[News] Reflections on Palestine Solidarity

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Below is an article from the upcoming 5th 
Anniversary issue of Left Turn magazine. Because 
of the timeliness and usefulness of the article, 
the authors and editors wanted to make it 
available now so that it can be distributed and 
discussed widely. This article comes at a 
critical time for the movement and will be very 
helpful for a wide range of activists so please 
forward to your listservs, post to websites, and 
share it with others you work with.

Challenging the New Apartheid: Reflections on Palestine Solidarity
by Rafeef Ziadah, Adam Hanieh, Hazem Jamjoum
from <http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=855&type=W>Left Turn
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=855&type=W

The Palestinian solidarity movement has made 
significant gains since the onset of the Second 
Palestinian Intifada in September 2000. Over the 
last five years, a new generation of Palestinian 
solidarity activists has mobilized in the 
streets, campuses, and schools across North 
America. Among the left and progressive 
movements, there is broad acceptance of the 
proposition that US foreign policy in the Middle 
East is based on support for Israel as a 
“colonial-settler” state, to draw upon the title 
of Maxime Rodinson’s classic work. Every major 
mobilization against the war in Iraq has seen the 
Palestinian struggle placed up front in opposing 
the US war machine, and most activists new to the 
movement are introduced to the Palestinian 
struggle and history through an anti-Zionist perspective.

This is an unprecedented achievement. Throughout 
the second half of the 20th century, radical and 
progressive movements in the advanced capitalist 
countries generally refused to take an 
unequivocal stance in support of Palestinian 
liberation. Zionist organizations were active in 
the movements against the Vietnam War, South 
African apartheid, and other progressive causes. 
Palestinian solidarity was marginal to the large 
mass struggles that took place in the latter half 
of the 20th century, and the left commonly 
countenanced a supposedly “progressive Zionist” stance.

While the Zionist movement remains extremely 
well-funded and dominates the mainstream press 
there has also been an important shift in this 
regard. Zionism has shown itself as a political 
current completely aligned with the pro-imperial 
policies of the US administration in an openly 
racist and anti-emancipatory fashion. There are 
many indications of this beyond the policies of 
the Israeli government. Throughout North America, 
Zionist student groups openly invite 
representatives of the CIA, US Department of 
Defense, and the Canadian Security and 
Intelligence Services to speak at meetings they 
sponsor. The witch hunt against progressive 
academics and activists is led by an alliance of 
neo-conservative journalists, academics, and 
think tanks with Zionist groups such as the David 
Project and Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch. Pipes 
explicitly advocates that US academics should 
work to serve US foreign policy interests; first 
and foremost, the defense of Israel.

The pro-imperialist character of the Zionist 
movement has impacted their ability to mobilize 
students on university campuses. While their paid 
organizers are active they are unable to win a 
significant hearing amongst students and lack the 
ability to do effective outreach on the ground. 
Each day brings news of initiatives around the 
world to isolate the Israeli state through 
boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Zionist 
propaganda is increasingly responsive to the 
campaigns of the Palestinian solidarity movement, 
and a quick read of the Zionist press indicates a 
widespread fear that they are losing the 
ideological battle in an unprecedented fashion.

Moving into 2006, however, it is clear that the 
Palestinian solidarity movement is also faced 
with significant challenges in the coming period. 
In some cities throughout North America, 
Palestine activists have lost momentum given the 
shifts on the ground. The routinization of the 
Intifada and the seeming intractability of 
Israel’s apartheid wall have led to a certain 
demoralization and loss of focus. Activists are 
confused about how to respond to the new 
situation following the victory of Hamas in the 
Palestinian Legislative Council elections. The 
purpose of this article is to set out a balance 
sheet of the solidarity movement in North America 
and to begin a discussion of where to go next.

