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<h1 class="gmail-single_title">Armed vs. peaceful resistance – What you need to know about Muqawama in Gaza</h1>
<div class="gmail-article-author"><h3>By <a href="https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012"> Ramzy Baroud </a></h3></div>
<p class="gmail-single_date">Saturday 22-June-2024 - <font size="1"><a href="https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/armed-vs-peaceful-resistance-what-you-need-to-know-about-muqawama-in-gaza/">https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/armed-vs-peaceful-resistance-what-you-need-to-know-about-muqawama-in-gaza/</a></font></p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Gaza: heart of resistance</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The other reason pertains to the relationship that Gaza had with
Egypt, the Strip’s former military administrator and once potential
liberator.</p>
<p>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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Changing Attitudes</strong></p>
<p>But is this the end of the Palestinian quest for Arab liberators?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This attitude is a relatively new phenomenon.</p>
<p><strong>Back to the Start</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>-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).</em></p>
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