Zohran Mamdani to Kristen Welker (Meet the Press, 6/29/25): “Freedom and justice and safety are things that, to have meaning, have to be applied to all people, and that includes Israelis and Palestinians as well.”

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker (6/29/25) showed courage by interviewing Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary for New York, after he’d been widely attacked by corporate media. But unfortunately, she fell into a trap that has been set repeatedly in recent months to smear Mamdani. She asked him to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” claiming—without offering evidence—that the term “intifada” refers to “violence against Jews.”

I doubt Welker is an Arabic linguist. But as a Palestinian journalist who covered the Intifada and helped introduce the term to Western media, I am appalled by this misrepresentation. Not only is the translation wrong, it’s an insult to the thousands of New York Jews who voted for Mamdani.

For the record, intifada translates to “shake off.” Palestinians used the term to describe their popular resistance against an Israeli occupation of their land that had no end in sight. It emerged amid a steady expansion of illegal settlements, which were systematically turning the occupied territories into a Swiss cheese–like landscape, precisely designed to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

As someone who reported on the Intifada and explained its meaning to international audiences, I can say unequivocally: Intifada was used by Palestinian activists to describe a civil resistance movement rooted in dignity and national self-determination.

Metaphor for liberation

The Arabic-language version of the website of the US Holocaust Museum translated the Warsaw Ghetto “Uprising” as “Intifada”—until blogger Juan Cole (5/1/24) pointed this out. (Creative Commons photo: Phil Kalina.)

Let’s begin with the word’s literal meaning. As noted, in Arabic, intifada simply means “shaking off.” Since many—including Jewish leaders, Christian Zionists and GOP officials—have distorted the peaceful intentions behind the word, I turned to a source that might resonate more clearly with people of faith: the Bible.

In the Arabic version of the Old Testament, the word intifada appears three times, both as a noun and a verb. Looking at its English equivalents in the New International Version (though other translations are similar) offers enlightening context:

• Judges 16:20: “Samson awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.’”
• Isaiah 52:2: “Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.”
• Psalm 109:23: “I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.”

Each of these examples uses the term intifada—shaking off oppression, captivity or anguish—as a metaphor for liberation, not violence.

While Google Translate and other modern tools often render intifada as “popular uprising,” its literal meaning—“to shake off”—captures the spirit with which Palestinians adopted the term. When they launched the first Intifada in 1987—after 20 years under a foreign military occupation—it was an expression of a desire to wake up, rise and throw off the chains of subjugation. It is not inherently antisemitic, nor does it refer by default to terrorism or violence.

While accompanying international journalists covering the protests, I often discussed this with them. In Jerusalem, I explained to LA Times bureau chief Dan Fisher, the  Washington Post’s Glenn Frankel and the New York Times’ John Kifner what Palestinians meant by the word. I told them that throughout Palestinian patriotic literature and slogans, two distinctions were always made: The Intifada was a protest against the Israeli occupation, not against Jews or the existence of Israel, and that the ultimate goal was to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Fisher, Frankel and Kifner included these clarifications in their reports, helping the Arabic term intifada enter the global lexicon with its intended meaning.

‘Bringing terror to the streets of America’

To define “intifada,” Fox News (5/23/25) brought on Douglas Murray, who calls Islam an “infection” and declares that “all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”

But today, as protests against Israel’s devastating war on Gaza mount, the word is being twisted. When Rep. Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT in December 2023 about pro-Palestinian chants invoking “intifada,” she equated the term with “genocide of Jews.”

The university presidents faltered. They should have said clearly: Genocide against Jews—or any people—is abhorrent. But intifada is not synonymous with genocide. To equate a call to end the Israeli military occupation with a call for genocide or violence against Jews is a gross distortion—a bizarre reversal that paints the victims as aggressors.

And yet this distortion persists. [Gillibrand] Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labeled Mamdani antisemitic. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt—who likely doesn’t speak Arabic—claimed on X that intifada is “explicit incitement to violence.” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) added that the word is “well understood to refer to the violent terror attacks.” Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told WNYC public radio (6/26/25), “The global intifada is a statement that means destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.”

Media echoed the politicians’ misrepresentations of intifada. “Many Jews see it as a call to violence against Israeli civilians,” ABC (6/29/25) reported. “Many Jews consider it a call to violence, a nod to deadly attacks on civilians in Israel by Palestinians in uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s,” wrote the New York Times (6/25/25). Of course, “many Jews” do not hear the word that way—but the more important question is, what is the accurate understanding of the word as used by Palestinians?

Fox News (5/23/25) didn’t mince words: “‘Intifada’ Means Bringing Terror to the Streets of America,” it said in a headline, citing notorious Islamophobe Douglas Murray. To the New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (7/1/25), “What Intifada Really Means” is “giving moral comfort to people who deliberately murder innocent Jews.”

Even liberal podcast host Donny Deutsch repeated the same claim while speaking on MSNBC (Morning Joe, 6/30/25):

I’m outraged that we have a candidate for mayor of New York, Mr. Mamdani, that cannot walk back or cannot condemn the words “globalize the intifada” and his nuance of, “Well, it means different things for different people.” Well, let me tell you what it means to a Jew—it means violence.

Brutal suppression of protest

The First Intifada in the Gaza Strip, December 21, 1987 (photo: Efi Sharir).

The first Intifada embraced principles of nonviolent resistance championed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. My cousin, Mubarak Awad, who established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, encouraged boycotts of Israeli products, labor strikes and grassroots economic development in preparation for statehood. He translated, printed and distributed Arabic translations of Gene Sharp’s writings on nonviolence throughout the occupied territories. Mubarak was deported on the eve of the Intifada by then–Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

After Shamir came Yitzhak Rabin, who called publicly to “break the bones” of Palestinian stone throwers. During the first Intifada, Israeli soldiers and settlers responded to the nonfatal protests with extreme violence. In the first phase of the uprising—a little more than a year—332 Palestinians were killed, along with 12 Israelis (Middle East Monitor, 12/8/16).

This brutality did not suppress the protests, but merely escalated the violence: At the end of six years, more than 1,500 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, and 400 Israelis—18 of whom were children—were dead, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

The same pattern recurred in the second Intifada: Only after the initial protests were met with massively disproportionate force did Palestinians, led by Hamas, turn to suicide bombing as a desperation tactic (Al Jazeera, 9/28/20). To treat the response to the brutal suppression of protest as though it represented the essential nature of intifada is intellectually lazy and politically cynical.

Zohran Mamdani never used the words “global intifada.” But he refused to denounce calls for the world to wake up and speak out against atrocities in Gaza. His victory in the Democratic primary—supported in part by Jewish New Yorkers—shows he is neither antisemitic nor willing to renounce an Arabic word that has been hijacked and misused by people who would rather Palestinians remain silent and submissive under occupation.

Research assistance: Shirlynn Chan

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Daoud Kuttab.

Sparked by an incident at the Erez Crossing in Gaza where an Israeli military vehicle crashed into a line of Palestinian civilian vehicles, the 1st Intifada quickly spread throughout Gaza and to the West Bank.

For six years, Palestinians, rallied, rioted, withheld taxes and staged armed attacks. While leadership of the Intifada was largely based within Neighbourhood Councils, the corrupt PLO used it as a bargaining chip for peace talks with Israel. While calls of the Intifada were for the total withdrawal of Israel from all Palestinian lands the PLO called for a two-state solution including the formation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. The two-state solution would never come to fruition and the brutality of Israeli occupation has continued to this day.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

“CPJ is deeply alarmed by the British counter-terrorism police raid on journalist Asa Winstanley’s home and the disturbing pattern of weaponizing counter-terrorism laws against reporters,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “These actions have a chilling effect on journalism and public service reporting in the United Kingdom. Authorities must immediately end this practice and return all devices seized back to Winstanley. Instead of endangering the confidentiality of journalistic sources, authorities should implement safeguards to prevent the unlawful investigation of journalists and ensure they can do their work without interference.”

Officers with the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command arrived around 6 a.m. and served Winstanley, associate editor at The Electronic Intifada news site, with a warrant authorizing them to seize his electronic devices. The operation cited potential offenses under sections 1 (Encouragement of Terrorism) and 2 (Dissemination of Terrorist Publications) of the United Kingdom’s 2006 Terrorism Act, which carry a maximum sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment.

Earlier in August, police detained freelance journalist Richard Medhurst for 24 hours on similar offense, searching and questioning him at Heathrow Airport, and seizing his electronic devices. He told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency that he believes he was held due to his reporting on Palestinians. 

CPJ emailed the Metropolitan Police Service’s press department requesting comment on the raid but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

NYU, April 23, 2004. Photo by Hany Osman.

The mass protests at dozens of US universities cannot be reduced to a stifling and misleading conversation about antisemitism.