Current political situation

An enormous shift has taken place with Hamas’ 
overwhelming victory in the elections for the 
Palestinian Legislative Council on January 25, 
2006. The popular vote for Hamas was principally 
a rejection of the disastrous negotiations 
process that followed the signing of the Oslo 
Accords in 1993. Countless voices have criticized 
the Oslo Accords as a fig-leaf for the ongoing 
colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, far 
removed from the avowed goal of a genuinely 
independent Palestinian state. Under the cover of 
“peace” negotiations, Israel continued to 
encircle and isolate Palestinian towns and 
villages with its network of settlements, bypass roads, and checkpoints.

The Israeli military controlled Palestinian 
transit with a complicated system of permits and 
movement restrictions. These isolated population 
islands were given the trappings of autonomy but 
effective control remained in the hands of the 
Israeli state. Oslo (and the subsequent 
agreements) aimed at having Palestinians police 
themselves while allowing Israel to deepen this 
system of apartheid. “Peace” has simply acted as 
newspeak to mask the apartheid blueprint.

Hamas’ victory is a striking indictment of this 
so-called “peace process.” Promoted with the 
deliberate deceit of Western governments and the 
corporate media, the myth of negotiations was 
fully shared in by the leadership of the 
Palestinian Authority (PA), most particularly by 
individuals such as Palestinian President Abu 
Mazen and Prime Minister Abu Ala. The PA 
leadership came to represent submission and 
surrender under the banner of peaceful 
negotiations and empty condemnation of violence. 
Indeed, immediately prior to the Legislative 
Council elections, Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal 
pointed out that “the experiment of fifty years 
taught us this road was futile” and Hamas would 
not continue to deceive the Palestinian people with this “political fiction.”

If Hamas makes good of its promise not to sustain 
these structures of occupation, this will be a 
huge setback for Israeli and US interests in the 
region. The situation, however, defies simplicity 
due to the labyrinthine network of factions and 
interests located throughout the PA apparatus. 
The Legislative Council is a weak body and 
considerable power officially remains in the 
hands of Abu Mazen and the Presidential Office. 
The security forces—in particular the 
Preventative Security branch—remains a Fatah-led 
body under the nominal control of Abu Mazen. 
Hamas itself, particularly in the Gaza Strip, 
maintains a strong network of armed cadre.

A number of commentators have raised the fear 
that the election results could herald a repeat 
of the 1991 Algerian experience, where the 
election victory of the Islamic party FIS was 
overthrown by a French-backed FLN military coup 
and led to prolonged civil war. Any repeat 
experience in the Palestinian context would 
undoubtedly see the involvement of the Israeli 
military and security apparatus in both provoking 
and maintaining internal armed strife. There is 
no doubt that Hamas is cognizant of this threat, 
repeatedly stating that it supports a government 
of national unity and refusing to being drawn 
into armed clashes with other Palestinian 
factions. Nevertheless, covert Israeli support 
for such an eventuality is a real and concrete possibility.

A key question will be how Hamas manages the 
contradiction between its commitment to the 
national struggle and maintaining the structures 
of the PA. The economic dependency of the PA will 
not disappear with the Hamas victory, although 
the political character of this relationship has 
been made strikingly obvious with threats by the 
US and EU to cut funding. It remains to be seen 
whether Hamas finds alternate sources of support, 
attempts to implement some form of wealth 
re-distribution or strategy of popular reliance, 
or begins to redefine its politics to become more 
acceptable to the West. While the latter appears 
unlikely at this stage, it is certainly not 
possible for the situation to remain static.

This contradiction is not of Hamas’ making and is 
precisely a consequence of the structural 
limitations put in place by the Oslo/Apartheid 
process. The only way out of this bind is to 
break with the conception that the Palestinian 
struggle is principally about what happens in the 
West Bank and Gaza Strip. A conscious aim of the 
Oslo process was to narrow the Palestinian 
struggle to a dispute over land percentages in 
the West Bank and to sever any link between 
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 
those who remained in 1948 historic Palestine as 
Israeli citizens, and those exiled outside of 
their homeland. Key to this was the destruction 
of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as 
a national liberation movement and its 
replacement by the Palestinian Authority “state” building project.

