The “Unity Intifada” and ’48 Palestinians: Between the Liberal and the Decolonial

Innovation as erasure: Palestine and the new regional alliances of technology

“…According to Tatour (2021), new platforms developed new demands and a decisive novelty was the wholesale rejection of the liberal project of ‘negotiation’ where the Israeli establishment decides on behalf of the Palestinians. Instead, many Palestinians in Israel or in the oPt, mostly young citizens, proposed and developed a ‘decolonial liberationist agenda’ (Tatour, 2021, pp. 87–88), which benefits from global comparison and solidarity with distant actors.…”

“…Importantly, we conceptualise the Israeli‐Gulf circuits of innovation not only as unseen sites of domination but as dynamic and multidirectional spaces that also allow acts of cooperation and innovation from Palestinians themselves. Hailed at times as decolonial resistance to Israeli settler colonialism (Tatour, 2021), Palestinians demonstrate an ability to exploit the opportunities offered by new regional forms of cooperation in the shadow of technological innovations. As recent works on geographies of (in)security have shown, Israel's expanding innovation ecosystem is not simply the all‐powerful ‘laboratory’ of perfected technologies and geopolitical fixes, but a space filled with tensions, ambivalences and limitations that allow opportunities for counter‐mobilisation and a plurality of potential outcomes (Machold, 2023, 2018; Slesinger, 2022).…”

A poetics of living rebellion: Sociocultural anthropology in 2021

“…May 2021 witnessed the eruption of what has since been deemed by some the "Unity Intifada," as Palestinians across the "isolated prisons" of fragmented territories in the homeland and the shataat mobilized against the "racist settler colonial system throughout Palestine." 8 Led by a new generation of activists, the uprising brought to the fore a reimagined decolonial liberationist agenda that aims to unite all Palestinians, both in the homeland and in the diaspora, to dismantle Israeli settler colonialism (Tatour 2021). As Palestinians collectively rebelled, they faced collective punishment.…”

“…What began as a small group of youth placing their bodies on the line to defend the El‐Kurd family home from occupation by Zionist settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem soon spread to mass demonstrations in Ramallah, Haifa, and Gaza, a “Palestine economic week,” flourishing cultural production, and the first general strike since 1936. May 2021 witnessed the eruption of what has since been deemed by some the “Unity Intifada,” as Palestinians across the “isolated prisons” of fragmented territories in the homeland and the shataat mobilized against the “racist settler colonial system throughout Palestine.” 8 Led by a new generation of activists, the uprising brought to the fore a reimagined decolonial liberationist agenda that aims to unite all Palestinians, both in the homeland and in the diaspora, to dismantle Israeli settler colonialism (Tatour 2021). As Palestinians collectively rebelled, they faced collective punishment.…”

“to stop the earthquake”: Palestine and the Settler Colonial Logic of Fragmentation

“…Protesting both Israeli settler colonialism and the Palestinian Authority—which functions as an arm of the larger colonial project—Palestinians organised a general strike that extended across the imposed borders that divide them. It is important to situate this general strike within a longer continuum of Palestinian resistance that includes other such momentous strikes during the Great Revolt (1936–1939) and the First Intifada (1987–1993) (see Barakat 2021; Joudeh 2021; Tatour 2021). Emphasising the unification of Palestinian struggle across the territorial, social, political, and existential fragments of Palestine, the call for strike issued by Palestinian organisers, “The Manifesto of Dignity and Hope”, reads in part:…”