Thousands of American students across the country are not protesting, risking their own futures and very safety, because of some pathological hate for the Jewish people. They are doing so in a complete rejection of, and justifiable outrage over the mass killing carried out by the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.

They are angry because the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7, is fully funded and backed by the US government.

These mass protests began at the University of Columbia on April 17 before covering all of US geography, from New York to Texas and from North Carolina to California.

The protests are being compared, in terms of their nature and intensity, to the anti-war protests in the US against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s.

While the comparison is apt, it is critical to note the ethnic diversity and social inclusiveness in the current protests. On many campuses, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Native American and White students are standing shoulder to shoulder with their Palestinian peers in a unified stance against the war.

None of them is motivated by fear that they could be drafted to fight in Gaza, as was, indeed, the case for many American students during the Vietnam War era. Instead, they are united around a clear set of priorities: ending the war, ending US support of Israel, ending their universities’ direct investment in Israel and the recognition of their right to protest. This is not idealism, but humanity at its finest moments.

Despite mass arrests, starting in Columbia, and the direct violence against peaceful protesters everywhere, the movement has only grown stronger.

On the other side, US politicians, starting with President Joe Biden, accused the protesters of anti-Semitism, without engaging with any of their reasonable, and globally-supported demands.

Once again, the Democratic and Republican establishments stood together in blind support for Israel.

Biden condemned the “antisemitic protests” describing them as “reprehensible and dangerous”.

A few days later, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited the university under tight security, using language that is hardly suitable for a country which claims to embrace democracy, respect freedom of expression and right of assembly.

“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses,” he said, adding: “I am here today joining my colleagues, and calling on President (Minouche) Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”

Shafik, however, was already on board, as she was the one who had called for the New York Police Department to crack down on the protesters, falsely accusing them of anti-Semitism.

US mainstream media has helped contribute to the confusion and misinformation regarding the reasons behind the protests.

The Wall Street Journal, once more, allowed writers such as Steven Stalinsky to smear young justice activists for daring to criticize Israel’s horrendous genocide in Gaza.

“Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” he alleged, thus, once more taking a critical conversation about US support of genocide into bizarre and unsubstantiated directions.

US establishment writers may wish to continue to fool themselves and their readers, but the truth is that neither Hezbollah or Hamas ‘recruiters’ are active in Ivy League US universities, where young people are often groomed to become leaders in government and large corporations.

All such distractions are meant to avoid the undeniable shift in American society, one that promises a long-term paradigm shift in popular views of Israel and Palestine.

For years prior to the current war, Americans have been changing their opinions on Israel, and their country’s so-called ‘special relationship‘ with Tel Aviv.

Young Democrats have led the trend, which can also be observed among independents and, to some extent, young Republicans.

A statement that asserts that “sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis”, would have been unthinkable in the past. But it is the new normal, and latest opinion polls regarding the subject, along with Biden’s dwindling approval ratings, continue to attest to this fact.

The older generations of American politicians, who have built and sustained careers based on their unconditional support for Israel, are overwhelmed by the new reality. Their language is confused and riddled with falsehoods. Yet, they are willing to go as far as defaming a whole generation of their own people – the future leaders of America – to satisfy the demands of the Israeli government.

In a televised statement on April 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” who “have taken over leading universities”, alleging that the peaceful protesters are calling “for the annihilation of Israel”. His words should have outraged all Americans, regardless of their politics and ideology. Instead, more US politicians began parroting Netanyahu’s words.

But political opportunism shall generate a blowback effect, not just in the distant future, but in the coming weeks and months, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections.

Millions of Americans are clearly fed up, with war, with their government’s allegiance to a foreign country, to militarism, to police violence, to the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in the US and more.

Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring that ‘enough is enough’. They are doing more than chanting, and rising in unison, demanding answers, moral and legal accountability and an immediate end to the war.

Now that the US government has taken no action, in fact continues to feed the Israeli war machine in its onslaught against millions of Palestinians, these brave students are acting themselves. This is certainly an awe-inspiring, watershed moment in the history of the United States.

The post American Intifada for Gaza: What Should We Expect?  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Three and a half hours. Three and a half hours from Jenin to Tul Karm. In three and a half hours you can fly to Rome, or drive to Eilat. But in the occupied West Bank today you’re barely able to drive between two nearby cities.

That’s the time it took us this week to travel from Jenin to Tul Karm, 35 kilometers. At the end of every Palestinian road on the West Bank there is a locked iron gate since the war in Gaza started. Waze instructs you to travel on these roads, but even this clever app doesn’t know there’s a locked gate at the end of every one.

If there isn’t a locked gate, there’s a “breathing” roadblock. If there isn’t a breathing roadblock, there’s a strangling roadblock.

• READ MORE: When Yemen does it it’s ‘terrorism’, when the US does it it’s ‘the rules-based order’
• Other War on Gaza and Palestine reports

Near the Ottoman railway station in Sebastia, reserve soldiers stop Palestinians from taking even that remote gravel path. Near Shavei Shomron, soldiers permit traveling from south to north, but not in the opposite direction.

Why? Because.

The soldiers at the next roadblock are taking selfies, and all the cars wait for them to finish photographing themselves so they can receive the dismissive, patronising hand gesture that will allow them to pass, while the traffic jam backs up on the road.

The Einav roadblock we passed through in the morning was closed to traffic in the afternoon by soldiers. It’s impossible to know anything. The Hawara roadblock is shut.

Like drugged coackroaches in bottle
The exit from Shufa is closed. So are most of the exit routes from the villages to the main roads. That’s how we traveled this week, like drugged cockroaches in a bottle, three and a half hours from Jenin to Tul Karm, to reach Road 557 and return to Israel.

And this is the Palestinians’ life in the West Bank these days.

When evening fell, thousands of cars whose drivers simply stopped by the wayside in abjection lined the roads in the West Bank. They stood helpless and silent. You have to see the fear in their eyes when they manage to approach the roadblock; any wrong move could lead to their death. It can make you explode.

It can make you explode that Israel is now doing everything to drive the West Bank to another intifada. It won’t be easy. The West Bank has neither the leadership nor the fighting spirit of the second intifada, but how can one not explode?

Some 150,000 laborers who worked in Israel have been out of work for three months. You can also explode from the army’s hypocrisy. Its commanders are warning that we must enable laborers to go to work, but the IDF will be the main culprit for the Palestinian uprising if it breaks out.

The problem is not merely economic. Under the guise of the war and with the extreme rightist government’s assistance, the IDF has changed its conduct in the occupied territories in a dangerous way — it wants Gaza in the West Bank.

The settlers want Gaza in the West Bank so they can drive out as many Palestinians as possible, and the army backs them up.

344 Palestinians killed
According to UN figures, since October 7, 344 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, 88 of them children. Eight or nine of them were killed by settlers. At the same time, five Israelis were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, four of them by security forces.

The reason is that the IDF has in recent months started firing from the air to kill in the West Bank, like in Gaza.

On January 7, for example, the army killed seven youngsters who were standing on a traffic island near Jenin, after one of them apparently threw an explosive charge at a jeep and missed.

It was a massacre. The seven youngsters were members of one family, four brothers, two more brothers and a cousin. That doesn’t interest Israel.

Now the IDF is moving forces from Gaza to the West Bank. The Duvdevan undercover unit is already there, the Kfir Brigade is on its way. They’ll return to the West Bank stoked with the indiscriminate killing in Gaza and will want to continue the great work there as well.

Israel wants an intifada. Maybe it will even get one. It should just not feign surprise when this happens.

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author who writes for Hareetz on human rights and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Image by CHUTTERSNAP.

Motivated by the Zionist spokesperson on CNN—who declared that anyone attending a pro-Palestinian march, following the sudden, spectacular resurgence of the Intifada, would be standing with the Hamas terrorists—I took the subway to Cambridge City Hall Monday, to attend a spirited rally and march. On Tuesday I attended a solemn candlelight vigil on the Tufts campus, sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine. On campuses around the country, Palestinian students and their allies rallied, once again, in defense of the resistance movement, the Intifada, the movement to “shake off” the oppressive settler-state built on their suffering.

The news media that continues to shape public awareness of the relevant issues (Hamas’ strikes inside of Israel, the display of Zionist vulnerability, charges of Iranian involvement, implications for the de facto emergent Israeli-Saudi alliance, etc.) by reports, utterly innocent of basic historical consciousness, of savage and inexplicable actions by Hamas fighters. They begin the narrative in the middle, and the premise that “nothing can justify” such inexplicable actions, when in fact those actions can only be explained as the result of rage based on abuses the media can’t cover. The mere exposure of daily apartheid conditions in Israel, to say nothing of a thorough critique of Zionism as a racist ideology, results in charges of antisemitism—from these conscious proponents of historical falsification.

