"Come together, O people of Palestine, come together. Palestine did not bid you farewell; it left, Palestine did not bid you farewell. On Chinese paper, I write with ink on Chinese paper, O Palestine, for what has happened to you, O Palestine."
National unity and the consolidation of Palestinian internal efforts against the occupation are urgent demands by all believers in the Palestinian cause. This demand is natural and necessary. However, to an extent, it can be seen as idealistic due to the existence of political diversity and factions within the Palestinian society. This is in addition to the different currents supporting the Palestinian cause in the Arab region and around the world. Consequently, unification of the Palestinian currents becomes difficult, except during the intensification of Israeli military aggression, where Palestinians, in all their orientations, press for the necessity to resist the aggression with all possible means and reject tension among Palestinian factions.
Protestors for Palestine in Sydney, NSW, Australia in November 2023. Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash.
Political diversity is a fundamental characteristic of the Palestinian society, with Palestinians belonging to a wide spectrum of political ideologies, affiliations, and perspectives. This diversity is shaped by historical, geographical, and social factors, particularly the historical context, the geographic dispersal of Palestinians, and generational shifts. Sharp divisions emerged especially after the 1711 Battle of Ain Dara in Mount Lebanon between the Qays and the Yaman, two rival tribo-politico Druze factions. Following the Qays tribe’s victory and the consolidation of their power, regional alliances formed across the Levant. These emerging partnerships initiated forced displacement and several massacres, marking a dark chapter of history for Palestinians, and all the people of the Levant.
In 1825, new divisions emerged in Palestine between supporters of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s revolution in Egypt and supporters of the Ottoman central government in Istanbul. Proxy wars became fierce in Palestine, with both sides bringing mercenaries from Morocco, Sudan, Iran, and Iraq. These battles lasted for seven years until Ibrahim Pasha’s forces took control of Palestine in 1831, officially annexing it to Egyptian rule. This marked a crucial stage in the non-tribal political alliance in Palestine and the wider Arab region, reshaping the Palestinian social capital away from large family concepts and elitist socio-economic classes, and contributing to the formation of the first Palestinian “cultural elite.”
However, the cultural elite was described as rebellious against the authority of families, especially the noble and privileged families. It did not offer socially acceptable progressive solutions, as the formation of political parties in the 1920s was based on family foundations. The parties formed in that era, such as the Arab Higher Committee led by Amin Al Husseini and the National Defense Party led by Raghib Al Nashashibi, became the main pillars of the Palestinian national movement during the British mandate on Palestine. Many historians, such as Rashid Khalidi, have acknowledged that the failure of Palestinian revolutions can be partially attributed to the dispersion of efforts in internal conflicts between Palestinian factions.
Following the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, Palestinian political parties were restructured amid new regional changes, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the rise of nationalist parties, Islamist parties, and socialist parties. Two different slogans painted political thought in Palestine at the time. On one hand, one slogan claimed that Arab unity is the path to liberate Palestine and achieving strategic balance with the Zionist enemy before starting the battle to liberate Palestine is essential. The other slogan contradicts the former, demanding a war of attrition waged by guerilla groups to repel the Zionist occupation. This slogan of Palestine would lead to Arab unity.
Palestinian man and child in front of their tent during the Nakba in 1948.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
This regional conflict has influenced the direction of the contemporary Palestinian national movement, which began with armed struggle operations in the mid-1960s. The goal was to create a new climate for the conflict based on a long-term people’s war, giving the Palestinian guerrillas a chance to step out of the political wrangling among Arab countries. However, some countries considered armed struggle as a means of involving Arab armies in a battle with the Israeli enemy before these armies were ready for a strategic balance of power with the occupation forces. In contrast, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established to consolidate armed Palestinian movements within the Palestinian Liberation Army, associated with Arab armies. Arab countries started competing for control over Palestinian resistance movements, portraying themselves as the primary supporters. This indirect competition led to proxy conflicts among Arab countries, weakening the efforts of Palestinian resistance movements that sought Palestinian decision-making independence and distance from regional polarization.
