The ongoing Palestinian uprising against the Israeli settler-colonial regime in colonized Palestine did not begin in Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem whose residents face imminent ethnic cleansing. While the threat of the expulsion of these eight families certainly catalyzed this mass popular mobilization, the ongoing uprising is ultimately an articulation of a shared Palestinian struggle in the wake of over seven decades of Zionist settler-colonialism.

These decades have been characterized by continuous forced displacement, land theft, incarceration, economic subjugation, and the brutalization of Palestinian bodies. Palestinians have also been subjected to a deliberate process of fragmentation, not simply geographically — into ghettoes, Bantustans, and refugee camps — but also socially and politically. Yet the unity witnessed over the last two months as Palestinians across colonized Palestine and beyond mobilized in shared struggle with Sheikh Jarrah has challenged this fragmentation, to the surprise of both the Israeli regime and the Palestinian political leadership alike. Indeed, popular mobilization on this scale had not been seen for decades, not even during the Trump administration, which oversaw the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states, and the further acceleration of Zionist settler-colonial practices.

Beyond mobilizing on the streets, Palestinians have been using creative forms of resistance against their subjugation. This includes the revitalization of grassroots campaigns to save Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem from destruction and ethnic cleansing, the disruption of the Israeli regime’s economy, and the continuous engagement of a globalized world with clear messages demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians.

Jerusalem: A Catalyst for Unity

As in so many Palestinian communities, the residents of Sheikh Jarrah have been facing ongoing and imminent expulsions and ethnic cleansing for decades. Indeed, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have long been engaged in legal battles against the Israeli regime in an attempt to forestall expulsion, which would serve Israel’s ultimate goal of the total Judaization of Jerusalem. 

In late April 2021, the Jerusalem District Court rejected the appeals of residents of Sheikh Jarrah against what the courts refer to as the “eviction” of eight Palestinian families, ordering that they vacate their homes by May 2, 2021. Refusing this order, the families threw their weight onto the “Save Sheikh Jarrah” grassroots campaign to protect the neighborhood from ethnic cleansing. The campaign, which has been recently popularized through social media, has attracted both massive local participation and international attention, not least because it encapsulates the Palestinian experience of dispossession. As a result, it has given momentum to other campaigns to “save” neighborhoods across colonized Palestine from ethnic cleansing and colonization, including Silwan, Beita, and Lifta.

Palestinians are reclaiming a shared narrative and struggle from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea
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Over the last two months, Palestinians across colonized Palestine have been protesting in shared struggle with Sheikh Jarrah, including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in cities like Haifa, Jaffa, and Lydd. These protests and demonstrations were met with violent repression from the Israeli regime, a reaction that is neither unprecedented nor unexpected. Indeed, during the Second Intifada, 13 Palestinian citizens were killed at protests by Israeli regime forces in the deadliest crackdown since Land Day 1976. Throughout this ongoing uprising, violence from regime forces has been accompanied by armed Israeli settler mobs attacking and lynching Palestinian citizens, and raiding and destroying Palestinian homes, vehicles, and businesses. 

However, it was the several days of protests at the al-Aqsa mosque compound that dominated international media, particularly as this was the site of successful mass protests in 2017 against the electronic barriers placed at the entrance to the compound. These latest protests in mid-May were also met with violent repression from Israeli security forces who stormed the compound, injuring hundreds of Palestinian worshipers with rubber bullets, gas canisters, and stun grenades.

As a result of this assault and the Israeli regime’s ongoing ethnic cleansing attempts in Palestinian Jerusalem, the Hamas government in Gaza retaliated with rockets targeting the city. Israel responded with over ten days of heavy bombardment of Gaza, which ultimately killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children. Despite claims by the Israeli regime that it was only targeting Hamas military infrastructure, vital civilian infrastructure, entire residential buildings, and even media towers, were destroyed. UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet has said that these bombardments on Gaza may amount to war crimes. 

Disrupting the Israeli Regime’s Economy

As Gaza was under attack, grassroots mobilization across the rest of colonized Palestine continued. On May 18, Palestinians called for a general strike in arguably one of the biggest shows of collective unity in years. It was soon adopted by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and, later, by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. But it was grassroots actors who took control of the narrative through various statements in Arabic and English calling for widespread participation and international support: “Launched from Jerusalem and extending across the world, we call on your support in maintaining this moment of unprecedented popular resistance,” one statement read. 