I’m talking about those who say that 700,000 Palestinians were NOT forced out by Zionist terror in 1948, creating an ongoing catastrophe for the Palestinian people; who say that 200 villagers were NOT slaughtered indiscriminately by Zionist Irgun terrorists on April 2, 1948 in Deir Yassin overlooking Jerusalem; or that massacres of civilians did NOT occur in Ilabun, Sa’as’a, Dawaymiya, and Safsaf. Or that the refugees now in the millions do NOT have the right to return to their homeland; or that Zionism is NOT a form of racism, but merely an inoffensive “Jewish nationalism.”

Or that Israel is NOT a settler-state, whose existence was midwifed by Anglo-U.S. imperialism, but a homecoming of a people so tragically scattered in the ancient Diaspora, and abused wherever they roamed for 2000 years that they (1) simply had, after the Holocaust, to have a state of their own; (2) had to settle in Palestine, supposing it to be their biblical-ancestral homeland; and (3) were entitled to live in Palestine because of their religious claim. (The latter of course involves a supreme being, Yahweh, who aside from creating all that exists, favors the descendants of a legendary figure named Abraham more than other humans, and has granted them, in perpetuity, the land of Israel, such that no further discussion of the matter is necessary. This religious claim, fortunately for the Zionists, has a huge Christian following in this country.) This is more than falsification; it’s falsification that claims immunity from challenge, precisely because it’s religious: I have the right to believe God gave the land to the Jews.

(Yes. And the Arabs have the right to believe that Zionists from Europe took it from their grandparents. Between equal rights force decides. But as the showdown progresses, we can at least try to clarify its historical roots.)

For many knee-jerk, habitual Israel supporters, if there is to be discussion, it must focus on the Bible, central source of all truth, which very plainly gives God’s Chosen People the right to commit mass slaughter as directed by Him. The Israelite conquest of Canaan, as recorded in the Bible, is regarded as largely fantasy by serious scholars. But it is taken seriously by many religious believers. What did Yahweh command the Israelites, as they set about seizing lands he’s assigned to them? “In the cities of the nations your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deuteronomy 20:16). In the Book of Joshua, Yahweh causes the walls of Jericho to collapse, and then Joshua’s forces attack, enforcing “the curse of destruction on everyone in the city: men and women, young and old, including the oxen, the sheep and the donkeys, slaughtering them all” (Joshua 6:21). This Hebrew term herem (“the curse of destruction”) meant killing all enemy human beings (and animals) in the course of war. Should the Israelis nuke Gaza, it could thus be justified religiously, at least to the satisfaction of some vile people.

The Bible also has Yahweh tell Abraham, progenitor of the Jewish people: “I will make you into a great nation,  and I will bless you; I will make your name great,  and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:23). That was good enough to determine Sarah Palin’s stance on Israel.

It also seems to provide the most irreligious of cable news directors their cue as they assiduously avoid identifying the roots of the Palestinian problem. The U.S. supports Israel, and always has, and always will, not because it fears God’s curse for doing otherwise, but because of …shared values! That would mean “Judeo-Christian values” that somehow are supposed to have been in Jefferson’s head when he authored the Declaration of Independence. Anyway since U.S. democracy must be influenced somehow by the Bible, one can always argue that there’s a special affinity between democratic Americans and democratic Israelis. And when a TV anchor reminds the audience “Israel is one of America’s closest allies” most are likely to tuck away the datum without asking why or even if this is so. For the U.S. news media to do otherwise would mean, if not incurring the bogus curse, questioning the moral authority of the Jewish state—indeed, exposing it as vicious.

They know what the “human rights situation” looks like in Palestine. They know the Israelis treat Gaza like the Spartans did the helots; every so often they bomb Gaza, a vast outdoor concentration camp, as though for sport. The U.S. mainstream media timidly questions, sometimes, the Israel use of “disproportionate force.” But that is the Israelis’ forte—they use it as a rule, to better terrify.

They know the Israelis always plead victimization, and that it’s official U.S. doctrine to present them as victims, while depicting the Palestinians as driven by inexplicable hate. They don’t see it as their task to actually explain and put that hatred and rage into context.

I watched a full hour of CNN yesterday, just to see how the station apportioned Jake Tapper’s time. Five minutes on the bombardment of Ashkelon, with no context. Five more on the plight of the people in Gaza; Tapper, stern and sour-faced as usual, interviewed a Palestinian U.S. national trying to leave her current hell under Israeli bombardment and return to the U.S. with three children. Tapper, seeming to recognize some injustice here, vows to “do everything possible” to help her get the attention of the U.S. State Department. So much for balance, and I’ve seen nothing similar since. Then a segment on Israeli forces’ “efforts to retake towns” around Gaza, and another on the hostages, and then an analyst tells us this is the worst day for Israel since the Holocaust (expect to hear this more). The hour was up. That was the news.

The syrupy sentimentalism with which cable news wraps all this stuff (endless airspace devoted to emoting relatives, telling us how terrified they are, telling us how they’re desperate for news, how they just don’t see how this can be happening, how people can be so cruel— telling us nothing about why this is happening) reminds me of the days after 9-11. What’s being called “Israel’s 9-11” allows for a replay of that time here too, a time in which somber music and shattering images, and animated ambient U.S. flags, produced a national climate of outraged injury and willful historical denial, justifying a response to al-Qaeda attacks by murderous wars on the Afghan and Iraqi peoples. Everything so neat and clear. Good versus equal. You’re for us or against us! barked Bush, echoing Jesus (Matt 12;30) while concocting lies to justify the “Shock and Awe” bombing that began the Iraq War. Remember? That war of U.S. imperialism cheered on by Israel, that killed half a million men, women, children, babies…

We’re hearing a variation of the Manichean theme now; the media is telling us the entire civilized world—the world that abhors the slaughter of babies—is with Israel, and that to do otherwise is to stand with “the terrorists.” How many viewers believe it’s that simple? I fear too many. A good reason to march.

The Palestinian forces involved here acted in extraordinary secrecy. That fact itself throws the U.S.-Israeli intelligence agencies into consternation. The “terrorist” enemy is more capable than they imagined. Land, air and sea attacks simultaneously!. ( Likely Iranian expertise here somewhere, but given the secrecy, hard to pin down. And even if you do, how embarrassing is it, to the U.S. and Israel, if the Shiite Iranians are effectively working with these Sunni Palestinians, whose cause is so dear to the Arab and Muslim worlds? How will the murderous Saudi regime, pressed by the U.S. to more openly embrace his Israeli friends—while simultaneously pushed by China towards rapprochement with Iran—cope with the mass enthusiasm for the Hamas achievement in the kingdom? The situation has changed. Everyone’s saying: “Israel will never be the same.” Nor will Palestine.

Lives there who loves his pain.

Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell,

Though thither doomed?

An old Palestinian man was the last to take the mike in front of Cambridge City Hall. He declared Monday the “greatest day in Palestinian history.” This met with a more restrained response than you’d expect; there’s much that has happened one doesn’t want to cheer, and it’s sobering to think that where we find hope, most of those around us are trained to see terror. But it’s true. Things can’t go back to normal—that old bizarre, impossible normal. Netanyahu says he will crush Hamas, which (this time) means he intends to crush the resistance of the Palestinian people, which means he’ll likely indulge in such overt acts of undeniable genocide that the entire Muslim world responds, at the demand of its masses, with a truly united front against Israel and its ever-better exposed apartheid system.

The Zionists, accustomed to the role of prison-guards, now find the prisoners are holding Israeli nationals, who they have likely taken to Gaza and distributed through its tunnels. Hostage-taking is a weapon of the weak, easily denounced in toto, in principle (especially if you’re equipped with armored tanks and jet fighters that can get the same job done). But given that the Israelis may wish to invade the prison camp using the weapons of the strong, the hostages may serve as a deterrent. (You keep bombing our people, we kill one of yours.) What a savage abuse of innocent civilians would such a usage be, in the logic of CNN!

What would these talking heads, experts, ex-government officials, house academics, consultants etc., have the Palestinian people do? Work through peaceful democratic channels to get the Israel state to withdraw its settlements, and to allow those driven out by terror to return? Work with Binyamin Netanyahu, that vicious, amoral, Judeo-fascist thug? They have no solution other than to insist that a “two-state solution” is possible (or the only way out) even as the Israeli ruling class effectively rules this out. All they can say now is that they hope when Israel “inevitably” brutalizes Gaza more than ever before, the civilian casualties are not so immense as to decisively weaken global support for it. For the people in Gaza they can propose no solution, certainly not one that goes through peaceful channels.

