[News] Armed vs. peaceful resistance – What you need to know about Muqawama in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Armed vs. peaceful resistance – What you need to know about Muqawama in
Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Saturday 22-June-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/armed-vs-peaceful-resistance-what-you-need-to-know-about-muqawama-in-gaza/

The word Muqawama in Palestinian lexicon does not need elaboration beyond
the immediate meaning it generates among ordinary Palestinians. Only
recently, and specifically after the Oslo peace accords and the sudden
infusion of western-funded NGOs, did such terms as ‘peaceful resistance’
and ‘non-violent resistance’ begin to emerge within some circles of
Palestinian intellectuals. These phrases, however, never truly registered
as central to the collective discourse of Palestinians. For them, Muqawama
remained: one – indivisible, all encompassing.

This assertion should hardly suggest that Palestinians did not resist, in
the various stages of their struggle, using non-armed methods. In fact,
they have done so for generations. The six-month general strike of April
1936 was a culmination of civil disobedience tactics that had been used for
years prior to that date. It continued to be used, since then, throughout
Palestine, for a century.

The difference between the Palestinian perception of resistance and the
western-promoted notion is that Palestinians do not see Muqawama as a
liability, nor do they seek to explain, contextualize or justify forms of
collective resistance they use. Historically, only circumstances determine
the type, time and place for armed or unarmed resistance.

The western notion, however, is predicated on the concept of
preferentiality, as in one strategy is better than the other, and that one
is ethical, while the other is not. In doing so, this judgmental attitude
creates a clear distinction between the ‘peaceful’ Palestinians, dubbed
moderate, and the violent ones, dubbed radical.

Moreover, western definitions of resistance are selective. The Ukrainians,
for example, are permitted to use arms to repel the Russian army.
Palestinians are condemned for doing so when Israel invades and carries out
an unparalleled genocide in Gaza.

Though some promoters of certain types of resistance are, perhaps, well
intentioned, they seem to fully ignore the historical roots of such
language. Yet, by engaging in such condemnatory discourse, they, wittingly
or otherwise, reproduce old colonial perceptions of the colonized. Similar
language defined colonial Europe’s relationship with virtually all
colonized spaces: those who resisted were perceived as savages or
terrorists; those who did not, were granted no civil or political rights,
only the occasional privilege of not being tortured or killed with impunity.

*Gaza: heart of resistance*

To fully fathom the concept of Muqawama in its Palestinian context, one
only needs to look at Gaza. Though the Strip has historically served as the
center of Palestinian Resistance in both discourse and action, al-Muqawama
here is not entirely an outcome of geography, but rather the collective
experience and identity of those occupying this tiny space of 365 square
kilometers.

70 per cent of Gaza’s population are refugees. They were ethnically
cleansed, along with nearly 800,000 Palestinians, from historic Palestine
during the Nakba, the catastrophic destruction and ethnic cleansing of
Palestine and her people in 1948. They are survivors of massacres, which
were part of a major military campaign that saw the ruin or emptying of
whole villages, towns and communities.

Due to Gaza’s small size and the nature of its topography – flat land with
little resources – the suffering of the refugees of Gaza was particularly
extreme. Trapped between a persisting past of loss, suffering and
unrestored rights and a present of siege and grinding poverty, it was only
rational for Gaza to be the spearhead of Palestinian Resistance throughout
the years. Often, the degree of Israeli brutality determined the degree of
Palestinian response, since violence begets violence and deadly sieges and
genocidal wars beget Al-Aqsa Flood type of resistance operations.

Though general strikes and other forms of civil disobedience were
abundantly used by Gaza’s resisting population throughout the years –
especially in the period between the Israeli occupation of 1967 and the
so-called Israeli military ‘redeployment’ of 2005 – armed resistance has
always been a critical component of Palestinian Muqawama.

Despite its geographic isolation, which has long preceded the latest layer
of Israeli siege imposed on the Strip in 2007, the Gaza population, as
judged by the constant state of rebellion and political discourse, has
always viewed itself as part of a larger and more coherent Palestinian
whole. One of the reasons behind this is that collective Palestinian memory
served as a generational bonding agent that kept Palestinian communities
attached to Palestine as a tangible reality, and also as an idea.

The other reason pertains to the relationship that Gaza had with Egypt, the
Strip’s former military administrator and once potential liberator.