The strike was organized in response to the attacks on Gaza and the struggle on the streets of Jerusalem. It saw wide participation and was particularly important for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who reiterated once again their connection to — and shared struggle with — Palestinians in Gaza and Jerusalem. It was also, however, a tactic of effective disruption of the Israeli economy. At 20% of the population of Israel, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship constitute a large part of the workforce; 24% of nurses and 50% of pharmacists in Israel, for instance, are Palestinian. 

The Israeli construction sector is also mostly made up of Palestinians, predominantly from the West Bank, but also Palestinian citizens of Israel. On the day of the strike, nearly all manual laborers participated, which meant that the industry was completely put on hold for an entire day. Palestinian trade unions also came together ahead of the strike and called on international trade unions to stand in solidarity with them, and to take action against Israeli oppression. This kind of action was demonstrated by dockworkers in the Italian port of Livorno, who refused to load Israeli weapons and explosives onto ships a few days ahead of the strike, stating that: “The port of Livorno will not be an accomplice in the massacre of the Palestinian people.” 

Protests continued in the days following the strike, albeit on a smaller scale and with less media attention. Nonetheless, the strike had lit a spark and the focus on economic oppression became a mobilizing theme. Building off the success of the strike, several weeks later, a campaign to promote Palestinian economic purchasing power was announced. Dubbed “Palestine Economic Week,” the event stressed that, despite the economic chokehold that the Israeli regime has placed on Palestinians, they still have collective purchasing power. This rhetoric is particularly reminiscent of the First Intifada, in which popular measures like the cooperative movement and the call to boycott Israeli produce challenged economic subordination and dependence on the Israeli regime. 

The Zionist settler-colonial project has deliberately subjugated the Palestinian economy, which was shattered by the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, and the subsequent occupation of Palestinian land. As the Zionist regime conquered most of the productive and agricultural sectors, it barred Palestinians from most areas of the new economy. This situation expanded to the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 war, which brought these territories under Israeli military occupation. 

This uprising has reiterated that the people are the locus of power through which Palestinian liberation must and will be achieved
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A series of “peace” agreements during the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s brought Palestinians under further economic subjugation, effectively handing over direct and indirect control of the Palestinian economy to the Israeli regime. The agreements also deepened the social fragmentation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. While some claimed the economic protocols would bring economic prosperity to all, in reality, they nurtured Palestinian capitalist cronyism, further entrenching the wealth gap and class divisions in society. 

Palestine Economic Week encouraged various activities across colonized Palestine — from Haifa to Ramallah and beyond — to promote Palestinian local produce and products over Israeli ones that have monopolized the market with their abundance and competitive prices. In this way, Palestine Economic Week put forward a more holistic notion of colonial domination as intertwined with capitalism, wherein economic liberation is a key aspect of the broader national liberation struggle. 

Understanding the Unity in the Unity Intifada

Following the May 21 “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas, international media attention was diverted away from the uprising, and the inevitable discussions on the reconstruction of Gaza have since dominated the news cycle. Despite the massive destruction and causalities in Gaza, though, many Palestinians considered the outcome a victory for Hamas. 

It is important to stress however, that the uprising, which began before the bombing of Gaza, goes beyond Hamas and its victory narrative. As one Palestinian colleague in Gaza noted to this author: “This time, it felt different in Gaza. This time, we felt as though we were not alone.” Indeed, given the mass mobilization across colonized Palestine and the revival of grassroots connections in the face of enforced fragmentation, this new uprising has been dubbed the “Unity Intifada.”

Around the time of the strike, a manifesto titled “The Dignity and Hope Manifesto of the Unity Intifada” was published online, laying out a rejection of this enforced fragmentation:

We are one people and one society throughout Palestine. Zionist mobs forcefully displaced most of our people, stole our homes and demolished our villages. Zionism was determined to tear apart those who remained in Palestine, isolate us in sectional geographical areas, and transform us into different and dispersed societies, so that each group lives in a separate large prison. This is how Zionism controls us, disperses our political will and prevents us from a united struggle against the racist settler colonial system throughout Palestine.