So about 300 of us Monday marched around Cambridge, chanting Long Live the Intifada! Intifada! Intifada!, to Central Square where an Israeli arms firm has its offices.

Intifada! Intifada!

How can you say this now, you ask, when Hamas terrorists have reportedly beheaded babies and murdered grandmothers, posting images on Facebook? Because the world did not begin just now. There is such a thing as history. You can’t choose the history you want, although you can make stuff up, about yourself or your tribe or your imagined community. In the real world, in the real story of what happened, Israel was established in 1948 through the suffering of the indigenous (Palestinian) people who were expelled to make it possible, and barred from reentry in order to ensure a Jewish majority in the present settler state.

Israel was expanded in 1967 to include the Old City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza at Palestinians’ expense. Racist settlers on the West Bank, convinced of Jewish superiority, have long abused Palestinian neighbors with impunity. There is every reason to seethe with indignation at this human suffering and those inflicting it. It has to be shaken off. That’s why we chant Intifada! Intifada!

The post Intifada! Intifada! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Gary Leupp.

Image by Anthony Choren.

The police racist killing of children is a regular occurance for decades in France, often triggering burgeoning spontaneous working class insurgencies. The moments after French police killed 17yr old 'Nahel M' in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre wasn't any different. 45,000 riot police, including the infamously brutal BRI special forces, contributed to the quelling of another uprising in France conducted mostly by young working classes of African heritage in the 'banlieues' or contained council estates often many miles out of the urban centres. Over two nights of the uprising at least 2,000 insurgents have been arrested by French authorities, the average age of arrestees is 17yrs old, pointing to another generation that will see considerable sections of their neighbours experiencing the French criminal justice system and prisons that will only boost their sense of alienation and confrontation with the French colonial state. Black working class communities across colonial centres in the 'West' are seeing multiple generations of the same family in prisons at the same time.The average age of the arestees also indicates how young our children are brutalised by the police and schools. The youth who led the uprising are of African heritage, both northern (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and also other regions like from West Africa and other former colonies of the French state. The uprising saw the insurrectionists use fire bombs, grenades and firearms against the state, indicating a further intensification by means of tactics as compared to previous similar uprisings. There is much to explore as to the significance of the uprising by means of class-struggle against capitalist-colonialism and for socialism in the colonial centre in a context of global victories of white supremacist racism and the far-right.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sukant Chandan.

Photograph Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0

After signing a military decree on May 18, allowing illegal Israeli Jewish settlers to reclaim the abandoned Homesh settlement located in the northern Occupied West Bank, the Israeli government has informed the US Biden Administration that it will not turn the area into a new settlement.

The latter revelation was reported by Axios on May 23. This contradiction is hardly surprising. While Israel’s far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, know precisely what they want, Netanyahu is trying to perform an impossible political act: he wants to fulfill all the wishes of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, but without veering off from the US political agenda in the Middle East, and without creating the circumstances that could eventually topple the Palestinian Authority.

Moreover, Netanyahu wants to normalize with Arab governments, while continuing to colonize Palestine, expand settlements and have complete control over Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy shrines.

Worse still, he wants, per the insistence of Ben-Gvir and his extremist religious constituency, to repopulate Homesh and create new outposts, while avoiding an all-out armed rebellion in the West Bank.

Concurrently, Netanyahu wants good relations with the Arabs and Muslims, while constantly humiliating, oppressing and killing Arabs and Muslims.

Indeed, such a feat is virtually impossible.

Netanyahu is not a novice politician who is failing at appeasing all his target audiences simultaneously. He is a right-wing ideologue, who uses the Zionist ideology and religion as the foundation of his political agenda. Anywhere else, especially in the Western world, Netanyahu would have been perceived to be a far-right politician.

One of the reasons that the West is yet to brand Netanyahu as such is that if there is a general agreement that Netanyahu is an affront to democracy, it would be difficult to engage with him diplomatically. While the likes of Italy’s far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, hosted Netanyahu last March, US President Joe Biden is yet to meet the Israeli leader in person, months after the latter composed his latest government of far-right religionists.

Netanyahu is aware of all these challenges, and that his country’s reputation, even among allies, is in tatters. The Israeli leader, however, is determined to persevere, for his own sake.

It took five elections in four years for Netanyahu to assemble a relatively stable government. New elections carry risks, as the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, is slated to win a majority of seats, if a sixth election is held.

But satisfying Ben-Gvir and others is turning Israel into a country governed by populist, nationalist leaders determined on instituting a religious war. Judging by the evidence on the ground, they might get what they want.

The truth is neither Ben-Gvir nor Smotrich has Netanyahu’s political savvy or experience. Rather, they are the political equivalent of bulls in a China shop. They want to sow the seeds of chaos and use the mayhem to further their agenda: more illegal settlements, more ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and, ultimately, a religious war.

Due to these pressures, Netanyahu, with an expansionist agenda of his own, is unable to follow a clear blueprint regarding how to fully annex large parts of the West Bank and render Palestinians permanently stateless. He cannot develop and maintain a consistent strategy because his allies have a strategy of their own. And, unlike Netanyahu, they care little for overstepping their boundaries with Washington, Brussels, Cairo or Amman.

This must be frustrating for Netanyahu who, through over 15 years in office, has developed an effective strategy based on several equilibriums. While slowly colonizing the West Bank and maintaining a siege and occasional wars in Gaza, he also learned to feign the language of peace and reconciliation internationally. Though he had his own troubles with Washington in the past, Netanyahu often prevailed, with the support of the US Congress. And though he provoked Arab, Muslim and African countries on numerous occasions, he still managed to normalize ties with many of them.

His was a winning strategy, which he bragged about shamelessly at every election campaign. But it seems that the party is finally over.

Netanyahu’s new political agenda is now motivated by a single objective: his own survival or, rather, that of his family, several members of which are implicated by charges of corruption and nepotism. If the current Israeli government collapses under the weight of its own contradictions and extremism, it would be nearly impossible for Netanyahu to recover his position. If far-right parties abandon Netanyahu’s Likud, Israel will sink even deeper into a seemingly unending political crisis and social turmoil.

For now, Netanyahu will have to stay the course – that of unprovoked wars, deadly raids on the West Bank, attacks on holy shrines, repopulating or establishing new illegal settlements, allowing armed settlers to unleash daily violence against Palestinians and so on, regardless of the consequences of these actions.

One of these consequences is widening the armed rebellion to reach the rest of the Occupied West Bank.

For a few years now, the armed struggle phenomenon has been growing across the West Bank. In areas like Nablus and Jenin, armed Resistance groups have grown in power to the point that the PA is left with little control over these regions.

This phenomenon is also an outcome of the lack of a true Palestinian leadership that invests more in representing and protecting Palestinians against Israeli violence, rather than engaging in ‘security coordination’ with the Israeli military.

Now that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s followers are wreaking havoc in the West Bank in the absence of any protection for Palestinian civilians, Palestinian fighters are adopting the role of protectors. The Lions’ Den is a direct manifestation of this reality.

For Palestinians, armed resistance is a natural response to military occupation, apartheid and settler violence. It is not a political strategy per se. For Israel, however, violence is a strategy.

For Netanyahu, the frequent deadly raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps translate into political assets that allow him to keep his extremist supporters happy. But this is short-term thinking. If Israel’s unchecked violence continues, the West Bank could soon find itself in an all-out military uprising against Israel and an open rebellion against the PA.

Then, no magic trick or balancing act by Netanyahu can possibly control the outcomes.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Consequences of Israeli Suppression

In the event of a Palestinian uprising, Israel would undoubtedly respond with intensified repression alongside a continued escalation of violence. This would include closures of cities across the West Bank, as witnessed in Jenin, Nablus, and Jericho in early 2023, causing substantial damage to Palestinian health in multiple ways.

Firstly, healthcare providers who live outside cities where most hospitals and healthcare facilities are located, would be prevented from entering closed-off areas, or they would experience hours-long delays at checkpoints. Secondly, patients in cities under closure would be unable to leave for care elsewhere, and patients outside of cities would be blocked from reaching medical facilities. As a result, providers based in cities would bear the brunt of delivering care that would otherwise be shared with providers who commute to cities. Moreover, healthcare personnel unable to access their workplaces may lose their jobs. 

Thirdly, Israel may also close entryways surrounding Palestinian villages, denying villagers access to main roads. Moreover, increased checkpoints and other physical barriers like dirt mounds and ditches would limit their ability to travel for care throughout the West Bank, or cause significant delays, potentially resulting in mortality. Fourthly, trucks carrying humanitarian goods or personnel would also face similar movement restrictions, and patients who are able to access care may arrive at facilities that lack the resources needed to treat them. Undeniably, there would be increased reports of more childbirths at checkpoints, blocked ambulances, and drug shortages. 