This conflict between these two ideas may have been decisively settled at the beginning of the current century after the collapse of Arab nationalist regimes, the failure of the Oslo Accords, and the expansion of Israeli settlements. This diversity led to a variety of Palestinian military operations, ranging from individual operations like Operation Quetzal, which achieved operational success without specific political objectives, representing popular systematic anger against Israeli aggression. It served as a popular reaction to the weakness of organized Palestinian resistance, especially major armed organizations, whose operations became extremely limited and insufficient compared to the scale of Israeli aggression.
On the other hand, new political ideas emerged about the concept of a one-state solution and creating peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis. This aimed to resist Netanyahu’s project for a purely Jewish state, as well as the idea of racial segregation between Palestinians and Israelis, adopted in Kushner’s plans known as the “Deal of the Century” and amendments to the Abraham Accords. However, these political ideas were completely rejected by Palestinian organizations, leading to an escalation of Israeli aggression in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The Israeli government sought to divide the Palestinian people, instill fear in their hearts, and dismantle any form of Palestinian resistance. The policy adopted was based on the fear of pigs, as frightened pigs scatter and flee individually in all directions. However, the Palestinians formed moving ant clusters, uniting against Israeli aggression. These clusters formed coordination committees that contributed to unifying popular efforts in each region of the West Bank and Jerusalem, providing social support for any Palestinian threatened by occupation forces or settler gangs. From these committees, new Palestinian military brigades were formed, such as the Lion’s Den, the Jenin Brigade, and the Nablus Brigade.
In contrast, the Qassam Brigades –Hamas’s military wing– developed their military strength and expanded the network of military tunnels despite the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. The formation of the Unity of Fields, a call for unifying the fields of confrontation against the Israeli army, reinforced the concept of Islamic resistance against Israeli and American aggression, enhancing the possibilities of military escalation between the two sides. This escalation differs from the usual activities that occur in the West Bank with brigades like the Lion’s Den and other small Palestinian armed forces. These operations usually include a fight for three days and then withdrawal from the area, allowing the occupation forces to enter without effectively ending the armed activity. This scenario has become prevalent in the West Bank beyond the control of the occupation forces due to the lack of organizational cohesion among the formations of armed Palestinian resistance, as some analysts have observed.
The armed Palestinian operations in the West Bank underscored the urgent need for comprehensive political solutions for Palestine. However, the Russian war on Ukraine shifted the Palestinian issue away from the decision-making tables of major powers, allowing the right-wing Israeli government to commit ongoing war crimes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This, in turn, led to the escalation of Palestinian armed activities, with many observers anticipating a stage of widespread explosion.
The Al Aqsa Flood emerged like an iceberg. Little is known about how it started or the extent of control the Palestinian resistance movements had on October 7. As the Palestinian resistance achieved the goals they had been hoping for and Palestinian citizens rallied within the Gaza Strip, convictions arose surrounding the idea that the latter was “allowed” to happen to somewhat justify the Israeli plan for the Gaza Strip, seeing that Israeli security agencies ignored many security concerns prior to the attacks. The demands of the Palestinian resistance emphasized the necessity to end security measures at Al Aqsa Mosque, control Israeli settler gangs in the West Bank, stop arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and accept a prisoner exchange between Palestinians and Israelis, known as “the whitewashing the prisons of the occupation.” In contrast, the Israeli government proposed a plan to end Hamas’s rule in the Gaza Strip, hold Hamas leaders accountable for the events of October 7, and enact major projects such as the displacement of Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip, the construction of the Ben Gurion Canal linking the Gulf of Aqaba and the Mediterranean Sea, and the establishment of a NATO military base in northern Gaza.
Israeli airstrikes led to the destruction of over 70 percent of homes in Gaza City, displacing more than 1.5 million Palestinians from their homes. Public facilities such as hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, bakeries, markets, and other public places were destroyed. Additionally, electricity, water, medicine, and food supplies were cut off, causing a humanitarian crisis. This crisis resulted in an increase in the number of protesters in demonstrations around the world, in places like the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Pakistan, and Malaysia, condemning the Israeli aggression on Gaza and demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Destruction of Gaza’s buildings following Israeli air raids in November 2023. Photo by Emad El Byed on Unsplash.
The protests sweeping through cities in Western countries are usually organized by leftist movements. They typically involve various socialist organizations, diverse labor unions, and different student movements, in addition to human rights groups, organizations supporting the rights of indigenous populations, as well as Jewish institutions opposing the occupation and supporting the rights of Palestinians. There is also a broad participation from Arab and Islamic diaspora communities, particularly Palestinian and Lebanese diaspora.