Though Egypt administered Gaza between 1949 and 1967 – with a brief few
months’ exception during the war of 1956 – Cairo did not exactly see Gaza
as a territorial or even as a political extension that is permanently
linked to the country’s body politic. True, Egyptian President, Jamal Abdul
Nasser, was the caretaker of Gaza and attempted to shape its political
institutions, in fact, the very armed resistance – for example, the
Palestine Liberation Organization (1964) and the Palestine Liberation Army
(1964) – Gaza’s local leaderships and political elites largely embraced
Egypt as strategic depth, not an alternative leadership, let alone
homeland. If any confusion existed, the matter was resolved, anyway,
following the humiliating defeat of Arab armies at the hands of the
US-backed Israeli military in the June 1967 war, known as the Naksa or the
‘setback’.

Though the post-war version of the PLO remained largely reliant on Arab
support and political validation, with time, it became more Palestinian in
terms of decision-making. The PLA, on the other hand, which only operated
under the auspices of other Arab militaries, became marginalized, if at all
relevant. But even with the sidelining of the Arabs and marginalization of
the PLA, Palestinians continued to resist. Their new resistance, however,
was modelled around Palestinian historical experiences. This history of
resistance is rife with examples, which started long before the
establishment of Israel on the ruins of Palestine, and continued after the
Nakba with the rise of the Fidayeen Movement, whose roots trace back to
Gaza.

When Gaza fell under Israeli military occupation in 1967, so did the West
Bank. Though all historic Palestine was now captive to Israel and its
totalistic Zionist discourse, the Occupation, coupled with the defeat of
Arab armies, only accentuated a Palestinian identity that had little
overlaps with regional Arab priorities – be it Jordanian, as was the case
in the West Bank, or Egyptian, as in the case of Gaza.

This new reality did not automatically cancel the historic rapport between
Palestine and the Arab world. However, it did underscore a growing sense of
Arab political provincialism and a growing sense of Palestinian nationalism
that began evolving into a new set of political significances and
boundaries.

Ironically, armed Palestinian resistance, which developed outside the realm
of Arab governments and armies, only grew stronger following the Naksa.
This was true in the case of Jordan and Lebanon-based Palestinian
Resistance. However, this seeming contradiction has been manifested in Gaza
since 7 October, more than any other time or place in the past.

Home-grown Palestinian resistance in Gaza has paralyzed the Israeli army to
the point of failing to achieve any real military or strategic objective in
its war on the Palestinians. Moreover, fighters, manufacturing most of
their own weapons, have arguably inflicted more damage on the Israeli army
than entire Arab armies in previous wars.

It will take years for the psychological outcomes of this war to be fully
appreciated. However, numbers already speak of a changing perception. Over
70 per cent of Palestinians now believe that armed resistance is the way
forward, a direct and decisive challenge to the perceptions held
immediately after the Oslo Accords and during the early phase of the
so-called peace process. Back then, many Palestinians genuinely believed
that a negotiated solution is the shortest way to a Palestinian State.

Chances are armed resistance will continue to grow, not only in Gaza but in
the West Bank as well. A nascent armed movement, mostly focused in the
northern region of the West Bank, will likely continue to develop as well,
modelling itself, whenever possible, around the ideas, strategies and
values of the Gaza Resistance. Indeed, a different kind of Palestinian
unity is now forming.

*Changing Attitudes*

But is this the end of the Palestinian quest for Arab liberators?

In a pre-recorded statement on 28 October, the military spokesman for the
Al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of Hamas – uttered a few words that
carried profound meaning. “We’re not asking you to defend the children of
Gaza with your armies and tanks, God forbid,” he said, in a sarcastic
message to Arab governments. Those few words were some of the most analyzed
remarks made by Abu Obeida, whose popularity in the Arab world has soared
since 7 October, along with that of Hamas and other Palestinian movements
in Gaza.

Though Abu Obeida’s language remained committed to religious, cultural and
social values held in common with other Arab and Muslim nations, the masked
fighter’s political language is now largely situated within a Palestinian
discourse. His statements, however, are an obvious departure from Hamas’s
own perception of the responsibilities of mostly Arabs, but also Muslim
governments towards Palestine. Hamas’s original charter seemed aimed at
mobilizing the Arabs as much as it did the Palestinians.

“Ya ummatuna al-Alarabiya” and “ya ummatuna al-Islamiyah” are the standard
form through which Al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian resistance
groups call upon Arabs and Muslims. However, considering the growing
involvement of non-Arab and non-Muslim countries in standing up to Israel’s
genocide in Gaza, a third term is now almost always present in these
statements: ‘Ya ahrar al-alem’ – a call to the ‘free people of the world’.