The manifesto goes on to detail the various geographic fragments of the Palestinian people: the “Oslo Prison” (West Bank), the “citizenship prison” (lands occupied in 1948¹), the brutal siege in Gaza, the system of Judaization in Jerusalem, and those in permanent exile. The imposition of this colonized geography on Palestine, characterized by concrete walls, checkpoints, gated settler communities, and wired fences, has left Palestinians living in fragments separated and isolated from one another. 

As the manifesto notes, this has not happened inevitably or at random. Rather, this deliberate policy of divide-and-conquer has been implemented by the Zionist regime to undercut a united Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. But Palestinians have not been passive. Over the years, many grassroots groups have made efforts to disrupt the fragmentation, including various youth protest movements like the 2011 demand for political unity between the West Bank and Gaza, the 2013 anti-Prawer demonstrations against the Israeli policy to ethnically cleanse Bedouins in the Naqab, and the campaign to Lift the Sanctions imposed by the PA on Gaza. 

More recently, Palestinian women established Tal’at, a radical feminist movement that seeks — among many things — to transcend this geographic division while asserting that Palestinian liberation is a feminist struggle. This latest articulation of Palestinian unity follows from these continuous efforts to revitalize a shared Palestinian struggle.

Yet much of the international discourse has failed to recognize this. Indeed, the unfolding violence in the 1948 territories has often been misleadingly dubbed as intercommunal violence teetering on the edge of a civil war between Jews and Arabs, a framing that distinctly separates Palestinian citizens of Israel from Palestinians in Gaza and Jerusalem. This assessment fails to describe the reality of apartheid, in which Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel live totally separate and unequal lives. 

In fact, this inherits a decades-old tendency of referring to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship as “Israeli Arabs” in an attempt to disconnect them from their Palestinian identity. At best, their situation is portrayed in the mainstream as the unexceptional case of a minority group facing discrimination by the Jewish majority, rather than as the indigenous survivors of the 1948 ethnic cleansing who continue to resist settler-colonial erasure. The failure to recognize the latest protests within the 1948 territories as a distinct part of a greater, united Palestinian uprising is especially remarkable considering their aesthetics; most demonstrations were characterized by a sea of Palestinian flags and the sound of distinctly Palestinian chants.

Gaza, too, has slowly been disconnected from the Palestinian struggle by these mainstream discourses, discussed as an entirely separate issue to that of the rest of colonized Palestine. More often than not, the Israeli regime’s continuous bombardment is explained away as a war between Israel and Hamas, a distorted narrative that deliberately detracts from the fact that Gaza is, indeed, the linchpin of the Palestinian struggle, as Tareq Baconi argues.

Unity Against all Odds

While the range of mobilization and the scope of popular participation witnessed over the last few weeks have been impressive, the cost of this uprising has been, and continues to be, high. In addition to the brutality in Gaza, Palestinians elsewhere throughout colonized Palestine have been subjected to brutal violence and arrests. In the last few weeks, under the Israeli regime’s “law and order” operation, thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested, most of whom are young, working-class men. The Israeli regime uses these mass arrests as a form of collective punishment to intimidate and frighten Palestinian communities.  

In the West Bank, the PA is still committed to security coordination with the Israeli regime, and has been arresting various activists involved in the protests. The arrest of political activists, especially those critical of the PA, is not new; it follows a pattern of political repression in both the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, on June 24, 2021, PA security forces arrested and beat to death Nizar Banat, a well-known activist and critic of the regime. Since then, demonstrations have erupted across the West Bank calling for an end to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ rule. The protests have been met with brute violence and repression, though this behavior is unsurprising. The PA is notorious for abusing its power through this kind of violent intimidation.

The Fatah-dominated PA in the West Bank has been totally sidelined throughout the uprising, particularly in the face of Hamas’s victory narrative. Yet this uprising shows more than just the growing irrelevance of the PA and the struggle for legitimacy and power between the two dominant Palestinian parties. It has shown that grassroots and decentralized leadership can develop organically and outside of corrupt political institutions. It has also shown that Palestinians are hungry for unified mobilization.

The momentum for the uprising continues, and the feeling of unity is building despite the decreased media and international attention. Something has indeed changed: Palestinians are reclaiming a shared narrative and struggle from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In doing so, they are recognizing that they face one single regime of oppression, even if it manifests in different ways throughout the fragmented Palestinian communities. Ultimately, just as the ones before it, this uprising has reiterated that the people are the locus of power through which Palestinian liberation must and will be achieved. 

