Following a year of rising settler attacks on the people of Beita and the death of Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the West Bank village is keeping civil resistance alive in the face of the threat of Israeli colonial land grabs.
The West Bank remains unusually calm as Israel carries out its genocide in Gaza. But while Israeli repression has dissuaded an uprising in the streets, the tectonic plates underneath continue to shift.
The past month has been nothing less than traumatic for the Palestinian people.
The massacre in Jenin, ongoing invasions, arrests, home demolitions; 36 people have been killed, eight of them children. Adam Ayyad, 15, was aware that a Palestinian under Israeli apartheid is always a potential target. The handwritten will he carried in his pocket the day he was shot began with the following words: “There were a lot of things I wished I could do, but we live in a country where realizing your dreams is impossible.”
Palestinians are enduring the rise to power of one of the most brazenly racist and brutal governments in the Israeli state’s history. But, however grim the reality looks for Palestinians, this may also be the moment of change.
While Americans and Europeans chat and debate with each other about the nuances of Israeli politics and come up with all sorts of fanciful solutions to “the conflict,” the Israeli government tightens its grip on Palestinians and Palestinians become ever more frustrated, eager for action, and impatient with their leadership and with a world that keeps telling them the time is not yet “ripe” for their rights to be realized.
Perhaps that is why we are seeing such widespread support for armed resistance. Perhaps it’s simply a response to Israel escalating an already violent policy of apartheid. In any case, armed action seems to be moving into a more prominent role in Palestinian resistance and it will be important for supporters of Palestinian rights to be ready to defend those actions wherever we can.
Long Live a United Palestine, Long Live the Intifada of Unity! — Read the The Dignity and Hope Manifesto on the goals and vision of the current uprising in Palestine.
Devyn Springer and Abu Shawarib speak to Mohammed El-Kurd, a poet, writer, and activist from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, Palestine. This episode is a collaboration with the Groundings Podcast.