I was asked about my stance on the Israeli protest movement that has been taking place for over two weeks, and the effect of the so-called Arab Spring on these protests, and most importantly: what the role of Palestinians living in the colonial state of Israel should be in these protests. Should they join these protests and tents and adopt the same demands? Should they erect their own tents and make demands relative to the Palestinian cause? Or should they quit, stand aside, and say: These protests don’t concern us at all?
Ultimately, the main theme of the Israeli protests, taken from the Arab Spring movement, and tweaked, is: “The people demand social justice!” This slogan summarizes the essence of previous, current and future Israeli protests. First: when they define “people”, we, the Palestinians, find our selves not only outside of this definition, but in the category of “enemy of the people”. Second, what does social justice mean when the entire state, from its inception, has survived on social oppression embodied in colonizing the land of Palestine and displacing its people.
Hence, I came to a definite non-negotiable answer: Any struggle in the State of Israel is necessarily a reactionary struggle as long as it opposes and ignores the struggle for natural rights for indigenous Palestinian people, including the liberation of the land and the return of the refugees.
In summary, The Israeli protest movement is reactionary regardless of its demands and our attempt to give ideological excuses/explanations to it, as some parties are trying. The demands of young couples, university students, doctors, and others can not be progressive demands if they ignore the demands of the indigenous people and instead race to steal their land and destroy any person opposing them.
The aim of these protests is to improve the situation of the colonizers/occupiers while our job is to hold them accountable. Is it my job, as a homeless Palestinian refugee, to make certain that my occupier can live a nice life and acquire a bigger and cheaper apartment on my land? Let this occupier go to hell and wander homeless on the streets. What do the inhabitants of these new, clean, colorful, tents in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem think of the black Palestinian tents that filled the area in 1948? Do they recognize their responsibility to these tents? Anyone who wants to live in a comfortable apartment at reasonable price cannot ignore these questions!
Social demands cannot be separated from political demands, especially in this country.
I am not, nor will I fall into the Zionist traps. I am not claiming that the Israeli society does not suffer from class struggles, nor am I someone who is narrow-minded by my nationalist ideals. I do not believe that the “Jewish nation” is an exceptional case because I simply do not believe in the existence of a Jewish nation outside of the sick imagination of some racist Zionists. We have enough meaningless bickering between the Israeli Communist Party and the BALAD party (party that represents Palestinian), which is just as Israeli as the Communist Party.
What I have said above does not lessen the significance of the Israeli protest. In actuality, a positive and important consequence of these events is the truth that came out about our local leadership and political parties. In spite of our continuous empty talks about housing problems, lack of building permissions and land confiscations, our leadership was too cowardly to take initiative and waited two weeks into the Israeli protest movement to join, fearing we wouldn’t be welcomed among the various Israeli protest groups.
Another reason for the importance of the protest movement is its expression of the crisis of the Israeli state locally, and the rising crisis with capitalist systems worldwide.
Finally, these protesters, united, from the right and left, liberals and conservatives, will find themselves faced with a question that will continue to follow them as they attempt to escape it: Will the State of Israel give them any solutions? Or will they discover that the State is in fact their real problem?
Ali Zbeidat is a writer and political activist from occupied Palestine 1948. He writes the blog Good Morning Sakhnin.
