The Palestinian Authority and the Unity Intifada

PA security forces maintain stability via a criminalization of resistance per set agreements with Israel to “make visible efforts” to arrest individuals and groups determined by Israel to be a threat.⁴⁸ Established in the post-Second Intifada Road Map agreement. George W. Bush, “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Economic Cooperation Foundation (2003), https://ecf.org.il/media_items/577. These activities are carried out in close collaboration with Israel, and it is common practice—as one top Palestinian security officer explained—that the PA would “get lists with names” from the Israelis. They “need someone, and [the PA] are tasked to get that person for them.”⁴⁹ Quoted in Sabrien Amrov and Alaa Tartir, “Subcontracting Repression in the West Bank and Gaza,” The New York Times, November 26, 2014. Increasingly, the PA has undergone what Yazid Sayigh calls an “authoritarian transformation” as evidenced by the increasing predominance of arrests of those who speak out publicly against PA policy and practice.⁵⁰ Yezid Sayyigh, “Policing the People, Building the State,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2011, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep12747?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Torture, and as the recent case of Nizar Banat shows, even assassination is commonplace.

Protests and demonstrations are also routinely banned or repressed in the West Bank. Indeed, in 2008, when the entire world was protesting one of Israel’s most ferocious bombardments of Gaza, one of the few places in the world where there was zero protest was in the West Bank, due to PA bans.⁵¹ Jeff Halper, “Abolishing the Palestinian Authority is an Urgent Prerequisite to Liberation,” Canadian Dimension, February 27, 2012. The PA explicitly works to prevent a situation in which, as former PA minister Ghassan Khatib acknowledged, “if the protests get out of control,” the result would be “a new intifada.”⁵² Quoted in Jonathan Cook, “Abbas in Firing Line over Security Cooperation with Israel,” Middle East Eye, July 10, 2014. The PA has contingencies for the outbreak of uprisings. One example of this is a report that in the event of mass protests against Israel’s planned annexation of the West Bank, the PA plans to turn over a stockpile of thousands of guns and armored vehicles—which they have under license from Israel—to an Israeli military base in an illegal settlement outside of Ramallah.⁵³ Adnan Abu Amar, “Israel’s Nightmare: The Dissolution of the Palestinian Authority,” Al-Jazeera, July 27, 2020.

These repressive functions are designed entirely to protect Israel. With Palestinians in the West Bank facing the daily violence of apartheid—home demolitions, bulldozing of orchards, forcible displacement, harassment, and aggression of IDF soldiers at checkpoints, and mass arrests, like Operation Brother’s Keeper in 2014—the Palestinian Authority security does not lift a finger to protect them. But should Palestinians come out to protest or resist these actions, to throw a stone in defense of their land, the PA sweeps in to arrest, beat, and perhaps torture those responsible. “There is no reciprocal security arrangement to protect Palestinians.” Noura Erakat writes: “In its futile attempt to demonstrate its capacity to govern, the Palestinian leadership has relieved Israel of at least a portion of its military burden as an occupying power and aided it in controlling the native population.”⁵⁴ Noura Erakat, Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, (Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2019), 218.

The role the PA plays is one of reaction. Both of its functions, as a belabored NGO lobbying for grants and aid to fulfill some humanitarian tasks and as a security contractor for Israel, reduce it to a subcontracted manager for Israeli settler colonialism. While relieving some of Israel’s burden in maintaining the racist order, it also puts a Palestinian face on apartheid and wraps the grim reality of life under occupation with the tawdry veil of an illusory autonomy. Meaningful reform seems out of the question because its primary functions are an impediment to the tasks of liberation.

While our argument largely concerns that of the PA, we think it important to at least mention parallels we see with Hamas. Hamas has faced specific conditions that have shaped its relationship with Israel differently than the PA. After winning the democratic leadership of the Palestinian Legislative Council and then being confined to administrative control of Gaza, Hamas faces a situation of a multipronged vise of near-complete Israeli blockade punctuated by regular military assault, concentrated de-development of its economy, international political isolation spearheaded by the US’s designation of it as a “terrorist organization,” and the Islamophobic demonization that shapes its public image.