The formation of the PLO in the 1960s was a 
critical step forward for the Palestinian 
struggle as it unified the dispersed Palestinian 
nation across many generations and countries. The 
bed-rock demand of this struggle was the right of 
return: the insistence that Palestinians had the 
right to return to their homes and lands from 
which they had been exiled. A key feature of all 
negotiations since Oslo was an attempt to 
undermine this demand, reducing it to the 
symbolic return of a few thousand Palestinians to 
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, 
despite the open willingness of individuals such 
as Abu Mazen to acquiesce to such attempts, 
Palestinians across the globe remain united 
behind a full return to historic Palestine. 
Central to the dynamics of the coming period will 
be what happens to these broader Palestinian 
national structures and the possible 
reinvigoration of the right of return movement.

Apartheid analysis

The overdue end of the Oslo process and its 
attempt to narrow the “Palestinian question” to a 
state-building project in the West Bank and Gaza 
Strip opens enormous opportunities in the coming 
period. In particular, the space has opened for 
renewing an analysis of Israel as a colonial, 
settler state based on a system of apartheid 
resembling apartheid South Africa.

Israel is an apartheid state not just because of 
its policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 
Israeli state defines itself as a Jewish state 
and, therefore, cannot be a state for all its 
citizens. More than 90% of 1948 occupied 
Palestine is land that only Jewish people can 
control or develop. The apartheid character has 
been clear from Israel’s inception. It is 
illustrated by the fact that Palestinian refugees 
are prevented from returning to their homes and 
lands from which they were expelled. In contrast, 
any person of Jewish descent from anywhere in the 
world may become an Israeli citizen under the so-called Law of Return.

This apartheid analysis provides an extremely 
powerful strategy for our movement. It bridges 
all parts of the Palestinian people: those who 
are citizens of Israel, those living in the West 
Bank and Gaza Strip, and those in exile. It is a 
strategy grounded in the right of return of 
Palestinian refugees to their homes and lands. It 
also makes sense: equality of all in a democratic 
state regardless of religion or ethnicity.

The analytic link with South African apartheid 
helps to clarify the real nature of Zionism as a 
reactionary and exclusivist colonial project. The 
strategic demands of boycott, divestment, and 
sanctions that we put forward help to illustrate 
the powerful ties between North American and 
European capital and the Zionist state. We can 
also build upon the experiences and lessons of 
the earlier anti-apartheid movement.

There is a powerful momentum building around the 
world for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions 
(BDS) campaign. On July 9, 2005 a call was made 
by over 170 Palestinian organizations to launch a 
global BDS campaign. Churches in North America 
have begun to investigate the possibility of 
divestment. In Norway, the first provincial 
council to have adopted a boycott of South 
African apartheid recently did the same in 
regards to Israel. Twenty Quebec organizations, 
including the Fédération des Femmes du Québec 
(FFQ) and the provincial union of CEGEP teachers, 
have endorsed a new campaign to boycott Israeli 
products and companies supporting Israeli apartheid.

The Zionist movement is fully cognizant of the 
implications of this movement. At the University 
of Toronto, the Arab Students Collective recently 
held their second annual Israeli Apartheid Week. 
The week received widespread coverage and 
pro-Zionist groups such as Hillel, Bnai Brith, 
and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center 
pressured to have the word apartheid removed from 
the event’s name. In the words of Avi Benlolo, 
Canadian director of the Friends of the Simon 
Wiesenthal Center, “seeing the name will register 
in the minds of students that Israel is an 
apartheid state, and that is an issue.” In 2006, 
Israeli Apartheid Week was also held at Oxford 
University, Montreal, and Kitchener-Waterloo.

The solidarity movement and the national movement

It is important to draw a distinction between the 
solidarity movement and the Palestinian national 
movement. While these two wings can support and 
strengthen each other—and steps forward on one 
side will push forward the other—rebuilding the 
Palestinian national movement is a task of 
Palestinians in exile, not of the solidarity 
movement. For this reason, the regrouping and 
organization of Palestinians in exile is of 
critical importance at the current juncture.

