'Not a Single Grain of Sand' The Record: Launch Statement

'Not a Single Grain of Sand' The Record: Launch Statement

'Not a Single Grain of Sand' The Record: Launch Statement

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following is the launch statement of a new platform, Al Sijil (The Record), on BDS in the Gulf that was written on 25 May 2021.]

On 15 May 2021 we mourned 73 years since the Nakba, the catastrophic Zionist colonisation of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of its people. The catastrophe was borne by the people of Palestine, but its reverberations have affected and shaped the lives and struggles of others across the region. The force of Zionist settler colonialism in shaping fundamental aspects of the lives of Palestinians everywhere in the world, and the lives of people of the region, continues up until this day. The attempted ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, lynch mob violence and murderous assaults in other Palestinian cities, and the monstrous bombing of Gaza are all a systematic part of the ongoing Zionist colonisation.

Today, on 25 May 2021, we take pause to reflect on the most recent iteration of the Palestinian struggle, to express our respect for those who fought for their liberation, to celebrate the achievements of Palestinian resistance, and to honour those who have lost their lives. This platform affirms its unconditional support for the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. We reject - absolutely and without negotiation - the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. We have been inspired by the courageous resistance - in all its forms - of Palestinians across historic Palestine, and by the solidarity shown with them by Palestinians and others across the world. We see the most recent general strike, armed struggle, widespread protests, organisation through popular committees and media campaigns as articulations that are particular to this moment, in the context of a long and radical tradition of resistance.

We note that today, 25 May, is a celebration of the day of resistance and liberation in Lebanon, marking the withdrawal Zionist forces from the South. We remember that struggles for justice in the region are interconnected, and the struggle of the people of the region - in spite of divisions created by the geography of colonialism. We pay respects to those who carry the burdens of these struggle, while recognising that their victory is a victory for us all. We also honour the tradition of resistance of the free people of the Mashreq, Maghreb and the Gulf, as well as others throughout time and across the world who have today and in the past come together to fight against domination.

“The Record” is a website for news and updates on normalisation in the GCC, which was made official through the signing of the 'Abraham Accords' on 15 September 2020. The website draws on news and social media sources to monitor normalisation measures in the GCC. The sources include a range of news, web and social media accounts created by fronts and entities linked to branches of the Zionist regime, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as those linked to the Gulf regimes. It is linked to the Twitter account 'alsijil1', which produces our blog posts as tweets. The website operates in Arabic and English and we aim to share the same content in both languages- although this is not always available. The links are catalogued thematically, and the archive is searchable. We hope this platform will be a useful resource for scholars, activists, campaigners and analysts. The blog will also feature analytical contributions to complement the information collected. We invite users to share news or information that we have missed, or to share corrections to information published.

We know that the people of the Gulf stand with the Palestinians in their struggle today, as they have stood with them in the past. We salute those who have done so publicly. We support their demand, made in the past weeks, for withdrawal from the shameful “Abraham accords”, which do not represent the proud history and ongoing commitment to the liberation of Palestine upheld here. Today we remind ourselves that our collective work must continue. We hope that this platform, in its own small scope, can contribute to the long struggle for justice.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412