The Israeli response would not be limited to movement restrictions. It would also include a violent military response that would take different forms across Gaza and the West Bank—and potentially in 1948 territories, if Palestinian mass mobilization spreads as it has since the 2021 Unity Intifada. Any action by Palestinian groups in Gaza would be met initially with Israeli bombardment, and potentially a ground invasion, while even non-violent mobilization efforts at the Gaza border would result in many casualties, as was seen with the Great March of Return. The West Bank would likewise see increased Israeli raids, extrajudicial killings by Israeli occupation forces, and more dangerous encounters with Israeli settlers, who would also likely mobilize in the face of a Palestinian uprising. 

All of these events would lead to a sharp increase in trauma-related injuries among Palestinians, but trauma care remains lacking in Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, Palestinians in Gaza will suffer from more frequent and potentially unnecessary amputations and other disabilities, and mortality would increase as a result of lack of access to care or through secondary causes, such as infections received at hospitals. 

Furthermore, the mental health strain of an Israeli military response to a Palestinian uprising would be incalculable. Aside from the mental distress caused by witnessing or experiencing violence directly, the inability of families to safely gather, the trauma of constant surveillance at checkpoints and by drones, and the overall uncertainty of knowing how or when the situation will end, would create a mental health burden similar to what was seen after the Second Intifada, especially among children.

The International Response to a Palestinian Uprising

In the event of a new Palestinian uprising, the Palestinian Authority (PA) would undoubtedly intensify its security measures to suppress it, as it has repeatedly done, with significant pressure from the international community. In January 2023, for example, and in the face of one of the deadliest periods in the West Bank in more than a decade, the US Secretary of State pressed PA President Mahmoud Abbas to implement a security plan drafted by the US government, including the training of a special Palestinian military force, with little attention paid to the significant humanitarian toll on the population. 

The PA security budget is already inflated compared to other sectors like health. A new uprising would only exacerbate this imbalance. For example, during the Second Intifada, health expenditure per capita decreased. Any new budget constraints would lead to cuts in the wages of government healthcare personnel, and, thus, potentially to strikes. 

To make matters worse, global attention to PA security would outweigh that of the increased health needs of Palestinians. Organizations that provide on-the-ground services, including international ones like UNRWA and Medical Aid for Palestinians, along with local efforts like the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, would issue emergency appeals for aid in an effort to fill service gaps. However, Palestinian NGOs might be at increased risk during an uprising, as demonstrated when Israeli forces raided the Health Work Committees and arrested its director in 2022. Under the pretext of security, Israel could launch a massive shutdown of Palestinian NGOs, including health-related organizations, greatly limiting their ability to function.

Conclusion

Escalation in Israeli and PA repression of Palestinian resistance, and the greater geographic fragmentation of Palestinians that follow, would make it more difficult for Palestinians to engage in health-related mobilization efforts. During the First Intifada, neighborhood committees and volunteer healthcare professionals provided medical services to vulnerable populations, especially in rural areas. But in the post-Oslo period, development in health infrastructure has focused on cities at the expense of a community-based approach to medicine. 

Geographic fragmentation and urbanization in the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to an over-reliance on donor aid,  continue to limit the potential of such grassroots initiatives. However, local efforts could undoubtedly fill service vacuums and offer care with whatever resources and personnel are available. Indeed, such community mobilization efforts during the First Intifada helped bring Palestinians together around a vision for liberation beyond the technical details of a state-building project. In the event of another uprising, the aspiration would be that short-term suffering may result in a genuine path to future liberation, including a decolonized health system built for and by Palestinians.

The post A New Intifada: Health appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by yara asi.

Unlike the group’s first appearance on September 2, the number of fighters who took part in the rally in the Old City of Nablus on December 9 was significantly larger, better equipped, with unified military fatigues and greater security precautions.

“The Den belongs to all of Palestine and believes in the unity of blood, struggle and rifles”, a reference to the kind of collective Resistance that surpasses factional interests.

Needless to say, the event was significant. Only two months ago, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz undermined the group in terms of number and influence, estimating their number to be “of some 30 members”, pledging to “get our hands on them (..) and eliminate them”.

The Palestinian Authority was also actively involved in suppressing the group, although using a different approach. Palestinian and Arab media spoke about generous PA offers to Lions’ Den fighters of jobs and money, should they agree to drop their weapons.

Both the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships have greatly misread the situation. They have wrongly assumed that the Nablus-born movement is a regional and provisional phenomenon that, like others in the past, can easily be crushed or bought.

The Lions’ Den, however, seems to have increased in numbers, and has already branched out to Jenin, Al-Khalil (Hebron), Balata and elsewhere.

For Israel, but also for some Palestinians, the Lions’ Den is an unprecedented problem, the consequences of which threaten to change the political dynamics in the Occupied West Bank entirely.

As Lions’ Den insignias are now appearing in every Palestinian neighborhood throughout the Occupied Territories, the group has succeeded in branching out from a specific Nablus neighborhood – Al Qasaba – to become a collective Palestinian experience.

A recent survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) demonstrated the above claim in an unmistakable way.

The PCPSR public poll showed that 72% of all Palestinians support the creation of more such armed groups in the West Bank. Nearly 60% feared that an armed rebellion risks a direct confrontation with the PA. A whopping 79% and 87% respectively refuse the surrender of the fighters to PA forces, and reject the very idea that the PA has the right to even carry out such arrests.

Such numbers attest to the reality on the street, pointing to the near complete lack of trust in the PA and the belief that only armed Resistance, similar to that in Gaza, is capable of challenging the Israeli Occupation.

These notions are driven by empirical evidence: lead among them is the failure of the financially and politically corrupt PA in advancing Palestinian aspirations in any way; Israel’s complete disinterest in any form of peace negotiations; the growing far-right fascist trend in Israeli society, which is directly linked to the daily violence meted out against Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The UN Mideast Envoy Tor Wennesland has recently reported that 2022 is “on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since (…) 2005”. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that 167 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank this year alone.

These numbers are likely to increase during the new term of incoming rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new government can only remain in power with the support of Bezalel Smotrich from the Religious Zionism Party and Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Otzma Yehudit Party. Ben-Gvir, a notorious extremist politician is, ironically though not surprisingly, slated to become Israel’s new security minister.

But there is more to the brewing armed rebellion in the West Bank than Israeli violence alone.

Nearly three decades after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians have achieved none of their basic political or legal rights. To the contrary, emboldened right-wing politicians in Israel are now speaking of unilateral ‘soft annexation’ of large parts of the West Bank. None of the issues deemed important in 1993 – the status of Occupied Jerusalem, refugees, borders, water, etc. – are even on the agenda today.

Since then, Israel has invested more in racial laws and apartheid policies, making it an apartheid regime, par excellence. Major international human rights groups have accepted and reported on the new, fully racist identity of Israel.

With total US backing and no international pressure on Israel that is worthy of mention, Palestinian society is mobilizing beyond the traditional channels of the past three decades. Despite the admirable work of some Palestinian NGOs, the ‘NGO-ization’ of Palestinian society, operating on funds largely obtained from Israel’s very western backers, has further accentuated class division among Palestinians. With Ramallah and a few other urban centers serving as headquarters of the PA and a massive list of NGOs, Jenin, Nablus, and their adjacent refugee camps have subsisted in economic marginalization,  Israeli violence and political neglect.

Disenchanted by the PA’s failed political model, and growingly impressed by the armed Resistance in Gaza, an armed rebellion in the West Bank is simply a matter of time.

What differentiates the early signs of a mass armed Intifada in the West Bank from the ‘Jerusalem Intifada’, also termed the ‘Knives Intifada’ of 2015, is that the latter was a series of disorganized individual acts carried out by oppressed West Bank youth, while the former is a well-organized, grassroots phenomenon with a unique political discourse that appeals to the majority of Palestinian society.

And, unlike the armed Second Palestinian Intifada (2000-2005), the ensuing armed rebellion is rooted in a popular base, not in the PA security forces.

The closest historical reference to this phenomenon is the 1936-39 Palestinian Revolt, led by thousands of Palestinian fellahin – peasants – in the Palestine countryside. The last year of that rebellion witnessed a large split between the fellahin leadership and the urban-based political parties.

History is repeating itself. And, like the 1936 Revolt, the future of Palestine and the Palestinian Resistance – in fact, the very social fabric of Palestinian society – is on the line.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Nonetheless, the end of the First Intifada, adoption of the 1993 Oslo Accords, and parameters introduced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) have rendered any resurgence of this economic model unlikely in the case of a new intifada. The NGOization of Palestinian civil society in the West Bank and Gaza has replaced popular organizing with professionalized organizations, compelled to compete with one another for donor funds in order to survive. Once-thriving cooperatives and associations are also subject to intense government oversight, thanks to a 2017 PA decree that restricts their independence and places further authority in the hands of ministry representatives. 

