[News] 2021 in Palestine: A new generation has finally risen

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeastmonitor.com
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220101-2021-in-palestine-a-new-generation-has-finally-risen/>
2021
in Palestine: A new generation has finally risen
Dr Ramzy Baroud - January 1, 2022
------------------------------

At the onset, 2021 appeared to be another ordinary year, one of unrelenting
Israeli occupation and continued Palestinian misery. While much of that
remained true, the dynamics of the Israeli occupation of Palestine were
challenged by an unprecedented sense of popular unity among Palestinians,
not only in the occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, but among
Palestinian communities in historic Palestine as well.

A prevailing sense of cautious hope has finally replaced the prevalent
sense of despair felt in previous years. With that, a feeling of renewal
and willingness to embrace new political ideas has been registered
throughout Palestine. For example, according to a poll
<http://www.jmcc.org/documentsandmaps.aspx?id=893&fbclid=IwAR1cWxLWzfuAWd0bdi6EJPeOGh2N0JOIL3jzU0jzs6nFo1wM3wPWVL7LBc0>
conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (JMCC) and
published on 22 November, there are more West Bank Palestinians who support
the one-state solution than those who still support the practically defunct
two-state solution, which dominated Palestinian thinking for decades.
Pandemic Takes a Toll

The year, however, began with a focus on something else entirely: the
Covid-19 pandemic. Aside from ravaging besieged and occupied Palestinians,
especially in the Gaza Strip, the pandemic began spreading
<https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2718836/25-cases-covid-19-among-palestinian-detainees-israeli-prison>
among Palestinian prisoners.

In February, the Palestinian Authority, along with international human
rights groups and organisations, criticised
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/health/palestine-condemns-israel-s-blocking-of-vaccine-to-gaza/2146970>
Israel for blocking access to Covid-19 vaccines to the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Sputnik 5 vaccines were donated by Russia, the first country to
contribute to fighting the pandemic in Palestine. Eventually, Palestinian
communities slowly accessed vaccines arriving
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/17/first-batch-of-covax-supplied-vaccined-arrives-for-palestinians>
from the COVAX program. However, the pandemic continued to ravage occupied
Palestine, especially as the Israeli occupation authorities continued
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-demolishes-quarantine-center-in-hebron/1917518>
to block Palestinian preventative measures and to dismantle makeshift
Covid-19 facilities in the occupied territories. According to
<https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/state-of-palestine/> the
website Worldometer, 4,555 Palestinians died as a result of Covid-19, while
432,602 were tested positive for the deadly pandemic.
Cancelled Elections

[image: Another attack on Gaza: Israel squeezing the life of Gaza - Cartoon
[Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]]
<https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/election--scaled.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1>

Another attack on Gaza: Israel squeezing the life of Gaza – Cartoon
[Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

As happened in the previous year, Israel's political crisis quickly
dominated the headlines, as the power struggle between the then Israeli
Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his rivals continued, leading to
Israel's fourth elections within two years. The elections
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-march-23-2021/> in March have
finally changed the Israeli political landscape, thanks to a strange
government coalition cobbled up by Israel's new Prime Minister, Naftali
Bennett
<https://www.npr.org/2021/06/13/1005724415/netanyahu-is-out-naftali-bennett-will-be-installed-as-israels-new-prime-minister>,
on 13 June. The coalition included
<https://time.com/6073019/mansour-abbas-arab-israel-coalition-government/>
Arab politician, Mansour Abbas, whose political party proved instrumental
in the forming of the government.

While Netanyahu and his Likud party quickly retreated to the opposition,
ending a reign spanning over 12 years, Palestinians anticipated their own
elections, which were announced
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/following-us-pressure-abbas-announces-first-elections-in-palestine-in-15-years/>
by PA President Mahmoud Abbas on 15 January.