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In 2013, the UNDP warned of the increasing occurrence of dangerous heatwaves in Palestine over the coming years as a result of climate change. Indeed, at the end of August 2020, the Palestine Meteorological Office issued a warning about an impending heatwave, where the temperature ranged between five to nine degrees above its yearly average.^{1 2}

As climate change continues to destroy the planet, Palestinians are struggling to manage its dramatic effects in great part due to the Israeli occupation. In August 2020, Israel blocked fuel entry to Gaza, which shut down its only power plant, and since then, the shortage has been ongoing. Today, with roughly four hours of electricity per day in Gaza, and with the Israeli assault, sewage treatment plants are not functioning properly, which leads to dumping waste in the Mediterranean Sea. While blockades on essential resources are not new to Palestinians in Gaza, the ongoing fuel shortage will continue to impact hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and water distribution facilities. 

The besieged enclave also must deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has been spreading at an alarming rate, especially during the recent Israeli aggression which displaced tens of thousands of people to crowded spaces, including in relatives’ homes and in schools, thus increasing the risk of spreading and contracting the virus. With another hot summer marked by COVID-19 and the widespread destruction wrought by Israel’s recent assault fast approaching, Palestinians in Gaza are concerned for their safety.

A Dangerous Summer Ahead

Palestinians in Gaza historically escaped heatwaves by going to the beach and other open spaces away from their cramped houses. This is no longer an option with the COVID-19 lockdowns, and with the latest Israeli assault, which has left countless buildings, homes, and neighborhoods in rubble.

This summer, with limited electricity, Palestinians in Gaza whose homes survived Israel’s attacks will be unable to use mitigation measures such as fans, cold water, and maintaining food in the fridge. The latter will leave families with higher food spoilage, necessitating that they buy food supplies in crowded markets on a daily basis, increasing both their risk of spreading and contracting the coronavirus, as well as their financial burden. 

With nearly one-third of the population of Gaza facing deep poverty, a soaring unemployment rate, continuous salary cuts, and scarce access to safe water, Palestinians in Gaza are left with minimal resources to respond to the harsh realities of climate change. 

Beyond financial hardships, Palestinians in Gaza face concerns over their health as temperatures rise. Among the most vulnerable are the elderly, who are highly susceptible to heat-related illnesses. In the months ahead, the elderly in Gaza will fight for survival from the dual threats of COVID-19 and the summer’s heat. Added to this is the increased fragility of the healthcare sector in Gaza which is already unable to withstand the rise in COVID-19 infection rates. Indeed, last month, Israel demolished Gaza’s only COVID-19 testing center.

In the months ahead, the elderly in Gaza will fight for survival from the dual threats of COVID-19 and the summer’s heat
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Women – and especially pregnant women – are also particularly vulnerable. As those who often shoulder unpaid care and domestic work, Palestinian women have reported an increase in these responsibilities since the start of the pandemic, which skyrocketed during the heatwave of August 2020.³ As a result, and with limited water and electricity, women in Gaza reported an increase in household tensions and psychological stresses associated with caregiving and housework, including bathing and cleaning their children, trying to keep their children hydrated, and caring for those with heat-related illnesses. Following the latest attacks on Gaza, it is certain that women will continue to bear the brunt of the psychological stresses of their households. 

What Palestinians in Gaza Need

Lasting change necessitates an intersectional approach to support Palestinian families in withstanding climate change, including through connecting with other oppressed groups throughout the world to exchange tools and tactics for resistance and survival.

Climate change analysis must be mainstreamed at the government, non-governmental, and donor levels. Access to climate-related information should be accompanied by guidelines on mitigating the effects of extreme weather conditions, and it should be communicated to households. 

The Palestinian Ministry of Health should issue guidelines to families on how to deal with heat-related illnesses within their homes. There must be proper documentation of heat-related illnesses by the Ministry of Health in order to clarify, with evidence and facts, the health consequences of climate change on Palestinians. 

Climate mitigation measures and efforts to redistribute care responsibilities from the individual to the state must be mainstreamed in the plans, strategies, and projects funded and implemented by donors and developmental agencies in Gaza. This consideration is crucial in marginalized areas where weak infrastructure exacerbates extreme weather impacts on people’s health, and places more caregiving responsibilities on women. 

