all became civilian journalists,” Barghouti said. “[The pandemic] required us to reclaim our voice.”
Palestinian-Canadian attorney and activist Diana Buttu put the current moment in perspective. “I think there always has been youth engagement and mobilization throughout history in Palestine,” she said.
Buttu compared the May protests to another moment of widespread activism in Palestine: demonstrations surrounding the U.S. Embassy’s move to Jerusalem in 2018. “I happened to be in the protest in Jerusalem on the day that the embassy move took place,” recalled Buttu, “and then the following evening and the next day in Haifa. And those protests were massive, and…organized not by traditional political parties, but by the youth movements.”
When asked whether the movement could live up to this potential, all were careful to not make bold predictions.
“It’s very early to tell,” said Iraqi. “This energization of the movement is only a few weeks old.” He was encouraged, however, by the lengths to which Palestinians both within and outside the Green Line took to avoid buying Israeli products. This, Iraqi said, gave him hope for the possibilities of self-reliance in Palestine.
Likewise, Barghouti struck a hopeful note when speaking of the opening for a new generation of Palestinian activists. “Youth are daring to move toward concrete realities because these past 73 years were not just [defined by] the colonization we’ve been experiencing,” Barghouti said, “We’ve spent them imagining together. And right now, what we’re trying to do is bring that imagination to the forefront.”
—Max Saltman
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