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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200712-optimism-of-the-will-palestinian-freedom-is-possible-now/">https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200712-optimism-of-the-will-palestinian-freedom-is-possible-now/</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">‘Optimism of the Will’: Palestinian Freedom is Possible Now</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ramzy Baroud - July 12, 2020<br></div></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-post-content"><p>In
a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared
that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic
Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a
whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift.</p><p>As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled me greatly.</p><p>I
have heard this line over and over again, often reiterated by
well-intentioned intellectuals, whose experiences in researching and
writing on the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ may have driven
some of them to pessimism, if not despair.</p><p>The ‘hopelessness
discourse’ is, perhaps, understandable if one is to examine the
off-putting, tangible reality on the ground: the ever-entrenched <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-1-background/" target="_blank">Israeli occupation</a>, the planned <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52756427" target="_blank">annexation</a> of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, the shameful <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/arab-israeli-normalization-picks-up-pace-in-2020/1738066" target="_blank">Arab normalization</a> with Israel, the deafening silence of the international community and the futility of the quisling Palestinian leadership.</p><p>Subscribing
to this logic is not only self-defeating, but ahistorical as well.
Throughout history, every great achievement that brought about freedom
and a measure of justice to any nation was realized despite seemingly
insurmountable odds.</p><p>Indeed, who would have thought that the Algerian people were capable of <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/algeria-s-revolutionary-spirit-is-a-legacy-of-the-heroes-that-fought-france-24639" target="_blank">defeating</a>
French colonialism when their tools of liberation were so rudimentary
as compared with the awesome powers of the French military and its
allies?</p><p>The same notion applies to many other modern historic experiences, from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/vietnam-was-unwinnable.html" target="_blank">Vietnam</a> to <a href="http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:344963/FULLTEXT01.pdf" target="_blank">South Africa</a> and from India to Cuba.</p><p>Palestine is not the exception.</p><p>However,
the ‘hopelessness discourse’ is not as innocent as it may seem. It is
propelled by the persisting failure to appreciate the centrality of the
Palestinian people – or any other people, for that matter – in their own
history. Additionally, it assumes that the Palestinian people are,
frankly, ineffectual.</p><p>Interestingly, when many nations were still
grappling with the concept of national identity, the Palestinian people
had already developed a refined sense of modern collective identity and
national consciousness. General mass strikes and civil disobedience
challenging British imperialism and Zionist settlements in Palestine
began nearly a century ago, culminating in the six-month-long <a href="https://www.paljourneys.org/en/timeline/highlight/158/great-arab-revolt-1936-1939" target="_blank">general strike</a> of 1936.</p><p>Since
then, popular resistance, which is linked to a defined sense of
national identity, has been a staple in Palestinian history. It was a
prominent feature of the First Intifada, the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/stones-day-palestine-reborn-171130074348187.html" target="_blank">popular uprising</a> of 1987.</p><p>The
fact that the Palestinian homeland was lost, despite the heightened
consciousness of the Palestinian masses at the time, is hardly
indicative of the Palestinian people’s ability to affect political
outcomes.</p><p>Time and again, Palestinians have rebelled and, with
each rebellion, they forced all parties, including Israel and the United
States, to reconsider and overhaul their strategies altogether.</p><p>A case in point was the First Intifada.</p><p>When,
on December 8, 1987, thousands took to the streets of the Jabaliya
Refugee Camp, the Gaza Strip’s most crowded and poorest camp, the timing
and the location of their uprising was most fitting, rational and
necessary. Earlier that day, an Israeli truck had run over a convoy of
cars carrying Palestinian laborers, killing four young men. For
Jabaliya, as with the rest of Palestine, it was the last straw.</p><p>Responding
to the chants and pleas of the Jabaliya mourners, Gaza was, within
days, the breeding ground for a real revolution that was self-propelled
and unwavering. The chants of Palestinians in the Strip were answered in
the West Bank, and echoed just as loudly in Palestinian towns,
including those located in Israel.</p><p>The contagious energy was
emblematic of children and young adults wanting to reclaim the
identities of their ancestors, which had been horribly disfigured and
divided among regions, countries and refugee camps.</p><p>The Intifada –
literally meaning the “shake off” – sent a powerful message to Israel
that the Palestinian people are alive, and are still capable of
upsetting all of Israel’s colonial endeavors. The Intifada also
confronted the failure of the Palestinian and Arab leaderships, as they
persisted in their factional and self-seeking politics.</p><p>In fact, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2537235" target="_blank">Madrid Talks in 1991</a>
between Palestinians and Israelis were meant as an Israeli- American
political compromise, aimed at ending the Intifada in exchange for
acknowledging the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a
representative of the Palestinian people.</p><p>The <a href="https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/the-price-of-oslo.html" target="_blank">Oslo Accords</a>,
signed by Yasser Arafat and Israel in 1993, squandered the gains of the
Intifada and, ultimately, replaced the more democratically
representative PLO with the corrupt Palestinian Authority.</p><p>But
even then, the Palestinian people kept coming back, reclaiming, in their
own way, their importance and centrality in the struggle. Gaza’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/gaza-great-march-return-protests-explained-190330074116079.html" target="_blank">Great March of Return</a> is but one of many such people-driven initiatives.</p><p>Palestine’s
biggest challenge in the movement is not the failure of the people to
register as a factor in the liberation of their own land, but their
quisling leadership’s inability to appreciate the immense potential of
harnessing the energies of Palestinians everywhere to stage a focused
and strategic, anti-colonial, liberation campaign.</p><p>This lack of
vision dates back to the late 1970s, when the Palestinian leadership
labored to engage politically with Washington and other Western
capitals, culminating in the pervading sense that, without US political
validation, Palestinians would always remain marginal and irrelevant.</p><p>The
Palestinian leadership’s calculations at the time proved disastrous.
