Palestinians disconnected from each other have struggled immensely to maintain a national project with clear objectives. Now, struggling together across the entire geography of historic Palestine, the disintegrated parts of our body are coming back together.

It is not a coincidence that Israel decided to remind us of its original sin, namely, the Nakba, by celebrating its “independence” in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. By committing the Wehda Street massacre, it has taken the so-called “conflict” to its origin.

Just like in the Great Revolt of 1936-39, the colonizer in Palestine is on the back foot in the face of unity and desperation.

Israeli police joined fascist mobs in attacking Palestinian neighborhoods, but this didn’t stop Palestinians in Haifa from joining the uprising taking place across Palestine. “These are historic moments and the people of Haifa are rising like never before,” Yoav Haifawi writes. “They are part of a united Palestinian struggle against their oppressors.”

The recent violence in the city Lydd (Lod) and other Palestinian cities in Israel has been described by many as “civil war,” but this narrative is misleading. Rather, what we are witnessing is the Israeli settler state declaring a war on its colonized “citizens,” and Palestinians fighting for their liberation.

The violence in Sheikh Jarrah isn’t exceptional. It is Zionism distilled to its purest expression. Dispossessing Palestinians is Zionism’s primary function.

It is a fiction to argue that there is any “co-existence” or that there are “mixed cities” inside Israel. It is a reality of ghettos and apartheid: an ongoing colonial project of Jewish supremacy. The reality of settler-colonialism, of Judaizing Palestine, is present in Lydda, “inside Israel” as much as it is in Sheikh Jarrah, in the occupied territory.

For decades Israelis have basked in the light of success. Israelis lived under – or upon – a volcano, believing themselves to be immune from standard legal and societal norms. Their control of over six million Palestinians seems to be safe from intervention, criticism or challenge. May 2021 has shattered such bizarre illusions.

Hundreds of Palestinians were injured and dozens were hospitalized on Friday night across the city of Jerusalem, as Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and continued to crackdown on protests against the imminent evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. The violence that erupted on Friday was the culmination of weeks of rising tensions in the city and across the occupied Palestinian territory.

Palestinians in the village of Burin were just sitting down to end their daily Ramadan fast when they noticed smoke rising on the outskirts of the eastern part of the village. As the evening unfolded they were forced to watch as the night sky lit up their village with orange flames and clouds of smoke. By the time the settlers and soldiers retreated, and the residents were able to put out the fires, the damage had already been done. “That land was planted with hundreds of olive trees, many of them were more than 70 years old,” Walid Saeed, 70, a local farmer in Burin, tells Mondoweiss. “There is no way to describe how we feel in Burin after what happened. This land, these trees, they are our whole lives, our heart and soul. They mean everything to us.”