There is often considerable confusion on this 
point. Solidarity activists frequently comment 
that life would be so much easier if there was a 
“Palestinian ANC” to clearly articulate goals and 
strategy of our movement. Nevertheless, we need 
to work with the reality that exists. 
Non-Palestinian solidarity activists cannot 
substitute themselves for the lack of Palestinian 
leadership. But building an effective solidarity 
movement that consistently tries to make links 
with Palestinian initiatives can push forward and 
inspire the reorganization of the broader Palestinian national movement.

The PLO’s signature on the apartheid blueprint of 
Oslo rendered the institutions of the national 
movement (the PLO and the Palestine National 
Council—Palestinians’ parliament in exile) a 
hollow shell. The national leadership transformed 
itself into the PA; the prison warden of the 
Palestinian Bantustans representing no more than 
the minority of Palestinians in 1967 Occupied 
Palestine. Palestinian activists and organizers 
should recognize the centrality of rebuilding the 
institutions of the national movement.

This being said, the Palestinian movement is part 
of a broader anti-imperialist struggle and cannot 
be built in isolation from movements within North 
America. Israel’s apartheid character is 
reinforced through its role in maintaining US 
hegemony in the Middle East region. For this 
reason, the dispossession of the Palestinian 
people is ultimately linked to the fate of US 
imperialism. This is the root explanation for the 
growing convergence between US imperialism and 
the Zionist movement in North America, and its 
opposite reflection in the anti-war movement. In 
countries as far apart as Iraq and Venezuela, we 
are witnessing a resurgence of popular movements 
across the globe. These struggles are beginning 
to roll back the power of US imperialism, and our 
Palestinian solidarity work must continue to make 
real and effective links with these struggles. 
These struggles will be central to pushing 
forward the struggle for Palestinian liberation, 
and they provide a basis for optimism in the coming period.

The role of Palestinian grassroots activists who 
straddle both the solidarity and national 
movements is vital to the success of this 
project. Like all minority groups, the supposed 
leadership of established Palestinian communities 
in North America is often tied to dominant 
political parties and interests in North America, 
or to Palestinian sectarian divides. This is 
reflected in strategies that channel the 
community into supporting capitalist electoral 
parties or advocate lobbying tactics that 
emphasize US interests in the region. Part of 
challenging this conservative leadership is to 
build real solidarity with other anti-capitalist 
movements in our cities. We strengthen the 
anti-imperialist character of the Palestinian 
movement when we are active in struggles of 
women, workers, people of color, immigrants, 
prisoners, and particularly indigenous peoples. 
This means being active as real participants in 
these struggles and moving beyond mere lip 
service or sloganeering. It is clear that the 
Palestinian movement is healthiest in those 
cities in North America where this approach 
really does exist in a non-sectarian and honest fashion.

Strengthening our movement

A boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign 
based upon an apartheid analysis can provide an 
overarching framework for our other Palestine 
work. It doesn’t replace the need for outreach, 
education, and action around the myriad of issues 
connected to Palestine such as refugees, the 
apartheid wall, or prisoners. Rather, a BDS 
campaign can answer the question: what to do 
next? It provides a concrete strategic focus that 
raises consciousness around Palestine as we carry 
it out. Pushing a divestment motion through a 
union requires sustained work to convince the 
membership of Israel’s apartheid character. 
Recent successes show that these demands are 
winnable and can provide tangible gains.

The experience of many divestment campaigns thus 
far has shown the difficulties with localized 
campus activism. The high turnover rate of 
students, combined with the fact that most 
students are in transit, without significant 
roots in the local community, has meant that many 
campus initiatives wither away as central 
organizers graduate and move on. The success of a 
BDS campaign depends on its being based in the 
community of long term residents of a locality. 
Efforts on campuses, if they are to be sustained, 
must be a branch of such a community based 
effort, and not the other way around. Campus 
activism itself should be viewed as an 
opportunity to funnel students’ energies and 
resources into the struggles waged outside of the campus.