The international community must increase its pressure on Israel to end its assaults on Gaza, and to lift its siege so that life-saving equipment and assistance can enter Gaza. 

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A Victorian animal rights group has launched a legal service that from next week will provide free preliminary legal advice to pet owners who have recently purchased a puppy, that became sick shortly after arriving home.

From Monday, Victorians will be able to access the Anti-Puppy Farm Legal Clinic, the brainchild of the Animal Law Institute (ALI), a non-profit community legal centre dedicated to protecting animals and advocating for their interests through the Australian legal system.

The new service is in response to a sharp rise in pet ownership – particularly dogs – during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a corresponding explosion in ‘puppy farming’, where breeders create intensive dog breeding practices that fail to meet the physical, social or psychological needs of animals.

Dogs are typically kept in inhumane conditions and suffer enormously, and the litters are on-sold to both private and commercial operators, including pet stores.

Anastasia Smietanka, Co-founder of the Animal Law Institute said healthy puppies can present with underlying conditions after unsuspecting buyers bring them home.

“Victoria arguably has some of the strongest anti-puppy farm laws in Australia, but unscrupulous breeders continue to operate,” Ms Smietanka said.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw more and more puppies being sold by breeders hoping to make a quick profit off unaware buyers. That’s why we are launching a specialist clinic to tackle this issue, and using our legal skills to fight negligent breeding.”

From Monday (1 February), Victorians who want advice on taking action against a breeder or seller (including a pet store) can submit an enquiry for legal assistance by completing an intake form on the Animal Law Institute’s website.

About 450,000 puppies are sold annually in Australia, according to the Pet Industry Association of Australia (PIAA), and only around 15% of them are sold through registered breeders. Another 15% are sold through pet stores, with the remainder mostly sold through online classified advertising, which is completely unregulated.

Identifying an animal from a ‘puppy farm’ can be difficult, but one tell-tale sign is a seller claiming their animal is vaccinated, when it’s too young to receive its first round of vaccinations (between six to eight weeks old).

Nationally, the practice of puppy farming is not technically illegal, although conditions on puppy farms routinely breach state-based animal welfare legislation. Animals Australia reports that Victoria is considered to be the only state in Australia with legislation specifically aimed at mitigating some of the problems associated with puppy farming, a fact not lost on the Animal Law Institute.

“The clinic was made possible thanks to the generosity of our donors and is supported by the Victorian Government,” Ms Smietanka said. “The Animal Law Institute extends its sincere thanks to all those involved in the creation of the Anti-Puppy Farm Legal Clinic.”

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Introduction

Gaza has always been unique among the different parts of Palestine. Its current particularity stems from being caught between three major variables exacerbating its collapse: the Israeli occupation, division in Palestinian leadership, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This reality raises socio-political questions about the role of these factors in advancing social collapse in Gaza, and about changes in the values of resilience and steadfastness among Palestinians in Gaza. ¹

Despite the attempts of Gaza’s inhabitants to survive and achieve stability in their daily lives, the consequences of occupation, political division, and the pandemic have eroded the foundations of perseverance amongst them. Indeed, Palestinians in Gaza have suffered from societal fragility, uncertainty, and turbulence that have forced them to live in imaginary communities that cling to fantasy in order to survive.

This commentary describes Gaza’s reality in light of the three major variables. It explores unfolding transformations within Gaza’s civil society to counter impending collapse, including social initiatives such as the Great March of Return, the “We Want to Live” movement, and other initiatives on social media. It concludes with reflections on the future of Gaza based on interviews with activists and young Palestinians who have lived this reality since their childhood.

Gaza Between Occupation and Division

Gaza sits on 360 square kilometers, or 1.3% of the total area of historic Palestine. With a population of around 2.05 million as of 2020, 1.4 million males and 1.01 million females, Gaza is the world’s most populated territory with 9,373 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Palestinians in Gaza continue to live under catastrophic conditions due to the Israeli siege now in its fourteenth year, three bloody wars in 2008, 2012, and 2014 in which 3,800 Palestinians were killed, as well as intermittent and devastating Israeli military assaults. In addition, Gaza’s economic and living conditions are at their worst, with unemployment exceeding 70% during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) sanctions against Gaza, the increased taxation by the de-facto government in Gaza, the electricity and water crises, in addition to food insecurity, have all led to a decline in investments and buying power in Gaza as the poverty rate exceeded 53%. These indicators reflect the damage caused by the Israeli occupation and the division between Hamas and the PA that has hampered sociopolitical development. This reality suggests bleak prospects for the future of Gaza, a future of continued peril and disintegration.