Nonetheless, Hamas’s shift to “governance” of Gaza has tempered its viability as a vehicle for resistance. This is shaped by the similar petty bourgeois class base they share with Fatah in its leadership and activist ranks.⁵⁵ See Paola Caridi, Hamas: From Resistance To Government (New York: Seven Stories, 2012), 217. Similar to Fatah, this has resulted in adaptation to an acceptance of a two-state solution within the 1967 borders in its 2017 Charter. Like Fatah, the motivation of self-preservation—albeit in the conditions of Gaza—has meant that Gaza’s security forces play a repressive role in quashing political dissent. As Gaza-based Haidar Eid writes: “After the 2006 election, Hamas took on the role of prison warden, entrenching itself and regulating the lives of two million prisoners. Day by day, we have seen this authority shift from a stage of resistance to the siege, to coexisting with it, and finally reaching a stage of taking advantage of it.”⁵⁶ Haidar Eid, “Palestinian Elections: Reconstructing the Status Quo,” Mondoweiss, February 11, 2021. Additionally, similar to the strategy of Fatah, Hamas pursues sponsorship of other regimes for diplomacy and secures donor and aid funding. This has meant that it strives, to quote Toufic Haddad, to “insert itself within the regional order, rather than being a part of fundamentally transforming it.”⁵⁷ Toufic Haddad, “Leaked Hamas Charter Illustrates Movement Maturation as a Political Actor,” Mondoweiss, April 3, 2017.

Flipping the Tables: the Unity Intifada as the Way Forward

This May’s “Unity Intifada” illustrated an alternative to the PA’s version of symbolic “resistance,” top-down rule, and NGO-ization of the Palestinian liberation struggle. The uprising displayed instead the potential for creativity in action and tactics, widespread mobilization in defiance of any and all authoritarianism, and a political determination and antagonism that has been building up over the past several years. It began with the grassroots campaign in defense of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Youth activists from East Jerusalem—most famously, Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd who themselves hail from Sheikh Jarrah, and whose family has faced displacement from the area for decades—refused mounting Zionist harassment and highlighted their town’s longstanding struggle against ethnic cleansing.

It should be noted that East Jerusalem, while part of the occupied territories, has been effectively annexed by Israel. While it faces some of the most egregious aspects of Israeli military occupation, its special status paradoxically has assisted in cohering effective grassroots efforts for two main reasons. The first is that its status allows East Jerusalemites to travel into Israel and allows Palestinians from inside Israel to travel to East Jerusalem more easily, while those from the West Bank are far more curtailed in their freedom of movement.

The second is that the Palestinian Authority and its security forces are not allowed to operate in any part of Jerusalem. Thus, these youth organizers in East Jerusalem were able to coordinate much more directly with Palestinians inside Israel, and they organized and brought Palestinian citizens of Israel to protests, sit-ins, and large outdoor iftars in Sheikh Jarrah in shows of defiance against the occupier and its violence and threat of displacement. Protests even shut down a major highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—an act that would have been necessarily ineffective against Israel within the West Bank and without the connections across Israel’s fragmentation.

The years of recent protest in East Jerusalem, from 2014 to 2017, have built up an organizational memory and practice in the city, allowing it to blossom without the interference of the PA and its security forces. This has allowed the protests and campaigns to retain independence from political parties, and, of course, to act without intervention of Israel’s oppressive puppet regime clamping down on Palestinian resistance before Israel is able to. Recent protests have therefore brought together longtime Palestinian organizers and activists, while activating many new, younger Palestinians, across the East Jerusalem–Israel divide. Protests against Israeli forces’ and settler organizations’ encroachment at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, too—such as the protest campaign in 2017 against Israeli security measures there, and once again during the May uprising—have only been possible due to the absence of PA forces, which have managed to clamp down on attempts at mass demonstrations within the West Bank. For example, the PA regularly represses Land Day protests in West Bank cities, preventing Palestinians from marching to mark the anniversary of the 1976 protests and preventing a show of solidarity with their fellow Palestinians inside Israel.

In fact, it was Palestinians inside Israel who waged some of the fiercest resistance during the May uprising. In cities like Haifa, Yaffa, and Lydd, thousands demonstrated, rejecting Israel’s rhetoric that Palestinians and Israelis live in “mixed cities” inside Israel. Indeed, Palestinians inside Israel are ghettoized, prevented from completing their studies in their own language, excluded from most housing and work opportunities, and face racist policing. In the town of Lydd in particular, Palestinian resistance had an insurrectionary character, including raising the Palestinian flag, prompting an Israeli state crackdown in which a state of emergency was declared and a curfew imposed.

