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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Young
Palestinians are teaching us how to resist</h1>
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<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nadia-naser-najjab"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Nadia Naser-Najjab</a></span> <span class="field
field-publication-date"><span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2015-10-14T21:05:00+00:00">14 October 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/young-palestinians-are-teaching-us-how-resist/14918">https://electronicintifada.net/content/young-palestinians-are-teaching-us-how-resist/14918</a></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
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<p>The Palestinian generation that came of age in the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/first-intifada">first
intifada</a> during the late 1980s has frequently decried its
successors.</p>
<p>Many times we have accused younger generations of being
apolitical and politically uneducated. I have lost count of the
number of times that I have heard the accusation that younger
Palestinians are self-absorbed; that they do not understand the
meaning of collective resistance and sacrifice.</p>
<p>Upon listening to these complaints, you would be forgiven for
believing that the very idea of popular resistance did not exist
until my generation came along. But recent events in Palestine
have shown us just how wrong and unfair these criticisms were —
there was nothing unique about the generation that came of age in
the first intifada.</p>
<p>As philosopher <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/frantz-fanon">Frantz
Fanon</a> taught, popular struggle <a
href="http://www.openanthropology.org/fanonviolence.htm">originates</a>
within the conditions of colonialism itself, within the various
ways in which it impinges upon, and steadily degrades, the
conditions of everyday existence.</p>
<p>Admittedly, some things never change. The response of the Israeli
government to recent events clearly derives from an unwavering and
unyielding colonial mindset. Thus, by virtue of the fact that the
natives cannot have political demands, the Israeli colonial
administrators have deemed the current “disturbances” to be a “law
and order” issue.</p>
<p>Order and tranquillity will be restored once the native
population are engaged with blunt force — this, after all, is the
only language “they” can be expected to understand. For
Palestinians, these words have a wearying familiarity — the likes
of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu">Benjamin
Netanyahu</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/moshe-yaalon-0">Moshe
Yaalon</a> are part of a colonial lineage which can be traced
back to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yitzhak-rabin">Yitzhak
Rabin</a> and beyond.</p>
<p>During the first intifada, Rabin, then defense minister, <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-22/news/mn-431_1_rabin-ordered">called</a>
upon the Israeli army to “break the bones” of Palestinian
protesters; now the current administrators of colonial power
effectively call for the same.</p>
<h2>Challenges</h2>
<p>But some things do undeniably change. Aside from anything else,
the challenges which confront young Palestinians are considerably
more imposing than the ones faced by my generation. During the
first intifada, our main opponent was the Israeli army.</p>
<p>The colonial <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements">settlement</a>
of the West Bank was still limited and the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlers">settlers’</a>
involvement in the first intifada was equally as limited. Today,
many new settlements are constructed in close proximity to
Palestinian population centers.</p>
<p>Additionally, in the first intifada, Palestinian activists
enjoyed relative freedom of movement and were able to travel
through cities, villages and refugee camps to organize sit-ins,
vigils, strikes and seminars.</p>
<p>Arab and international opinion was also more supportive. Israeli
solidarity groups lent their assistance to our struggle and worked
to change public opinion in their society.</p>
<p>Changes in all of these respects have introduced new dimensions
to the question of Palestinian struggle.</p>
<p>The younger generation has found innovative ways of responding to
this changed reality. It has identified new ways of creating
political and social consciousness — “Resist to exist” was one
particularly striking slogan which I saw posted on Facebook the
other day.</p>
<p>Images of incarceration, brutalization and dehumanization now
circulate through social models, creating new solidarities and
vernaculars of struggle. The two elements imply each other: as the
political realities adjust, so too do the forms of resistance.</p>
<p>However, the challenges which confront young Palestinians are
more than just geographical; they are also political. Limited
Palestinian political autonomy, along with the creation of a
self-governing political entity — the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority">Palestinian
Authority</a> — has become one of the ways in which the
occupation has strengthened and consolidated its hold over
territory and population.</p>
<p>Upon reading and watching interviews with younger Palestinians, I
am frequently struck by how far their political mindset diverges
from that of my own generation.</p>
<p>We looked to phrase our struggle within an internationally
accepted political vernacular, and to align ourselves with broader
political dynamics; we looked to the Unified National Leadership
to coordinate the day-to-day tactics and strategies of resistance
during the first intifada, and to the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/plo">Palestine
Liberation Organization</a> as the symbolic embodiment of the
Palestinian national struggle.</p>
<p>In vivid and direct contrast, one member of the younger vanguard
recently <a href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768091">informed</a>
the Ma’an News Agency that “we don’t care about leaders. We will
be the leaders,” while another interviewee abruptly referred to
the Palestinian Authority as “traitors.”</p>
<p>The ongoing developments within the West Bank correspond to a
pronounced crisis of Palestinian political leadership. The current
antagonism appears to be directed as much towards one of the
central mechanisms of colonial power — a discredited Palestinian
political leadership that has effectively perpetuated <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/mahmoud-abbas-collaboration-israeli-army-secret-police-sacred">a
subcontracting</a> of the occupation — as to its originating
point.</p>
<h2>Strategic management</h2>
<p>In a number of key respects, any distinction between the two is,
of course, redundant. In addition to its formidable array of
instruments of coercion and force, the occupation is therefore
secured by more subtle forms of political influence which co-opt
and strategically manage the agency of local partners — the PA
being a case in point.</p>
<p>From this perspective, the formal peace process can be
retrospectively analyzed as a reconfiguration of relations of
domination and control: “compromise” has entrenched occupation;
“self-governance” has sanctified inefficiency and corruption;
“peace” has become equated with moral and political degradation.</p>
<p>All of this perhaps goes some way towards explaining why I have
not heard the younger generation issue one single appeal to the
Palestinian political leadership.</p>
<p>It is time for those of us who engaged in the first intifada to
admit our essential irrelevance. Not only because circumstances
have changed, but also because the strategies and approaches which
we advocated have since been so thoroughly discredited.</p>
<p>For all our efforts, sacrifices and limited advances, we
ultimately contributed to a political settlement which reinforced
and consolidated the conditions and relations of occupation. We
lost sight of the essential fact that, as Fanon once <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-XGKFJq4eccC&pg=PA92&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false">observed</a>,
“colonialism never gives anything away for nothing.”</p>
<p>Far from teaching the new generation of Palestinians “lessons”
about our struggle, it is my generation who should be seeking to
learn.</p>
<p><em>Dr. Nadia Naser-Najjab is an associate research fellow at the
European Center of Palestine Studies-Institute of Arab and
Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.</em></p>
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