Equating between Arabs and any other nation anywhere in the world, and the
cynical reference to Arab armies – let alone the near complete absence of
any demand by Palestinian groups for Arab military intervention – have all
signaled an obvious shift in the attitude of Palestinian Resistance. Gaza,
the heart of this resistance, is now sending a message to all Palestinians,
that liberation can only originate from Palestine itself.

This attitude is a relatively new phenomenon.

*Back to the Start*

One of the earliest and most powerful calls for resistance, then referred
to as Jihad, was not made by a Palestinian, but a Syrian preacher at his
final public sermon at the Al-Istiqlal Mosque in Haifa on 9 November, 1935.
Palestinians have been resisting for years. But what made the call by Izz
Al-Din Al-Qassam particularly special is that it contributed to the
three-year rebellion against British and Zionist colonialism which followed
the strike of 1936.

Al-Qassam’s political thought may have matured in Palestine, but it
developed in Syria and Egypt. Al-Qassam had fled French colonialism in 1920
only to engage in another anti-colonial struggle, this time involving the
British and their Zionist allies in Palestine.

“I have taught you the matters of your religion,” the Sheikh, now actively
pursued by British police, said in his last sermon. “I have taught you the
affairs of your homeland,” he continued, before raising his voice louder
with an impassioned plea, “To the Jihad, o Muslims. To the Jihad.”

A Syrian Arab, urging Muslims from a Palestinian town to engage in a holy
struggle was a perfectly accepted and rational notion back then. These
layers of identity, since then, however, have fragmented to create
alternative identities, thus relationships.

Al-Qassam himself was killed, along with a small band of his Palestinian
followers in the orchards of Ya’bad, not long after he left Haifa in
preparation for a countrywide revolt – one that only happened after his
death.

When Al-Qassam Brigades was officially formed in Gaza in 1991, it may have
attempted to model itself after the Al-Qassamite bands of yesteryears. But
their lack of means, Israel’s policy of assassination, in addition to the
restrictions and crackdowns by the Palestinian Authority – which managed
Gaza until the Hamas-Fatah clash of 2007 – made it difficult for such an
army to exist.

Ultimately, the group managed to achieve what Al-Qassam himself could not,
forming a resistance army consisting of small units of fighters that was
able to fight and sustain a liberation war using guerrilla warfare tactics
for a long time.

Unlike Al-Qassam’s old rag-tag army of poorly trained fighters, the new
Qassamites are well-trained, make their own weapons and have managed to
achieve what standing Arab armies and traditional warfare have failed. The
same conclusion can be drawn about the Quds Brigades, the military branch
of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) Movement.

But even well-trained and equipped fighters cannot fight, let alone
survive, the kind of Israeli firepower that has destroyed the majority of
Gaza. According to The Washington Post, the number of bombs dropped on Gaza
in a single week – between 7 October and 14 October – estimated at 6,000
bombs, was almost as many as what the US has dropped on Afghanistan in one
year.

So, how did the Palestinian resistance survive? The answer here has less to
do with military technology or tactics and more with intangible values. If
this question is asked in Gaza, the answer is most likely to point towards
such notions as ‘ruh al-muqawama’ – spirit or soul of the Resistance.
Though such intangible concepts cannot easily be qualified, let alone
quantified, according to western academia, the truth is that armed
resistance in Palestine would have not survived the Israeli onslaught if it
were not for the sumud – steadfastness – of the Palestinian people.

In other words, if it were not for the Palestinian people themselves, no
group of Palestinian fighters, no matter how well-trained and prepared,
would have sustained the task of fighting the Israeli military machine,
backed by Washington and its other western partners.

Muqawama for Palestinians is not an intellectual conversation, or an
academic theory. It is not an outcome of a political strategy, either. In
the words of Frantz Fanon, referencing wars of liberation, “we revolt
simply because (…) we can no longer breathe”. Indeed, Palestinian revolts
and resistance are a direct outcome of the Palestinian people’s refusal to
accept the injustices of settler-colonialism, military occupation,
protracted sieges and the denial of basic political rights.

For Muqawama to be fully appreciated as a unique Palestinian phenomenon, it
cannot be delinked from history; neither can it be explored separate from
the ‘popular embrace’ – Al-Hadina al-Sha’biyah lil-Muqawamah
al-Filistiniyah – of the Palestinian people themselves, who have always
served as the original source and the main protector of Palestinian
resistance in all of its forms.

*-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).*
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