The PA parliamentary and presidential elections were scheduled
<https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210115-abbas-announces-first-palestinian-elections-in-more-than-15-years>
for 22 May and 31 July, respectively. The two rounds of voting were meant
to be followed by a political arrangement that would end Palestinian
political disunity by ensuring equal representation for all Palestinian
political groups, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, in a revitalised
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Unfortunately, none of this has transpired. Despite positive Palestinian unity
talks
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/14/hamas-says-it-is-ready-to-resume-palestinian-unity-talks>
in Cairo over the course of several weeks*,* Abbas cancelled
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56929547> the scheduled
elections, under the pretext that his decision was made in protest of
Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian voters in East Jerusalem to
participate.

In exchange for blocking Palestinian efforts at ensuring a semblance of
democracy, even under Israeli occupation, Abbas was allowed to return to
Washington's list of allies. Indeed, the US resumed
<https://www.voanews.com/a/middle-east_us-resumes-aid-palestinians-235-million/6204282.html>
its financial aid to Palestinians in April, promising
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-usa-idUSKBN29Y1FB> to
re-open the PLO office in Washington, which was shut down by the Trump
Administration and also pledging to re-open its own consulate in Jerusalem,
which was also closed
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-orders-closure-of-plo-office-in-washington/2018/09/10/7410fe6c-b50c-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html>
by Trump in September 2018.

Despite these gestures, which served to validate the PA again, after four
years of complete marginalisation by the US, the new Biden Administration
offered neither a roadmap for a renewed peace process nor pressured Israel
to end its occupation or to slow down the pace of illegal settlement
expansion in occupied Palestine. In fact, the rate of Israel's settlement
construction has grown exponentially in 2021, with the announcement
<https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/28/middleeast/israel-west-bank-settlements-condemned-intl/index.html>
of Israel's plan to approve thousands of new Israeli housing units in the
West Bank, in October.

*Opinion: Israeli settler violence pushes Palestinians to the point of no
return
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211228-israeli-settler-violence-pushes-palestinians-to-the-point-of-no-return/>*
>From Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza

Israel's provocative actions would have gone unnoticed by the international
community if it were not for the Palestinian people who took a collective
stance, using all forms of resistance, from Sheikh Jarrah, in East
Jerusalem, to Gaza. The whole episode, which eventually led to an Israeli
war on Gaza in May, began with a routine Israeli attempt at ethnically
cleansing
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/sheikh-jarrah-evictions-ethnic-cleansing-meshaal/2234482>
Palestinians from several East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, including Sheikh
Jarrah and Silwan. Palestinian Jerusalemites, however, began organising
against an Israeli court order to evict them from their homes, to be then
taken over by Israeli Jewish settlers, as has been the habit for many years.

The popular resistance in Sheikh Jarrah was met with extreme Israeli
violence, involving armed settlers, Israeli police and occupation forces,
leading to the wounding
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/7/jerusalem-dozens-of-palestinians-hurt-in-al-aqsa-clashes>
of at least 178 Palestinian protesters on 7 May. Palestinians throughout
the occupied territories began mobilising in solidarity with their brethren
in Al-Quds, leading to another devastating Israeli war
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/world/middleeast/jerusalem-protests-aqsa-palestinians.html>
on the Gaza Strip on 10 May. The war resulted
<https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-militant-groups-gaza-strip-hamas-f1e2a12119da7b34c1553c3ca0821612>
in the killing of over 250 Palestinians, thousands more wounded and
mass-scale destruction.

The Israeli war was meant to distract from the events taking place in East
Jerusalem. The Israeli designs, however, completely failed as Palestinians
in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Haifa and many other Palestinian towns,
villages and refugee camps marched
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/palestinians-protest-west-bank-jerusalem-israel/>
in solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza, articulating a political
discourse which, for the first time, was devoid of factional references.

