Review of Our Vision for Liberation, edited by Ramzy Baroud and Ilan Pappé, Clarity Press, 2022.
‘Liberators do not exist. It is the peoples who liberate themselves.’
– Ernesto Che Guevara
Taking inspiration from the Unity Intifada, the uprising across Palestine in May 2021, this collection of 31 chapters by Palestinian progressives and their supporters gives a sense of the debates rumbling in the world’s foremost national liberation struggle. Based loosely on Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s idea of the engaged intellectual, Baroud and Pappé bring together the contributions of political prisoners, artists, journalists and many others, resulting in a set of reflections that are both optimistic and resistance-based. Rejecting the politics of the collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA) and embracing the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the book is itself an act of liberation and a call for unconditional solidarity.
Though writing towards this project began before May 2021, the Unity Intifada showed that a new generation of resisters was stirring. The uprising involved the whole of Palestine, as those with second class Israeli citizenship joined Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem in resistance to Zionist oppression. 240 Palestinians, including 67 children, were killed by the Zionist regime, but the uprising beat back the onslaught on Gaza and attempts to colonise all of Sheikh Jarrah, leading to celebration on the streets in its aftermath. Here was ‘a torrent of resistance,’ threatening a ‘new leap forward,’ according to Ibrahim Aoude (p33). For Samaa Abu Sharar, the rising heralded new hope as millions around the world championed the cause (p59).
The involvement of ‘48 Palestinians, or those living on ‘the inside’ of the Zionist entity has endured. Fierce Bedouin-led resistance in early 2022 confronted Zionist attempts to capture the southern Naqab, while protests have hit the supposed heartlands of the regime. Multiple contributors to the book highlight the re-emergence of ‘48 Palestinians as a major force within the struggle. For musician and performer Reem Talhami, the uprising ‘confirmed that they are part of the Palestinian people, and that efforts to integrate them into Israel and to erase their identity have failed. The uprising showed a deep and strong commitment to the cause of Palestine’ (p280).
Central to this debate is the crisis of leadership facing the Palestinian movement since before the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s capitulation to Zionism and imperialism in the Oslo ‘peace’ deal of 1993 which created the PA and effectively surrendered any right of return for Palestinians. Quoting Che Guevara, Baroud recognises that, in the Palestinian case: ‘we have been quite unfortunate of having too many liberators or, more accurately, self-designated liberators. From self-serving Palestinian leaders, to corrupt Arab rulers, and even to confused western ideologues’ (pxv). Though the chapters offer contrasting strategies in terms of their ‘visions for liberation,’ whether through boycotts, cultural organising or prisoner solidarity, a sharp critique of the PA runs through many passages of the text. This is the book’s most vital message.
Khalida Jarrar was in prison as the book was being produced. Describing the courage of women political prisoners who won the right to study and take exams on the inside, she writes:
‘Prison is comrades—sisters and brothers who, with time, grow closer to you than your own family. It is common agony, pain, sadness and, despite everything, also joy at times. In prison, we challenge the abusive prison guard together, with the same will and determination to break him so that he does not break us’ (p175).
The PA played no progressive role in this struggle, nor in the leadership of the fighting women of al-Aqsa represented by Hanadi Halawani, who has faced constant Israeli arrest for her organising role in defence of the mosque (p171).
Both Aoude (p44) and Qassem Izzat Ali (p56) see the June 2021 torture and killing of activist Nizar Banat by PA forces as bringing to the fore opposition to the PA’s corrupt fiefdom, with his murder backfiring in the faces of the occupiers and the PA. Samah Jabr points out that smear tactics copied from the Zionist occupier were used by the media organs of the Palestinian bourgeoisie to discredit protesters calling for justice for Banat’s killing, while unleashing fascist violence on the youth:
‘Official media diffused the situation, claiming that those demonstrators have an “external agenda,” that the women who participated in the demonstrations have no “honour” and that their slogans “scratch the purity” of the Palestinian society. The mobile phones of the women participants were confiscated, and their content was used as a subject to blackmail, silence and render them invisible. Like Israel’s agents who pose as Palestinians to assassinate activists in our markets and camps, Palestinian official security agents sneaked into opposition demonstrations wearing civilian clothes and started attacking the demonstrators with stones in order to break their bones’ (p296).
Banat has become a symbol of defiance among Palestinian youth and a cross-section of society more openly opposing the PA. His image appears regularly on demonstrations of Palestinian students, alongside placards of Ghassan Kanafani and Basel al-Araj, both militant intellectuals murdered by Zionist death squads.
Many of the book’s most militant and powerful contributions come from directions that may be surprising to readers unfamiliar with Palestine’s historic social diversity and cultural vitality. Halawani, for example, details a struggle in Jerusalem over the mass cooking of Palestinian maqluba, which led to arrests and investigations. Talhami writes of the centrality of music: ‘With every new Palestinian outburst, new songs are born.’ (p282) Christian priest Manuel Musallam calls out: ‘Do not allow the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Arab normalisation and spineless initiatives to define you. Do not lose sight of your resistance, do not let grief weaken you or shake your collective confidence’ (p138).
Taken as a whole, the book opposes the failed strategy of negotiations with the coloniser, showing how principled positions were born from the bitter disappointment of PLO concessions. Narrating his own learning curve, Hamdan Taha opposed Israeli claims on Palestinian archaeological sites in the 1991 Madrid ‘peace’ Conference and was consequently excluded by the official Palestinian delegation (p23-4). Aoude’s chapter on the language of colonialism offers a critique of PA views of ‘48 Palestinians as dealing only with ‘apartheid’, under the supposedly settled issue of their Israeli citizenship (p41-2):
‘This sort of leadership that sees no other avenue before it but that of “negotiations,” is a leadership that engages in “security coordination” with the enemy, a euphemism for collaboration, that serves the needs of the settler-colonial entity and the Palestinian bourgeoisie’.
Louis Brehony