In 2012, UNICEF and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) published a report titled “Gaza in 2020, A livable place?” in which they projected the population in Gaza to grow from 1.6 million to 2.1 million by 2020, with a concentration of 5,800 inhabitants per square kilometer. This figure has been exceeded by a high margin.

The report indicated that the fundamental infrastructure for electricity, water and sanitation, and municipal and social services, was struggling to keep pace with the needs of the growing population. However, the report neither factored in natural disasters and pandemics like COVID-19, nor predicted the savage war of 2014. One can thus undoubtedly conclude that Gaza has already been absolutely unlivable for some time now, and is arguably in a state of post-collapse.

Gaza has already been absolutely unlivable for some time now, and is arguably in a state of post-collapse
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The Israeli regime has managed to not only besiege Palestinians in Gaza, but to also project their image internationally as a hostile people. Indeed, Israel has killed hundreds of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators during the Great March of Return. To this day, it controls and restricts the import of vital medical equipment and other materials of importance to a variety of sectors in Gaza. It imposes strict restrictions on the movement of goods, and with ongoing military bombardments, it has managed to destroy vital infrastructure. Beyond material restrictions, the Israeli regime restricts Gazans’ freedom of movement, effectively trapping them in a territory it continues to actively destroy. 

The ongoing division in Palestinian leadership between Hamas and the PA has also had serious implications for Gaza’s inhabitants. One result of this power struggle has been the complete separation between governing institutions in Gaza and the West Bank with the establishment of two completely distinct authorities and governments. Within this framework, the division has formally institutionalized factional politics and has effectively devastated the Palestinian national project. In effect, this has destroyed the credibility of liberation leadership, and has diminished the trust of Palestinians – and especially of Palestinians in Gaza – in the effectiveness and usefulness of the struggle. Finally, the division of leadership into two authoritarian camps has eroded public freedoms and the political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights of Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza During COVID-19

On March 22, 2020, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza recorded the first cases of COVID-19 in two travelers returning from Pakistan. Subsequently, the government closed popular markets, halls, mosques, restaurants, cafes, and most shops. Nearly two months later, it permitted the reopening of all commercial establishments provided that they undertake preventive measures and enforce social distancing. In late August 2020, the ministry discovered four domestic cases of COVID-19 infections, the sources of which they could not trace, and later announced further infections.

In response to domestic infections, the Ministry of the Interior declared a state of emergency and a two-day curfew in Gaza, quarantining all governorates and enforcing full closures. These were later eased in light of an escalation in Israeli military attacks, and a sharp decline in electricity supplies. The de-facto government failed to learn from the ramifications of the previous closure, especially on day laborers, or to propose measures to assist them financially. In addition, the Israeli regime restricted the import of medical test kits into Palestinian territories.

Since the detection of COVID-19 in early 2020, the number of infections has exceeded 45,000. According to Mahmoud Abdul-Hadi, an expert on civil society institutions, COVID-19 relief efforts in Gaza mostly concentrated on quarantine centers and in the early months of the pandemic, despite many humanitarian relief initiatives, including decentralized community campaigns, civil society institutions, international organizations, Hamas ministries, and the Waqfat Ezz (stand with dignity) Fund. He added that aid has markedly decreased compared to its levels in March, further aggravating the crisis as infection cases rise and overwhelm medical team capacity and crisis management efforts, which had led to further closures that continue to adversely impact Palestinians in Gaza.

The Ramifications of Collapse on Gaza’s Palestinians 

The reality in Gaza has shifted from open resistance to one of civil disobedience, as Gazans’ attempts to survive have boiled down to three behavioral options: withdrawal, surrender, or confrontation. A person withdraws when they fail to change their reality and reclaim their rights, and their only option becomes to escape after their means of action have been usurped. Withdrawal in Gaza means to travel, which is particularly common among youth.

To surrender means to reluctantly acclimate with one’s reality, a behavior that engenders a feeling of defeat, failure, and self-condemnation. Judging from their transformations following their failed innovative attempts, one may say that many young Palestinians in Gaza have lost their sense of purpose and desire to live.