In light of these challenges, reviving the resistance economy of the First Intifada is unrealistic. Moreover, without the dismantlement of the PA and the reconstruction of the national liberation movement (or revival of the Palestine Liberation Organization), a new Palestinian uprising would take the form of discontinuous outbursts. In this context, the alternative to a unified resistance economy may entail various localized grassroots economies boycotting Israeli goods and promoting collective production. 

The continuity of these grassroots economies and their ability to develop are contingent on four conditions. The first is trust, which can be achieved through democracy, independence, and transparency. The second is social capital, which exists when a group of people have the same concerns and objectives. The third is the ability, capacity, and willingness to struggle against impediments and abuses. The fourth is the formation of a structure that unifies the efforts of the grassroots economies, transforming them into a national struggle against the dominance of the neoliberal system and toward a resistance economy. 

The concept of a localized resistance economy can unite communities around collective resistance. However, bridging the gap between different actors in different communities and across different social classes necessitates a larger framework. Given the weakness of Palestinian political factions and of most donor-funded civil society organizations, the aggregation of localized collectives into a powerful political movement remains unclear. Trade unions are a potential initial framework, since they represent a group with common concerns and defend workers’ rights while also resisting the Israeli occupation. However, democracy among trade unions in the West Bank and Gaza needs to be further addressed. 

In a resistance economy, Palestinians must boycott Israeli products and all forms of cooperation with the Israeli regime. Although some sectors could be negatively affected, dependency on the Israeli economy would be undermined. The neoliberal elites may resist such a framework and try to flood the Palestinian markets with Israeli products. For this reason, the involvement and democratization of trade unions would be necessary to monitor their activities and challenge their power. 

The post A New Intifada: Economy appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Tareq Sadeq.

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The post Protected: New Intifada: Society appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Jamil Hilal.

Discussions around an upcoming Palestinian intifada draw inspiration from previous Palestinian experiences, specifically the first and second intifadas. However, this overlooks the possibility of a new intifada that differs from its predecessors. This is more likely, given that many factors have changed, including the Israeli “withdrawal” from Gaza, the deteriorating state of life for Palestinian refugees in some host countries, the active reengagement of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Palestinian national cause, and the hegemony of West Bank security forces, discussed below. 

Direct clashes between Palestinians, Israeli settlers, and the Israeli military have transformed into full-fledged military confrontations since the Israeli military’s so-called withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, as seen in Israel’s recurrent offensives against the besieged enclave. The participation of Palestinians in Gaza in a new intifada would therefore take a different form, which could include militarized action involving missile launches or, in the case of land invasion, direct engagement with occupation forces. Popular resistance would take the form of rallies and vigils near the border fence. It is likely that Gaza’s engagement in any upcoming struggle would involve limited military action in support of Palestinian popular resistance in other places, as was seen in the Saif al-Quds battle, which was launched in support of popular Palestinian resistance in Sheikh Jarrah and 1948 territories.

Palestinian life in some host countries has declined acutely in recent years, bringing new crises in the wake of profound societal transformations taking place in the region, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. This situation has reminded Palestinians in the regional diaspora of the need to participate in the Palestinian struggle, which could provide them with a way out of their present hardship. Although the prospects of Palestinian national action abroad are limited, Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries are increasingly responding to events unfolding inside Palestine. They are beginning to organize marches to the borders, delivering a clear message that the solution to the refugee issue is their return, that the Palestinian cause goes beyond the West Bank and Gaza, and that it is indeed inclusive of all Palestinians. Accordingly, Palestinians in the diaspora would participate in any upcoming intifada through mobilizing material or moral support, or even through physical resistance in later stages, as their capabilities permit.

After decades of Israeli attempts to eliminate solidarity among Palestinians across colonized Palestine, and to focus the political actions of Palestinians in 1948 territories on obtaining rights from the Zionist establishment, new trends have emerged in these territories, specifically among Palestinian youth. There is now a lack of confidence in obtaining equal civil rights, particularly in view of recently enacted laws to Judaize the Zionist state and the Israeli right’s monopolization of Zionism. A redefinition of the national cause in the Palestinian psyche is also taking place, in which the cause is no longer about obtaining rights but rather about confronting settler colonialism. This recognizes the settler-colonial regime’s different tools of oppression and control used against the Palestinian people. Accordingly, Palestinians in 1948 territories have progressed from a position of solidarity to one of active participants in the unified Palestinian struggle against the Zionist project.

These new trends constitute the foundation for the engagement of Palestinians in 1948 territories in any new Palestinian intifada. This would take different forms, including rallies, protests, direct confrontation with the Israeli occupation forces in mixed areas, and economic obstruction through strikes and boycotts. Collectively, these actions could later develop into activities that impede Zionists’ daily lives.

In the aftermath of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian security forces were rebuilt under US supervision, expanding and transforming their role into one of security coordination with Israel. As a result, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank have been undermined, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been restrained. The Independent Commission for Human Rights has documented thousands of politically motivated arrests by PA security forces, who threaten, torture, and kill political opponents, even those unaffiliated with a particular organization, including the activist Nizar Banat on June 24, 2021. 

This new reality in the West Bank reduces the chance of a popular wave of anger turning into a large-scale and sustained intifada, as the PA relies on Fatah’s popular base and restricts that of other Palestinian factions. The likelihood that this scenario will materialize is thus slim, unless the PA ceases its security-based approach first, and economic approach second. This is possible only if Palestinians overcome the current climate of fear and take collective action to pressure the PA to either rectify its conduct or restructure itself entirely, as discussed in the second scenario. In other words, the outbreak of a large-scale and sustained intifada in the West Bank will not occur without radical change in the PA’s behavior. Without this change, a West Bank intifada would take the form of sporadic waves of anger that maintain the struggle without leading to a new reality. Such a change would allow Palestinian resistance organizations to rebuild and the Fatah movement to abandon its position as the ruling party within an authoritarian regime, returning to its roots as a liberation movement.

Accordingly, when envisioning the shape of a new intifada, one must consider circumstances in which Palestinians participate in different geographies and with different resistance tools. Such an intifada may be limited to a location outside the control of the Palestinian security forces, such that the role of Palestinians in the West Bank could be limited to solidarity activities. However, this is unlikely, as the West Bank’s involvement in any upcoming intifada is only a matter of time.

A number of actions make this scenario possible in the near future, including continuous Zionist settler-colonial projects of annexation, expansion, and de-Palestinization, as well as continued arrests, assassinations, restrictions of freedoms, and deprivations of Palestinians’ rights with US support (either overtly, as during the Trump administration, or covertly). The international community’s silence and Arab regimes’ preoccupation with internal issues or intra-Arab disputes add to the increasing likelihood. Moreover, the growing far right in Israel and the oppression of Palestinians as a decisive factor in polarizing the Zionist public, should motivate Palestinians to rise and confront these policies.

Other factors that make this scenario possible pertain to Palestinian popular consensus on resistance and rejection of the PA, as seen during the Unity Intifada, as well as the Saif al-Quds battle. That uprising garnered unprecedented popular sympathy and solidarity at both the Arab and international levels. Such solidarity would not have been achieved without the use of virtual spaces outside of traditional media that enabled Palestinians and their supporters to communicate their struggle to the world. The fact that the Israeli regime pressured these digital platforms to reduce Palestinian content attests to the role of digital spaces in shaping support. Although some platforms, including Facebook, entertained Israel’s request, Palestinians’ content has persisted.

Although these factors have only grown in importance, the obstacles presented by the first scenario – namely, continued financial and security support to the PA, as well as Israel’s attacks against Palestinians in 1948 territories – may prevent the outbreak of a large-scale intifada in the near term. 

The post A New Intifada: Political Overview appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Belal Shobaki.

The Israeli settler-colonial regime has long employed the policy of administrative detention as part of its carceral tactics against Palestinians. This policy allows Israel to detain Palestinians at any given time and indefinitely, without charge or trial. Its widespread and arbitrary application allows the Israeli regime to criminalize Palestinian social and political mobilization, and to thwart Palestinian resistance against ongoing violence and dispossession — all by framing these Palestinians as a danger to Israel’s “security” and “public order.” 

Israel’s use of administrative detention dates back to the early days of its violent inception, and detainees have consistently demanded an end to its use, highlighting the harm it inflicts on them and their families. On January 1, 2022, the nearly 500 administrative detainees held in Israeli prisons at the time launched a collective boycott of military courts and called on lawyers not to attend court sessions nor to engage in judicial processes related to their detention. This boycott, which ended on June 27, 2022, is a continuation of decades of Palestinian struggle against Israel’s carceral policies — including through hunger strikes, demonstrations against prison authorities, and certain forms of cultural production from captivity. 

