Let's Talk About Popular Resistance in Palestine
Ahhhhh, I do love a good argument. I have already received feedback on my last post. One Palestinian activist brought up an important point: how did my post help the struggle? He was concerned that my post was simply criticizing everything that was going on in the West Bank villages' struggle and that such criticism publicly only hurts "the cause".
So first, let's look at what I said, and what I DIDN'T say. I said that Israeli activists needed to have a better analysis of power relations when it comes to their interactions with Palestinians. I said that Israeli activists are not needed for a Palestinian popular resistance. I also said that they SHOULD be involved in protest. I said that the Bil'in MODEL (which is a term used to describe the type of protests that originated in Bil'in in 2005 and has been adopted by all the villages that are commonly considered part of the "popular struggle" in the West Bank to this day) is not the only model, and not everyone thinks it's a good one. Finally, I said that what is currently being called "popular resistance" is not actually popular.
Popular Resistance?
What currently exists in the West Bank is a series of villages who are all directly affected by either the Wall or Settlements who engage in weekly protests. The protests are highly symbolic. Bil'in popularized the idea of "themed" demonstrations, where costumes, props, and specific messages were used to garner media attention. Though the themed demos have for the most part died down, the focus and implied messages have spread to demonstrations which have sprouted up off and on in various villages, mostly in the Ramallah and Nablus districts, since 2005. The message that has been taken up is one of a "joint struggle" or "joint resistance". It is heavily reliant on media attention, international solidarity action and support, and for the joint part, Israeli activist participation. These demonstrations have been highly successful in a number of ways. First, they have managed to get the image of unarmed demonstration into the mainstream media around the world. The connections built during these joint demonstrations have been used in other campaigns, particularly international campaigns for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. The presence of Israeli activists has become part and parcel of this strategy. It was further entrenched with the creation of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, an organization begun by leaders in Bil'in which seeks to represent and coordinate the messaging and support for the village resistance internationally. Beyond the obvious issues with a committee designating itself the coordinators of the struggle (with no democratically elected body, for example), my issue with the body is that it has defined popular struggle in Palestine in this specific way (weekly, symbolic demonstrations focusing on media, international attention and support, and Israeli joint activity). The problem is, there's a whole sector of the Palestinian society, the vast majority of it, that haven't bought in to this version of "the struggle".
So what? Of course, there's room for all kinds of strategies. As I hope I made clear above, this model of struggle, what I like to call The Bil'in Model, has been very useful in a variety of ways: it has gotten the New York Times, for example, to cover unarmed protests. For many Israelis, it has broken the invisible barrier of the Green Line, allowing more people to see the realities of certain parts of the Israeli Occupation. But this model has also had some huge downsides. And when a group of Palestinian women activists expressed frustration with the current state of affairs, I felt the need to address it.
The Evolution of Israeli Activists
A focus of my previous post (and, in fact, many of my previous posts) was about Israeli activists. Again, I think a little background might help in explaining my points. I first went to demonstrations in the West Bank in 2003. The same year (actually, 1 week before I arrived) the presence of Israeli activists in demonstrations became internationally known when an Israeli was shot in both legs by soldiers at a demonstration in Mas'ha, Salfit district. That group of demonstrators, little more than half a dozen, was the beginning of the Anarchists Against the Wall, a group of Israeli activists that had begun to join demonstrations and direct actions confronting the construction of the Annexation Barrier. They weren't the first Israeli activists to participate in actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but they did have a very clear analysis of their role as allies from the oppressing population. They were active in Budrus, Biddu, Beit Liqya, Saffa, and other villages throughout the 2nd half of the Second Intifada. Very few of these activists are still active today in Palestine. Those that are, continue to demonstrate an amazing capacity to support and serve the Palestinian cause. Some, through years of developing relationships, are considered friends by their Palestinian counterparts. These Israelis who wanted to work with Palestinians approached it with caution and humility. With hundreds of Palestinians being killed each year, and daily demonstrations that were often deadly, the Israeli activists in 2003-2005, led by activists who had worked as solidarity activists in other capacities in other countries, understood the dynamics of power involved in what they were doing. But there's a new generation of Israeli activists. Many of the Israelis currently coming to West Bank protests did not experience the ground-breaking work that the activists during the Second Intifada had to do. They came in 2005, to Bil'in, where the demostration leaders, who spoke Hebrew and had worked in Israel, embraced them and coined the phrase "joint struggle". There was an important paradigm shift. Rather than Israeli activists seeing themselves as allies (using the framework of white allies in People of Color movements in the U.S., or straight allies of LGBTQ activists), the new Israeli activists saw themselves as part of the struggle. It's 'them and the Palestinians against the Israeli state'. The problem, of course, is that this invisibilizes the privilege these activists carry with them. While they all pay lip--service to the fact that in an Apartheid state they have access to privilege, they seem to think that that goes away when they are at a demo in Palestine. Or, more specifically, that those privileges have nothing to do with any interaction they have with Palestinians outside of the state's treatment of them.