Those who choose confrontation continue to confront the status quo with all means available, be they peaceful or armed, and with a great deal of effort placed in educational, community service, and relief activities. They thereby alternate between moments of temporary inability to continuous action.

The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated Gaza’s economic, political, and social conditions, and has exposed the fragility of society. Individualist tendencies have increased amongst Gaza’s Palestinians, along with anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty. Their political and social participation has decreased, and social values ​​have decayed. The pandemic has also created a political vacuum and lack of transparency at the level of decision-making.

Many young Palestinians in Gaza have lost their sense of purpose and desire to live
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Nowadays, Gaza is overpowered and shows little signs of life, lacking the basic foundations that would enable resilience and steadfastness, whether in the context of the liberation movement or otherwise. The result has been a continuing downward spiral towards social and individual isolation.

Simply put, Palestinians in Gaza are haunted by social misery, violence, and wars every second of their lives. Social inequalities have increased, while the marginalized and disadvantaged in society no longer have rights and live in limbo.

Confronting Total Collapse

The Great March of Return

Residents of Gaza take pride in the Great March of Return that began in 2018, as some consider it a new form of struggle against the occupation. And although the organizing body in charge of the Great March of Return decided to limit the rallies to national occasions on December 26, 2019, the large and ongoing demonstrations have represented a popular activity that engages individuals and families, and its effects on Gaza’s society are palpable.

Routinely on Fridays, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza headed eastwards to the borders with the part of Palestine occupied in 1948, setting their right of return in motion and fantasizing about returning to the homeland. After all, roughly 70% of Gaza’s population is internally displaced refugees from lands occupied by Israel in 1948. In effect, on Fridays, Gazans marched to return to their homes. 

The rallies were peaceful, inclusive, non-partisan and decentralized, and were founded on Palestinians’ desire to reclaim their rights without clashing directly with the occupation army. However, the occupation regime did not see it this way. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, 214 Palestinians were killed, including 46 children, with over 36,000 injuries, including 8,800 children. Many of those injured remain in dire need of rehabilitative care. 

From another perspective, the rallies changed from a tool of struggle to a tool of political bargaining with the advent of the “breaking the siege” slogan, which gave the Israeli government the excuse to attack demonstrators. Additionally, it prompted certain political forces including Fatah and the Democratic Front to withdraw from the rallies because their objectives changed.

Politically, Hamas benefited from the rallies by entering into unannounced talks with Israel in order to promote de-escalation between Israel and the Palestinian factions. In addition, the Qatari ambassador, Mohammad Al-Emadi, visited the marchers’ camps in eastern Gaza on November 9, 2018 and, with Israel’s approval, brought along a Qatari grant of $15 million in order to pay the salaries of Hamas employees. The next day, fuel supplies were resumed to Gaza’s power plant. 

Palestinians in Gaza counted on their leadership to seek political reconciliation and end the division, to abstain from bargaining with the occupation, and to adopt the Great March of Return as a means to reclaim the right of return. But they were soon disappointed. Hamas’s actions towards the demonstrating masses represented a loss of the sense of national identity, and of the values underpinning the right of return.

The “We Want to Live” Movement

Palestinians in Gaza grew tired of their living conditions and the status quo, and thus shifted from resistance to civil disobedience and rebellion. It was in this context that the “We Want to Live” Movement (bidna n’eesh) emerged on March 14, 2019, urging Gaza’s inhabitants to take to the streets in protest. The movement called on its followers to come out with kitchen cookware and utensils as a symbol, but they were surprised by the violent reaction of Hamas security forces who arrested families, journalists, and human rights defenders. They also orchestrated simultaneous demonstrations under the pretext of suffering from the salary crisis and the PA sanctions against Gaza.

The activists involved in the movement said they were shocked during interrogations as Hamas security forces invoked “treason” in their questions and purported that the “We Want to Live” demonstrators “worked against the resistance.” However, the activists protested issues of unemployment, and rising prices and taxes. They did not protest against Hamas or side with the PA; rather, they were standing for themselves.