To quell the Palestinian rebellion, Israel dispatched
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/05/israel-opt-end-brutal-repression-of-palestinians-protesting-forced-displacement-in-occupied-east-jerusalem/>
thousands of soldiers and police, along with armed Jewish settlers and
militias in the occupied territories and Israel itself. Many Palestinians were
killed
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/05/israel-opt-end-brutal-repression-of-palestinians-protesting-forced-displacement-in-occupied-east-jerusalem/>
in resulting clashes and attacks. The May events, however, have
highlighted, not only the unity existing among Palestinians but also the
deep racism that has afflicted all sectors of Israeli society. The notion
that Palestinians of historic Palestine have assimilated with the new
reality and are no longer part of a larger Palestinian body politic, proved
completely false.

*Opinion: The UN war crimes probe is still tarnished by decades of colonial
support for Israel
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211230-the-un-war-crimes-probe-is-still-tarnished-by-decades-of-colonial-support-for-israel/>*
Boycotts, Divestments and the ICC

The Palestinian resistance at home further mobilised civil society around
the world. Rights organisations like Human Rights Watch
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution>and
Israel's own B'tselem
<https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid>
concluded that Israel is an apartheid state.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement received many boosts
throughout the year as companies, such as the ice cream giant, Ben &
Jerry's, decided to divest from the occupied territories and the sport's
multinational corporation, Nike, has decided to end its operations in
Israel entirely, though without rationalising its decision on political
grounds.

Additionally, Norway's largest pension fund, KLP, declared
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/norway-s-largest-pension-fund-divests-from-companies-linked-to-israeli-settlements-1.9971368>
on 5 July that it would no longer invest in firms linked to Israeli
settlements. Later in the year, famous Irish novelist, Sally Rooney,
announced
<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/12/sally-rooney-beautiful-world-where-are-you-israeli-publisher-hebrew>
her refusal to have her bestseller 'Beautiful World, Where Are You'
published by an Israeli company.

Meanwhile, efforts at holding Israeli war criminals accountable at the
International Criminal Court (ICC) continued, unabated. In March, then ICC
Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=210303-prosecutor-statement-investigation-palestine>
the opening of a formal investigation into alleged war crimes in the
occupied Palestinian territories. Although Bensouda is no longer at the
ICC, the Palestinian case remains active, with the hope that international
justice can finally prevail.

Despite the numerous difficulties, the spirit of all Palestinians was
lifted, once more, when the Palestinian Olympic delegation entered
<https://olympics.com/en/video/palestine-s-parade-during-beijing-2008-opening-ceremony>
Tokyo's Olympic Stadium in July, carrying a Palestinian flag. The small
delegation included Palestinians from various regions, cementing
Palestinian unity in culture and sports as well.
Resisting Through Hunger

Meanwhile, Palestinian hunger strikers continued their resistance inside
Israeli prisons, with prisoners like Kayed Fasfous and Meqdad Al-Qawasmi
leading
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211122-palestinian-administrative-detainee-kayed-al-fasfous-wins-battle-for-freedom/>
prolonged hunger strikes of 131 and 113 days, respectively, almost
resulting in their deaths. In a show of further defiance, six Palestinian
prisoners had escaped
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/6/six-palestinians-escape-from-high-security-prison-in-israel>
the Gilboa prison on 6 September. Though they were all caught and reportedly
tortured
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/15/israeli-intelligence-torturing-palestinian-prisoners-lawyers>
following their re-arrest, the news captivated all Palestinians, who felt
empowered with what they perceived to be a heroic quest for freedom.

However, many Palestinian prisoners also suffered at the hands of the PA
itself, which continued its practice of unlawful detention and torture of
dissenting Palestinian activists. The death
<https://www.dw.com/en/palestinian-authority-critic-nizar-banat-dies-after-arrest/a-58037947>
of Nizar Banat, at the hands of PA security forces on 24 June, led to mass
Palestinian protests where thousands of people demanded accountability and
justice for the PA critic who was beaten to death.

2021 was a year of war, loss and destruction for Palestinians. Yet, it was
also a year of unity, cultural achievements and hope, as a new generation
is finally taking centre stage, asserting its identity and its centrality
to the future of its homeland.


The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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