“Los libertadores no existen. Son los pueblos quienes se liberan a sí mismos.” – “Liberators do not exist. It is the peoples who liberate themselves.”
—ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA
THIS FAMOUS QUOTE, attributed to the Argentinian revolutionary, is as true in the case of Palestine as it is of South America.
In Palestine, however, we have been quite unfortunate in 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, many have claimed, with much fanfare though little action, that the “liberation of Palestine” is central to their political agendas.
I grew up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. My father’s intellectual circle consisted mostly of like-minded socialists, ex-political prisoners and true revolutionaries—that is, engaged organic intellectuals in the full Gramscian sense. Like my father, they were all justifiably cynical, making constant reference to the “treason of the Arabs,” the hopelessness of the international order and the stranglehold Zionists have over America. Yet, though they would have been utterly offended by the following suggestion, they were also—to a degree—politically innocent, if not outright naive. Despite their constant tirades against their “Arab brethren,” they still hoped that some liberating Arab army would, miraculously, come to Palestine’s rescue.
During the First Intifada, the popular uprising of 1987, rumors abounded: that the Egyptian military was crossing the Sinai desert to confront the Israeli occupation army in Gaza; that Saddam Hussein had ordered the Iraqi army to march to Palestine through Jordan; and that even the Algerians whom, we were told, were particularly fond of Palestinians, were fed up with the silence of Palestine’s Arab neighbors before the Israeli atrocities, and had thus decided to dispatch their navy through the Mediterranean. Though my father and his friends would always claim that they had known, all along, that these were silly rumors, I remember hearing the giddiness in their voices and seeing the excitement in their eyes whenever a new rumor would surface, hoping, perhaps, that this time around, the stories of approaching Arab liberators were true.
The liberating Arab and, by extension, the liberating Muslim, have occupied much space in the Palestinian popular discourse. The Imam of our local mosque would always end his Friday sermon with the supplication, “May Allah awaken the sleeping Arab and Muslim Ummah so that they would liberate Palestine and Al-Aqsa Mosque.” We, the faithful, including my father and his allegedly communist friends, would repeat in unison, “Ameen.” By the end of the Intifada, it was clear that no one was coming to liberate us, not then, not now, and, most likely, not any time soon.
Since then, I have lived and traveled in many countries and interacted with numerous intellectual spaces in which solidarity with Palestine is central, or at least relevant, to various political or ideological movements. The true love and genuine concern that ordinary people across the globe have for Palestine is more than touching; it is invigorating. A Native American woman in Colorado told me that her biggest regret, knowing that she was dying with cancer, was that she would not see the day in which Palestine is free—her dying wish was to visit Palestine and her community actually made it happen. A newly-wed South African couple told me that the happiest day in their life was the day they prayed at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. A former Irish fighter and prisoner assured me that he is as committed to the freedom of Palestine as he is to the true freedom of his people…
Judging by the rise of global solidarity with Palestine and the tremendous success of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement—coupled with the greater awareness of the interconnectivity/intersectionality among the struggles of all people against injustices in all of its forms—one can rest assured that solidarity with Palestine is not a fleeting phenomenon. However, since a centralized Palestinian political strategy, one that emanates from a representative Palestinian leadership, remains missing, many often take the initiative to speak for, and on behalf of, the Palestinian people.
A few years ago, while visiting the United Kingdom on a speaking tour, I repeatedly asserted that Palestinians own political discourse, their cultural, their national aspirations, history and so on—should serve as the guiding principle of any true solidarity with Palestine. To my surprise, a British activist protested: “Our solidarity should not hinge on a deep understanding of the people in need of solidarity,” he argued. He said that it was “his generation” that “liberated Vietnam from American imperialism” and, yet, he, to this day, still knew nothing about Vietnamese culture. I was dumbfounded at this clear misrepresentation of that heroic struggle. That interaction has afforded me the most jarring insight into the extent of the disconnect between those who seek to appropriate the role of liberators, and the people who, as per Che Guevara’s words, are the only ones capable of truly liberating themselves.
For many years, the Palestinian people have been caught in a seemingly impossible political dichotomy. On the one hand, they have proven capable of shouldering immense sacrifices and sustaining a national struggle for justice and freedom over the course of a century while, on the other hand, in the words of the late Palestinian Professor, Edward Said, they have also been “woefully cursed by bad leadership.”
Clearly, it is not by a curse but by political design that the Palestinian people have been afflicted with such a “bad leadership,” despite the fact that Palestine is endowed with some of the most accomplished, capable, educated and well-informed women and men in every field of leadership. This book is but a microcosm of what Palestine has to offer. The problem, however, is that such potential leadership is often marginalized, silenced, imprisoned and even assassinated. With the true engaged Palestinian leaders and intellectuals sidelined or eliminated altogether, the political space is deliberately opened for fraudulent leaderships, political wheelers and dealers and money-hungry charlatans.
Our Vision for Liberation is our attempt to offer a new way of looking at Palestinian liberation. For the kind of liberation championed in this book to succeed, the Palestinian people must be placed at its core, and truly engaged Palestinians must take center stage, not only to convey the victimization of their people but also to mobilize and empower them as well. Such engaged Palestinians are also critical to the international solidarity movement. Solidarity that is not guided by authentic Palestinian voices is simply futile; it cannot reflect the true desires of the Palestinian people, and therefore cannot effectively mobilize what is most essential: their support.
As an admirer of the great historian, Ilan Pappé, I felt truly privileged to be his Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter’s European Center for Palestine Studies. My focus at that time was on finding an alternative, non-elitist way of conveying the history of the Palestinian people. I wanted to imagine a different way of telling the history of Palestine that does not go through the traditional routes of powerful clans, wealthy leaders and political factions, but through the narrow and impoverished alleyways of Gaza, the dusty roads of Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, and the heaps of rubble to which the refugee camp of Jenin, in the Occupied West Bank, was reduced following the Israeli invasion of 2002. I wanted to tell a different kind of narrative, stories about ordinary Palestinian men and women who defined Palestine, its tragedies, its triumphs and its aspirations. Though I earned my degree in 2015, I remain a forever student of this inspiring teacher.
In an article, published in 2018, Pappé wrote,
… Thus, 70 years on, one has to resort to a term that might seem outdated in order to describe what can genuinely bring peace and reconciliation to Israel and Palestine: decolonization. How exactly this will occur is yet to be seen. It would require, first of all, a more precise and united Palestinian position on the political endgame or the updated vision of the project of liberation.
Palestine is in need of a radical form of decolonization, as the forces that conspire to deny Palestinians any form of liberation, let alone justice and freedom, are too powerful to be left to crumble under the weight of their own contradictions. Indeed, caught between a decided Israeli colonial project, irrelevant Palestinian “leadership,” and the self-aggrandizing authoritarian Arab regimes, Palestinians have no alternative but to be their own liberators.
Our Vision is not an intellectual exercise aimed at dissecting or dwelling on the past, but a serious attempt at looking forward, at envisioning that “unified Palestinian position” urged by Pappé, by allowing the engaged Palestinian intellectuals, each in his/her respected field of work, study and struggle, to articulate that coveted road map of liberation.
I am honored to have co-edited this book with my mentor and friend, Professor Ilan Pappé. I am also honored and humbled to have worked with many inspiring Palestinian leaders and engaged intellectuals, who have much to teach us all, not just Palestinian readers, but justice warriors the world over.