Other elements that marked the Unity Intifada, and the potential path forward, included the general strike and massive global solidarity. On May 18, Palestinians waged a general strike across both the occupied territories and inside Israel, the first of such magnitude since the First Intifada of 1987. The call came from the grassroots, with the PA only signing on at the last minute. The return to the general strike must be applauded. While a one-day strike marks symbolic strength and unity in the face of Israel, we would do well to remember that Palestinians have used the strike weapon even before the state of Israel was established. In 1936, when Palestinians fought both the British and the encroaching Zionist movement in a three-year long revolt, Palestinians waged a six-month-long general strike. Looking to Palestinian history before the creation of the PA, whether in the 1987 Intifada or the 1936 Revolt, can remind us of the militancy and effective strategies that Palestinians have used in the not-too-distant past before the creation of the PA.

Finally, the Unity Intifada was supported by massive global solidarity. First at the borders of Jordan and Lebanon, refugees, and those in solidarity with Palestine, protested and demanded their right of return. While the PA and the old Palestinian political parties have effectively dissuaded popular solidarity from across the region, or any action in defiance of the region’s regimes, Palestinians in reality depend upon these forces for their liberation. A return to mass resistance would mean engaging with those Palestinian refugees as well as the millions in solidarity across the region in defiance of their ruling classes. The Unity Intifada also saw Palestinians call for union solidarity efforts, like the blocking of the Zim ship as it tried to dock in ports across the US. This was another escalation in solidarity with Palestine. With the rise in global solidarity and change in narrative worldwide in support of Palestine, we can imagine further support for Palestinian grassroots movements and uprisings in the near future with even greater momentum and effect.

Along with the organizing cohering over the past few years in Palestine is the Tal’aat movement. Formed in 2019 through feminist protest, Tal’aat is a radical feminist group that has been instrumental in pointing out the connection between settler colonialism and sexist violence. It has mobilized against the occupation under a feminist banner and has also been instrumental in shedding light upon the PA’s use of gender-based violence, in particular against recent protests in the wake of Nizar Bana’s assassination. It is no coincidence that the situation for women in Palestine has deteriorated since the Oslo Accords, as economic inequality and NGO-ization pushed aside previous grassroots women’s efforts like those of the First Intifada. Tal’aat represents an alternative to the NGO-ization of women’s issues that has taken center stage in the West Bank since the 1990s and 2000s. It espouses a revolutionary feminism rather than a feminism reliant on European or American funding.

Just as global revolt has shaped consciousness over the past few years and sharpened a global understanding of capitalism, colonialism, and racism, the Unity Uprising also represents a sharpened understanding of settler colonialism and the struggle against it throughout Palestine. The Uprising recognized the unity of Palestinians across Israel’s regime of fragmentation and demanded an end to colonial subjugation in its entirety. To quote activist and commentator Yara Hawari:

Something has indeed changed: Palestinians are reclaiming a shared narrative and struggle from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In doing so, they are recognizing that they face one single regime of oppression, even if it manifests in different ways throughout the fragmented Palestinian communities. Ultimately, just as the ones before it, this uprising has reiterated that the people are the locus of power through which Palestinian liberation must and will be achieved.⁵⁸ Yara Hawari, “Defying Fragmentation and the Significance of Unity: A New Palestinian Uprising,” Al-Shabaka, June 29, 2021.

As the Palestine Economic Week this past June showed, this includes an analysis of how Israel’s occupation and colonialism is intertwined with economic domination. In many circles, this has included an analysis of capitalism as a central problem, too.

These are the first steps for the coherence of a new left in Palestine. “The greatest accomplishment thus far,” writes Budour Hassan, “has been to demonstrate the actuality of liberation … a severance with despair [that] shows that liberation is closer than we had thought.”⁵⁹ Budour Hassan, “Palestine’s Uprising and the Actuality of Liberation,” Madamasr, May 24, 2021. This is happening largely independent of the PA and the traditional factions, and mobilizing both against the Israeli settler colonialism and its junior partners in the Palestinian Authority. The PA has got to go, and its abolition can create space for this creative, unified, youthful movement fighting with new spirit. But we cannot get ahead of ourselves.