Hamas’s reaction to this movement gives a clear indication of the amount of repression targeting public freedoms in Gaza, and the ways the political authorities have treated, and defamed, those agitating for basic improvements in living conditions as “collaborators against the resistance.” In fact, such a charge of treason is so profound that it provides sufficient grounds to refer the case to the Military Court in Gaza, where the accused faces a bleak and unknown fate.

The repercussions point to the crisis of the security apparatus in Gaza, and Hamas’s totalitarian rule which it justifies on grounds that it protects the citizens. This has, in fact, eroded steadfastness in Gaza, as it politicizes the resistance and works to render it the monopoly of a particular group.

Taking to Social Media

Like the rest of the world, Palestinians in Gaza circulate information on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, including satires of political news in the form of jokes and memes. Indeed, we can think of the virtual space as one that some have adopted as a field for spontaneous critique, away from factional allegiance, and amounting to its own kind of social mobilization. 

Given the increasing oppression of their right to freedom of expression, social media platforms have also become a means for Palestinians in Gaza to publicly shame authorities from across the political spectrum. In this way, public shaming has become a digital weapon that Gazans frequently use to express their anger and raise awareness about critical issues, such as in cases where families use violence against their female members, and in cases of political and social extortion against ordinary citizens.

Recently, Palestinian activists in Gaza launched an online campaign, “Down with Jawwal,” against the Palestine Cellular Communications Company, Jawwal, to protest its high prices, particularly in light of the difficult conditions in besieged Gaza. Online activism ensures social rather than formal immunity, speaks the mind of the public, and constitutes a true expression of marginalized groups. As such, it enhances the structural balance of society, reclaiming visibility across the collective, and minimizing individualist tendencies.

The pandemic has reinforced the Zionist principle of ‘divide and rule,’ while the division in Palestinian leadership has further entrenched fragmentation, the state of anomie, and social fragility
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While social activism in the street ceased and moved to online platforms as the only way to escape repression, activism on social media is hardly as powerful or effective. It should not replace physical and material activism, especially in the context of occupation.

The online protest movement has set a new language and form of political expression in Gaza following the political vacuum and the loss of faith in political change. Nevertheless, it instituted a digital mall, so to speak, in which political discourse is mired in consumerist culture, and has become a main mode of action for many in Gaza. This new mode of expression has resulted in indolence and lack of creativity. Indeed, consumerist values ​​have started to replace social and voluntary work, as well as productivity in society, in turn compounding the ways in which the existing political division continues to foster an environment hostile to creativity and productivity.

Projections on Gaza’s Future 

In a brainstorming session held on November 27, 2020, for a group of young men and women born after the turn of the millennium to discuss the transformations in Palestinian social and political values, one participant said: “the homeland is too narrow, and we are out of luck.” That is, this group represented the generation that spent its childhood in brutal wars, and came of age as the division in Palestinian leadership solidified. This is the generation that saw what few freedoms they enjoyed as children taken away. Their present is chaotic and their future unclear, as they see a world saturated with frustration, dangers, and loss.

Gaza’s Palestinians face the systematic discrimination of the occupation regime, as well as the discriminatory practices of the PA and Hamas. The pandemic has reinforced the Zionist principle of “divide and rule,” while the division in Palestinian leadership has further entrenched fragmentation, the state of anomie, and social fragility. The repercussions of COVID-19 exposed the role of the three variables (occupation, division, pandemic) in forging the duality felt by the Palestinian people in Gaza between what they experience in a society with historical memory and national identity, and what they have created within the permanent uncertainty they experience in order to live in momentary peace.

One cannot think of Gaza as going through a transitional phase brimming with turmoil and ambiguity since it has been in this state for more than a decade. One can only predict that Gaza will turn from a political to a humanitarian cause and its people will grow concerned with their individual interests, neglecting issues of collective importance. In such a future, the struggle will change into a struggle for survival between the victims themselves, tearing apart their shared humanity.

Palestinians in Gaza continue to fantasize about returning to their homeland and homes, especially after the Great March of Return, and even if the current generations – like many of their parents and grandparents – do not have actual memories of the homeland. Indeed, as prominent Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani once said: “I search for the Palestine of reality, the Palestine that is more than a memory.” Nonetheless, with ongoing collapse and traumatization in Gaza, Palestinians here have become anxious and fearful of tomorrow as they are unable to sustain their livelihoods and work. The right of return for them has become a mere fantasy.

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This post was originally published on Al-Shabaka.