Perhaps most importantly, Israelis seem to have forgotten that most Palestinians would rather not work with them at all, or only under the most specific criteria. Again, because the villages' struggle has become the popular struggle, the participation of Israelis is rarely questioned. Even worse, when Israelis are not welcome (or even not welcome on the same terms as they are in other villages) there is a sense of disdain on the part of those Israeli activists, rather than acceptance.
From Martin Luther King to Malcolm X
It is an imperfect analogy, but part of the shift that the Palestinian women I addressed in my original statement have alluded to is one from a politik of collaboration to one of "Palestinian Power". Though they have not taken up the mantra of armed self-defense that the Black Power movement of the U.S. in the 1960's had, there is a critique of the current state of Palestinian organizing that seeks to seperate itself from its reliance on International funding and support and Israeli activists. By the late 1960's, Blacks in the American south were telling their white allies to go home and work in their own communities. In Palestine, young activists have said a number of times that they reject the term "joint struggle" not because they are unwilling to have Israelis participate in the fight for Palestinian liberation, but because of the form which that participation has taken.
The struggle in Palestine is a long way from the mass protests, strikes, and collective action of the 1st Intifada or the first anti-wall protests. It seems to have evolved, for the moment, into a struggle to counteract Israel's powerful PR machines and to present another "face" of Palestine. What it has gained in international support, however, has been accompanied by the desertion of the Palestinian streets. Pretending that an international PR campaign accompanied by small scale acts of symbolic defiance is a replacement for mass grassroots mobilization is a mistake. It frustrates those who recognize the disparity between what is presented to the outside world and the reality of resistance on the ground and, I would argue, it diverts precious time and energy. Communities facing immediate displacement, land theft, imprisonment and injury are forced to spend more time courting international and Israeli funds than inspiring a mass movement.
The international campaign is vital, and it's working. It is a critical place for Israeli and international activists to leverage their privilege and add another layer of pressure on Israel. Nothing in my previous post takes away from that. But Palestinians need to be allowed to shape their own grassroots movement, without a framework dictated by money and influence that until now has led most Palestinians to stay home.
Imagine, one year from now, mass protests in the Palestinian streets. Civil disobedience, general strikes, mass non-compliance and unarmed protests. The residents of Nablus and Jenin, refugees and villagers, amassing at checkpoints and burning Israeli-issued pass IDs. Israelis and internationals providing money for one giant legal fund, donating cameras, providing website support for the Palestinian bloggers, writing to their local newspapers, and, of course, continuing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Specific palestinians events joined by Israeli and international supporters, who provide a strategic element to the demonstration (de-arresting, diversion, documentation). Demonstrations inside Israel to coincide with demos in the Palestinian communities. Emergent coordination that comes organically from a desire to actually coordinate, not control. No role for the Palestinian Authority, who can be left to manage their bantustans. That would be a popular struggle. It would be something, wouldn't it?