After decades of catering to Washington’s expectations and diktats, the
Palestinian leadership, ultimately, returned empty-handed, as the
current Donald Trump administration’s ‘<a href="https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/the-failed-deals-of-the-century/index.html" target="_blank">Deal of the Century</a>’ has finally proven.</p><p>I have recently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY1eZNrWM70" target="_blank">spoken</a>
with two young Palestinian female activists: one is based in besieged
Gaza and the other in the city of Seattle. Their forward-thinking
discourse is, itself, a testament that the pessimism of some
intellectuals does not define the thinking of this young Palestinian
generation, and there would be no need to dismiss the collective efforts
of this budding generation in anticipation of the rise of a ‘better’
one.</p><p>Malak Shalabi, a Seattle-based law student, does not convey a
message of despair, but that of action. “It’s really important for
every Palestinian and every human rights activist to champion the
Palestinian cause regardless of where they are, and it is important
especially now, ” she told me.</p><p>“There are currently waves of
social movements here in the United States, around civil rights for
Black people and other issues that are (becoming) pressing topics –
equality and justice – in the mainstream. As Palestinians, it’s
important that we (take the Palestinian cause) to the mainstream as
well,” she added.</p><p>“There is a lot of work happening among
Palestinian activists here in the United States, on the ground, at a
social, economic, and political level, to make sure that the link
between Black Lives Matter and Palestine happens,” she added.</p><p>On
her part, Wafaa Aludaini in Gaza spoke about her organization’s – 16th
October Group – relentless efforts to engage communities all over the
world, to play their part in exposing Israeli war crimes in Gaza and
ending the protracted siege on the impoverished Strip.</p><p>“Palestinians
and pro-Palestinian activists outside are important because they make
our voices heard outside Palestine, as mainstream media does not report
(the truth of) what is taking place here,” she told me.</p><p>For these
efforts to succeed, “we all need to be united,” she asserted, referring
to the Palestinian people at home and in the diaspora, and the entire
pro-Palestinian solidarity movement everywhere, as well.</p><p>The words
of Malak and Wafaa are validated by the growing solidarity with
Palestine in the BLM movement, as well as with numerous other justice
movements the world over.</p><p><strong><a title="Another Palestinian political prisoner dies in Israeli prison due to deliberate medical negligence" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200710-another-palestinian-political-prisoner-dies-in-israeli-prison-due-to-deliberate-medical-negligence/">Another Palestinian political prisoner dies in Israeli prison due to deliberate medical negligence</a></strong></p><p>On June 28, the UK chapter of the BLM <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-israel-palestine-black-lives-matter-rejects-annexation-west-bank" target="_blank">tweeted</a> that it “proudly” stands in solidarity with Palestinians and rejects Israel’s plans to annex large areas of the West Bank.</p><p>BLM
went further, criticizing British politics for being “gagged of the
right to critique Zionism and Israel’s settler-colonial pursuits”.</p><p>Repeating
the claim that a whole new generation needs to replace the current one
for any change to occur in Palestine is an insult – although, at times,
unintended – to generations of Palestinians, whose struggle and
sacrifices are present in every aspect of Palestinian lives.</p><p>Simply
because the odds stacked against Palestinian freedom seem too great at
the moment, does not justify the discounting of an entire nation, which
has lived through many wars, protracted sieges and untold hardship.
Moreover, the next generation is but a mere evolution of the
consciousness of the current one. They cannot be delinked or analyzed
separately.</p><p>In his “Prison Notebooks”, anti-fascist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci, <a href="https://www.centreforoptimism.com/Pessimism-of-the-Intellect-Optimism-of-the-Will" target="_blank">coined</a> the term “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”</p><p>While
logical analysis of a situation may lead the intellect to despair, the
potential for social and political revolutions and transformations must
keep us all motivated to keep the struggle going, no matter the odds.</p><p>The
views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p> </div></div></div>
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