Our movement faces many challenges in the coming 
period, challenges that go beyond being 
campus-centered. A persistent problem is the 
widespread sectarianism that exists in many 
cities. A multiplicity of different (usually 
small) groups with little substantive differences 
between them compete against each other for 
political audience and memberships. The roots of 
sectarianism lie in fetishizing minor 
programmatic differences and organizational forms 
ahead of the interests of the movement as a 
whole. Often this sectarianism is brought into 
the movement from competing left organizations or 
other movement divisions (such as those within 
the anti-war movement). We need to change the way 
we relate to each other, realizing that building 
unity in practice is our most powerful weapon. We 
need to truly internalize the reality that the 
best political line is something developed 
through a common political practice—not 
bequeathed to the movement from historical texts 
or pontificating from outside the struggle. This 
means swallowing our egos and realizing that 
whose name goes first on a leaflet, who gets to 
speak, and which banner is the biggest in a 
demonstration is not as important as what we achieve by marching together.

We also need to realize that the larger our 
movement grows the more it will contain 
differences in political interpretation, focus, 
and tactics. We are often paralyzed by sterile 
debates over emphasis on large demonstrations, 
direct action, lobbying, or educational outreach. 
The BDS campaign provides the perfect political 
vehicle for allowing these differences to exist 
while marching in unity. Individuals and 
organizations can support and build a BDS 
campaign with their own focus, constituencies, 
and tactics yet each victory achieved helps to 
strengthen the work of others. Clearly, this 
ideal is best achieved when the individuals and 
organizations involved can put sectarian divides 
aside for the purposes of coordination and cooperation.

A related problem is our weakness in building a 
collective leadership. Too often our movements 
are associated with individual “stars” rather 
than a truly broad and accountable leadership. We 
don’t consciously think through who gets to speak 
and how we can expand the number of people taking 
on responsibility for our work. This can easily 
lead to other problems such as reinforcing 
gendered divisions of labor where the day-to-day 
organizational tasks fall upon women and the 
speaking, writing, and public face of the movement is male.

This lack of a conscious approach to movement 
building also means that we don’t pay enough 
attention to those who are joining activist 
politics for the first time. Few people are 
naturally able to do public speaking, write an 
article, facilitate a meeting, or hand out a 
leaflet. The political education that sustains 
lifelong committed activism needs to be carried 
out consciously—it doesn’t happen through 
osmosis. If we don’t help to foster these skills 
and political education in new activists then our 
movements cannot sustain themselves in the long-run.

All of these problems are reflected in the lack 
of common projects and vision within the 
Palestinian solidarity movement across North 
America. The unevenness of activities across 
different cities points to how much there is to 
learn from each other. The retreat to the “local” 
that characterized much of the anti-globalization 
movement means that we often fetishize this 
fragmentation rather than look for ways to build 
and strengthen the commonalities that we all experience.

The important steps made in the last five years 
towards strengthening popular solidarity for the 
Palestinian struggle lay the groundwork for 
future victories. The possibility of building a 
successful campaign to isolate and end Israeli 
apartheid is probably more likely today than at 
any other time since the establishment of the 
Israeli state. Accompanying this possibility is 
the responsibility to sustain and improve what has been built so far.


*This article, located at 
<http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=855&type=W>http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=855&type=W 
, will appear in the Spring 2006 issue of Left 
Turn magazine, which will be a special issue 
marking the magazine's five year anniversary.

**********

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Adam Hanieh, Hazem Jamjoum, and Rafeef Ziadah are 
active in a variety of groups in Toronto, Canada, 
including Al Awda (Toronto), Sumoud Political 
Prisoners Group, the Arab Students Collective 
(University of Toronto), and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid.

________________________________________

Also check out Left Turn's article collection, 
<http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/hamasvictory.aspx>Palestinian 
Elections: Hamas Defies Predictions and 
Preconceptions, for more analysis on the current 
situation: 
<http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/hamasvictory.aspx>http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/hamasvictory.aspx


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