This makes organizational cohesion within the protests loose. The political orientation of the protests is generally limited to concise slogans calling for a ceasefire, condemning Israeli aggression, supporting Palestinian resistance, and rejecting any political settlement that condemns Palestinian resistance as a legitimate national movement engaged in armed struggle against Israeli occupation. Beyond that, many of these groups lead with different, more personal slogans, using this reality as grounds to remain –to a certain extent– separated organizationally and within activism spaces from others.
Protestors from different organizations march at a rally for Palestine in Naarm(Melbourne), Australia on November 5, 2023. Photo by Ahmed Ali Barakat.
These broad demands have led to an increase in the numbers of protesters to more than three hundred thousand people in massive rallies in London and slightly fewer in some American and European cities. In Australia, the number of protesters reached about 30,000 in protests in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.
In analyzing the political composition of the protesters, we find some contradictions or competition among them, making the protest a collection of small demonstrations moving in one direction but with subtle differences to distinguish each group from the others. Before a protest starts, ‘neutral’ protestors are recruited by groups, leading to sorting processes that widen the gap between the ideas of those holding up large placards, each representing a specific political group. This prompted some protesters to form new political groups that operate only within pro-Palestine demonstrations, some being regional or ethnic organizations: Punjabis for Palestine, Italians for Palestine, Parisians for Palestine, and so on, as well as cause-oriented groups like LGBTQ+ for Palestine, vegetarians for Palestine, Maronites for Palestine, Assyrians for Palestine, and many other groups lacking organizational structures or political objectives. The reason behind the formation of some of these groups came from their rejection of the ideas of major organizations dominating pro-Palestine protests.
Vegans for Palestine sign help at a pro-Palestine protest in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia on November 5, 2023. Photo by Ahmed Ali Barakat.
In light of the weaknesses of some Palestinian factions in Western countries, and the immediate criminalization of belonging or supporting some of these factions, such as Hamas for example, the role of Palestinians in managing these protests is practically impossible. Instead, the management of these protests is carried out by coordinating bodies that do not have a specific political direction but gather under one slogan: “Stop the aggression on Gaza now”. The real reason is that the media does not highlight the words of the speakers or statements of the protest leaders; the media believes that all this is a gathering united behind a slogan of ceasefire now, and there is nothing else that unites the protesters, like liberation from an occupying entity.
No matter how much we try to unify the efforts of the protesters, we cannot unify their ideas, but we can invest in their gathering for popular pressure to get Western governments to adopt a supportive stance for a ceasefire. This is also a goal that Palestinian factions seek to happen in Arab countries to pressure the Israeli government to cease the aggressions and initiate new political negotiations on matters such as the prisoner exchange and ending arbitrary Israeli arrests.
The logic of “standing together” does not only mean creating a unified field force but implies that Palestinian and pro-Palestinian factions fight side by side, protecting each other in a fraternal alliance where everyone sacrifices for everyone. This logic is built on the strength of an ant ball, a formation taken by groups of ants to protect each other preemptively from possible oncoming dangers, that fortifies each individual within it. This enables them to confront the enemy with capabilities exceeding individual strengths, as they belong to an organization that supports and provides aid and assistance. The idea of the ant ball applies to protests, offering a faster approach to the formation of an emergency defensive alliance. This ball may evolve and develop strong offensive capabilities if it transforms into a snowball rolling quickly towards a radical change in the political scene in Western countries or imposes a radical change in the way Palestinian factions operate.
As such, the continued Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip increases the possibilities of such a radical change that may occur in the future.
Khaled hails from the village of Na'alin in Ramallah, Palestine. He completed a master's degree in Engineering Management at the University of Sydney. With a distinguished record of achievements, he has written numerous studies and articles on revolutionary thought, heritage, and Palestinian history. He founded a project named Tamrat Ramadan with the aim of reviving Palestinian heritage.
In addition, he has written many folktales and anecdotes in the Palestinian dialect and authored several plays. He has also provided distinctive coverage of various Arab and Palestinian events, especially in Australia. His publications include numerous intellectual, political, and heritage studies, reflecting his ongoing dedication to disseminating knowledge and awareness in various fields and topics.
Check his work here also: Website
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Khaled Ghannam