This policy brief contextualizes Israel’s use of administrative detention against Palestinians, historically and legally, and explains how the policy relates to the broader functioning of Israeli military courts and their criminalization of Palestinian activism. It also examines the detainees’ most recent boycott of military courts, situating this action within the wider repertoire of detainees’ responses to Israel’s systemic violation of their rights. While the months-long boycott did not result in the termination of the practice of administrative detention, it affirmed that unified action by detainees, activists, lawyers, Palestinian political leadership, and allied local and international civil society and human rights organizations is needed to actualize this goal.  

Israeli Administrative Detention in Historical and Legal Context

Across the world, governments may administratively detain individuals they deem pose a “security risk” and justify such action as preemptively thwarting potential threats. International humanitarian law and international human rights law permit states’ recourse to this measure under strictly defined codes and exceptional circumstances. That is, administrative detention is regarded as an extreme measure that should be subject to strict legal provisions and oversight mechanisms.

The juridical review processes create a facade of judicial oversight while allowing Israel to bypass legal battles through which the detainees and their lawyers would be able to bring forth an actual defense
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For instance, Articles 42 and 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) — ratified by Israel in 1951 — permit the use of administrative measures, including administrative detention, solely if deemed absolutely necessary to maintain the security of the detaining power. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — ratified by Israel in 1991 — similarly permits administrative detentions only in exceptional circumstances. 

An Intricate Legal Regime 

The use of administrative detention in Palestine dates back to the British Mandate, when the colonial government adopted the 1945 Defense (Emergency) Regulations, effectively imposing martial law in Palestine. The regulations also allowed the colonial government to establish military courts as it deemed necessary. The Israeli settler-colonial regime adopted these regulations upon its creation in 1948, and over the years, formulated various laws to allow for the prolonged detention of Palestinians under the pretexts of maintaining “security” and “public order.” 

Currently, the Israeli regime uses three distinct laws and orders to justify and facilitate administrative detention across colonized Palestine:

1. Military Order 1651, Order Regarding Security Directives [Consolidated Version], authorizes the commander of the Israel occupation forces, or commanders authorized by him, to issue administrative detention orders against Palestinians from the West Bank for periods not exceeding six months and to renew them indefinitely. Furthermore, it permits the judge of the military court to receive evidence in the absence of detainees and their legal counsel, and not to disclose it if the judge is convinced that doing so “may harm regional security or public security,” thus preventing any form of legal defense. 

2. The Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law allows Israel to detain Palestinians in Gaza for an indefinite period. It defines an “unlawful combatant” as a person who is not entitled to the status of prisoner of war, and who is engaged in “hostilities” against Israel, or is a member of a force that is engaged in “hostilities” against Israel. Unlike military laws applicable to residents of the West Bank that specify the duration of each detention order, the detention of “unlawful combatants” is not restricted in time. Detentions only end if the Israeli defense minister believes that the conditions justifying them cease to exist.

Under this law, detainees must be brought before an Israeli district court no later than 14 days following their detention, and if an order is issued, they must be brought for a judicial review every six months. Judges are not required to present evidence, and the deliberations are carried under the pretext of “secret” evidence that cannot be disclosed due to “security” considerations.

3. The Emergency Power (Detentions) Law of 1979 is used inside 1948 territories and Jerusalem to detain Palestinian Jerusalemites and Palestinian citizens of Israel. It permits the Israeli Defense Minister to issue detention orders for renewable periods of up to six months, and has been used increasingly since the 2021 Unity Intifada, which saw widespread mobilization among Palestinians.

These three laws and orders are part of the Israeli regime’s ongoing lawfare against Palestinians across colonized Palestine. They extend the work of Israeli military courts, where Palestinians are treated as threats to be managed, and through which their lives are subject to constant monitoring, surveillance, and punishment. But unlike military court procedures, by elevating the oft-cited notions of protecting “security” and maintaining “public order,” these policies allow Israel to incarcerate Palestinians without the need to provide evidence or bring detainees to trial. The laws work to effectively punish Palestinians for their civic and political work, thus hindering their resistance by attempting to instill fear and submission in them. 

The arbitrary nature of administrative detention is exemplified by the lack of effective judicial oversight mechanisms. In effect, and as administrative detainees commonly attest, detainees are only released following the approval of the Shabak, the Israel Security Agency. Contrary to the claim purported by Israel’s courts that detention orders are judicially reviewed, administrative detainees and their lawyers constantly point to the dominant role that the Shabak plays in determining detention periods. In this way, the juridical review processes create a facade of judicial oversight while allowing Israel to bypass legal battles through which the detainees and their lawyers would be able to bring forth an actual defense — notwithstanding that Israeli military courts always presume a “guilty” Palestinian to be tried and sentenced. 

This is further exemplified by the multiple cases of Palestinians who are transferred to administrative detention centers when the Israeli authorities are unable to charge them in military courts. For instance, eighty-year-old Bashir Khairi was arrested in October 2021 and originally presented with a list of charges in Ofer military court. Over a month later, and due to the military court’s inability to charge him, the Israeli military prosecutor issued a six-month administrative detention order against Khairi that was renewed an additional time since. 

Administrative Detention in Practice

The Israeli regime justifies administrative detention as necessary for “security” purposes. In practice, however, Israel’s use of the policy never adheres to restrictions set by international humanitarian law and human rights law. Rather, it is intended to thwart Palestinian civic and political activism, to suppress resistance, and to attempt to instill fear among the colonized population. That is, administrative detention is never used as a “preventative” measure in “exceptional” circumstances: it is a core policy that inflicts long-lasting damage on Palestinian detainees, their families, and Palestinian civic and political institutions at large.  

Indeed, Israel’s use of administrative detention is a form of psychological warfare. First and foremost, it subjects detainees and their families to a perpetual state of uncertainty. As administrative detention orders can be renewed indefinitely, detainees never fully know when they will be released. In many cases, detentions are renewed just hours prior to the expiry of the orders. This reality was described by one detainee as akin to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, in which the cursed protagonist struggles to carry a rock up a mountain, always failing in the moment he reaches the summit, and is thus forced to begin his journey once again. 

Administrative detention is never used as a 'preventative' measure in 'exceptional' circumstances: it is a core policy that inflicts long-lasting damage
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The number of Palestinians in administrative detention has varied over the years. During the First Intifada, it is estimated that a total of 14,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli administrative detention, while during the Second Intifada, numbers ranged between 700 and 1,000 administrative detainees each month. And during the 2021 Unity Intifada, the Israeli regime responded with extensive use of administrative detention across colonized Palestine. By the end of 2021 alone, the Israeli military commander in the West Bank had issued 1,595 administrative detention orders, including renewals of previously issued orders against current Palestinian detainees. Today, out of the 4,700 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, 640 are held under administrative detention, including children, activists, civil society workers, and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). 

The lived reality of Palestinian detainees constitutes part of the violence that the Israeli regime has long inflicted on them and their families through carceral practices. More broadly, Israel’s widespread and arbitrary use of administrative detention affects all Palestinians across colonized Palestine. Palestinians from the river to the sea live in a reality in which they do not know when, why, or for how long they might be imprisoned. 

Challenging Israeli Administrative Detention 

For as long as Israel has used administrative detention, Palestinian detainees have employed a variety of tactics to challenge this policy. Over the decades of Israeli occupation, detainees have led protests inside prisons, individual or collective hunger strikes, and boycotts of military courts and their judicial processes — resistance tactics that are often met with violent and punitive measures.

Amnesty International documented that Palestinian administrative detainees went on hunger strike in al-Naqab Prison as early as February 1989. Detainees’ resistance continued in the 1990s: following the signing of the Oslo Accords, which ushered in a new era of widespread and indefinite administrative detention, detainees announced the first boycott of military courts on August 4, 1996. This boycott lasted for six months without achieving any concrete changes. During this period, Palestinian detainees also burnt their wooden beds and prison tents to further protest their detention. 

Israel’s use of administrative detention increased during the Second Intifada. While only 32 Palestinians detainees were held in November 2001, by May 2002, that number skyrocketed to more than 700. Throughout the Second Intifada, Palestinian detainees resorted to multiple measures of protest, including burning their beds and tents, rejecting the prison authorities’ orders, refusing to accept and sign detention renewal orders, and protesting in the prisons’ courtyards. The detainees also engaged in several military court boycotts, though they were not widespread and rarely lasted more than three months. 

In December 2011, Palestinian administrative detainee Khader Adnan began his first hunger strike, demanding the termination of his administrative detention and his immediate release. The strike lasted for 66 days, after which an agreement was reached to end his detention and to release him on April 17, 2012. Adnan resorted to hunger strikes during his subsequent detentions in 2015 and 2018. Inspired by Adnan’s first hunger strike, dozens of administrative detainees followed suit with individual strikes of their own. On April 24, 2014, administrative detainees began a collective hunger strike that lasted for two months. The strike was called off on June 25, 2014, with no concessions made by Israel and with only an agreement to continue dialogue on issues related to administrative detention. Until today, detainees continue to resort to hunger strikes as a measure to protest Israel’s use of this policy.

Palestinians from the river to the sea live in a reality in which they do not know when, why, or for how long they might be imprisoned
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The effectiveness of individual hunger strikes in the face of the broader administrative detention policy is frequently debated among Palestinians, but it is worth noting that they have gained international attention and have highlighted the severe impact of administrative detention on detainees and their families. Moreover, hunger strikes shift the political burden onto Israel. That is, the Israeli regime can agree to release administrative detainees or risk widespread protests and mobilization in the event that the health of hunger strikers deteriorates in detention. 

Broadly, hunger strikes and other forms of protest by administrative detainees illustrate the policy’s centrality for the Israeli regime. Even if these tactics have only succeeded in securing the release of individual detainees, their consistent use and historical duration illustrates the critical and strategically symbolic role of administrative detainees in the broader Palestinian struggle for liberation.

“Our Decision is Freedom” 

In January 2022, Palestinian administrative detainees began a collective boycott of Israel’s military courts under the slogan: “Our decision is freedom. No to administrative detention.” In a published statement, the detainees specifically outlined the arbitrary nature of administrative detention arrests and described the physical and psychological toll that this practice has taken on them. Moreover, they called for solidarity and support in their boycott of military courts, which they began after reaching a dead-end in negotiations with the Shabak and the Israeli Prison Service. 

The boycott applied to all levels of Israeli military courts: detainees were to refuse to attend court procedures and hearings, and lawyers were to boycott court sessions. The detainees further threatened to undertake a collective hunger strike if the boycott did not succeed in forcing Israel to meet their demand to end the policy. By framing these escalating moves as part of a “mass united resistance movement,” the statement testified to the detainees’ conviction in the power of collective action.

The boycott came at a time during which the Israel Prison Service sought to fragment the detainees’ movement and to instate a wide range of punitive measures against all Palestinian prisoners, particularly in response to the escape of six prisoners from Gilboa prison in September 2021. The boycott also came amid the Israeli regime’s increased use of administrative detention against Palestinians from Jerusalem and 1948 territories throughout the ongoing wave of resistance across colonized Palestine, which began in May 2021.

The scope and duration of the detainees’ boycott underscored the ways in which the Israeli regime’s carceral and legal policies impact Palestinian lives, whether in detention or not. Indeed, Israel’s carceral regime extends beyond the confines of prisons and interrogation rooms to impact the lives of Palestinians across colonized Palestine who either have family members in detention or who themselves are awaiting detention on arbitrary grounds. 

Palestinian administrative detainees’ 2022 boycott of Israeli military courts thus asserted that the Israeli regime’s legal structures cannot offer justice, for they are specifically designed to harm and punish Palestinians, and to rid them of their will to resist. In doing so, the boycott undermined any sense of legitimacy that Israeli military courts attempt to claim and affirmed that collective action is necessary to end the policy of administrative detention. 

What Needs to be Done 

Just as the administrative detainees’ boycott gained significant traction over the first half of 2022, Palestinians and their allies should mobilize to ensure that the Israeli regime’s practice of administrative detention ends. Several Palestinian and international organizations have been demanding an end to the policy and highlighting its impact on Palestinians more broadly. These include Amnesty international, Addameer: Human Rights and Prisoners’ Support Association, and the Defense for Children International – Palestine Section. 

But more must be done:

• The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its associated Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs should highlight the detrimental effects of administrative detention on Palestinians to the international community. They must advocate for an end to this policy in all international forums, including by demanding Israel be held accountable for its violations of the international human rights laws it ratified.   
• Palestinian civil society organizations, including those working on issues related to prisoners, should continue to rally support for Palestinian administrative detainees both locally and internationally. Addameer’s work is notable for its creative and continuous campaigns against administrative detention, which highlight the policy’s intricate connection to the functioning of the Israeli regime’s military courts.
• Across colonized Palestine, Palestinians and their allies should more actively organize public events and protests in support of Palestinian prisoners, including administrative detainees. 
• The families of administrative detainees should establish a working committee that could centralize solidarity efforts on behalf of detainees. This step, mirroring other committees organized in Palestine and internationally — Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, for example — would further shed light on the policy’s broader impact on Palestinian society.  
• International Palestine solidarity groups should include the Israeli regime’s carceral system in their boycott and divestment campaigns. These campaigns should target any companies benefitting from the Israeli carceral system, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise and G4S, which is currently owned by Allied Universal. They should also amplify calls to end the Deadly Exchange program between Israeli and US law enforcement agencies — tactics that manifest in prisons and detention centers across colonized Palestine.

The post The Prison Intifada: Supporting Palestinian Administrative Detainees appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Basil Farraj.

The brief highlights Palestinian administrative detainees’ 2022 collective boycott of military courts and situates it within the wider repertoire of Palestinian resistance to Israeli carceral policies. While the boycott was called off in June 2022 with some gains for the detainees, it affirmed that collective action is needed to end the Israeli regime’s use of administrative detention. The brief thus offers recommendations for how Palestinian political leadership, civil society organizations, activists, and local and international solidarity groups can collectively do so. 

The Israeli regime justifies administrative detention as necessary for “security” purposes. In practice, however, Israel never adheres to restrictions set by international law, which permit states’ recourse to this measure only in exceptional circumstances. Detainees are frequently prevented from accessing effective legal defense because judges may receive “secret” evidence — undisclosed due to “security” considerations — in the absence of detainees and their counsel. Moreover, contrary to the Israeli courts’ purported claim that detention orders are judicially reviewed, detainees attest that they are only released following the approval of the Israel Security Agency (the Shabak). 

Fundamentally, Israel’s use of administrative detention is a form of psychological warfare: it subjects detainees and their families to a perpetual state of uncertainty, as detainees never fully know when they will be released. But more broadly, Israel’s widespread resort to administrative detention affects all Palestinians under Israeli control. Palestinians from the river to the sea live in a reality in which they do not know when, why, or for how long they might be arbitrarily imprisoned. This was made apparent by the Israeli regime’s extensive use of administrative detention during and following the 2021 Unity Intifada.

For as long as Israel has employed administrative detention, however, Palestinian detainees have resisted with protests inside prisons, individual or collective hunger strikes, and boycotts of military courts. The efficacy of hunger strikes in particular is constantly debated among Palestinians, but it is worth noting that they have gained international attention and illustrate the centrality of administrative detention for the Israeli regime. Even if these tactics have only succeeded in securing the release of individual detainees, their consistent use and historical duration has meant that administrative detainees fulfill a critical and strategically symbolic role in the broader Palestinian liberation struggle.

On January 1, 2022, the nearly 500 administrative detainees held in Israeli prisons at the time launched a collective boycott of military courts and called on lawyers not to attend court sessions nor to engage in judicial processes related to their detention. Moreover, in their public statement, the detainees threatened to undertake a collective hunger strike if the boycott did not succeed in forcing Israel to end the policy. By framing these escalating moves as part of a “mass united resistance movement,” the detainees affirmed their conviction in the power of collective action.

The 2022 boycott demonstrated the importance of collective action in ending the Israeli regime’s policy of administrative detention. To support Palestinian prisoners in their intifada and to ensure that this long-standing policy comes to an end:

• The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its associated Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs should highlight the detrimental effects of administrative detention on Palestinians to the international community, and advocate for an end to this policy in all international forums, including by demanding Israel be held accountable for its violations of the international human rights laws it ratified.  
• Palestinian civil society organizations, including those working on issues related to prisoners, should continue to rally support for Palestinian administrative detainees both locally and internationally. 
• Across colonized Palestine, Palestinians and their allies should more actively organize public events and protests in support of Palestinian prisoners, including administrative detainees. 
• The families of administrative detainees should establish a working committee which could centralize solidarity efforts on behalf of detainees. This step, mirroring other committees organized in Palestine and internationally (Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, for instance), would further shed light on the policy’s broader impact on Palestinian society.  
• International Palestine solidarity groups should include the Israeli regime’s carceral system in their boycott and divestment campaigns. These campaigns should target any companies benefitting from the Israeli carceral system. They should also amplify calls to end the Deadly Exchange program between Israeli and US law enforcement agencies — tactics that manifest in prisons and detention centers across colonized Palestine.

The post The Prison Intifada: Supporting Palestinian Administrative Detainees appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Basil Farraj.