A-Infos (en) IAS: Observations on the anarchist movement in Palestine (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Reflections of young Palestinian anarchists in a land occupied for 70 
years in which there has been no shortage of brilliant experiences of 
self-organization, but in which it is difficult to think of the 
anti-colonial struggle as an anti-authoritarian struggle ---- Ramallah, 
December 7, 2018, Nena News - "I'm still trying to kick the nationalist 
habit," jokes activist Ahmad Nimer, as we talk outside a bar in 
Ramallah. The topic of our conversation seems strange: living as an 
anarchist in Palestine.
In a colonized country, it is quite difficult to convince people of the 
goodness of the non-authoritarian and non-state solution. Most of the 
time you are faced with a strongly anti-colonial, often barely 
nationalist mentality. And, in fact, Palestinian anarchists today have a 
visibility problem. "Despite high-profile international and Israeli 
anarchist activity, there does not appear to be a corresponding 
awareness of anarchism among many Palestinians."

Contemporary debates about anarchism center on a power approach: 
rejecting power "from above" in favor of power "with." When we talk 
about anarchy as a political concept, we define it as a rejection of the 
State," explains Saed Abu Hijleh, professor of Human Geography at 
An-Najah University in Nablus, "we talk about freedom and a society that 
organizes itself without the interference of the State. But how do a 
stateless people cope with anarchy, a term that implies opposition to 
some form of state as a condition of their existence?

In Palestine, various elements of the popular struggle have historically 
been self-organized. Although not explicitly identified as "anarchism," 
"people have already organized their lives in a horizontal, 
non-hierarchical sense," says Beesan Ramadan, another local anarchist 
who describes anarchism as "tactical," questioning the need to give it a 
label. . "It is already present, in my culture and in the way 
Palestinian activism has worked," he continues. "During the First 
Intifada, for example, when someone's house was demolished, people 
organized to rebuild it, spontaneously. As a Palestinian anarchist, I 
would like to go back to the roots of the First Intifada. It did not 
arise from a political decision .

Yasser Arafat declared independence in November 1988, the First Intifada 
had begun in December 1987, "to deflect the momentum of the Intifada," 
says Ramadan. The Palestinian issue has become even more complicated in 
recent decades. The predominantly horizontal organizational landscape of 
the First Intifada disappeared in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo 
Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. Now here 
in Palestine," Ramadan observes, "we do not have the concept of 
authority that other people reject. We have the ANP and the occupation, 
and our priorities are always mixed. "The PA and the Israelis are on the 
same level because the Authority is for Israel an instrument of 
oppression of the Palestinians."

Nimer shares his opinion and explains that there is growing consensus 
that the ANP is "a proxy for the occupation." "Being an anarchist does 
not mean having a black and red flag or being a black bloc," Ramadan 
specifies, referring to the anarchist protest tactic of dressing in 
black clothing and covering the face. "I don't want to imitate Western 
groups in their way of 'doing' anarchism. It doesn't work here, because 
you have to create a whole consciousness in people. People don't 
understand this concept." However, Ramadan believes that the low 
visibility of Palestinian anarchists and the lack of knowledge of 
anarchism among Palestinians in general does not necessarily mean that 
there are few: "I think there are a good number of Palestinian 
anarchists. But for the most part, at least for Now, it is a personal 
and individual belief, we are active in our own way.

This lack of a unified anarchist movement in Palestine could be due to 
the fact that Western anarchists have never really focused on 
colonialism. Western writers didn't have to do it," says Budour Hassan, 
activist and law student, "their struggle was different." "For an 
American anarchist," adds Nimer, "decolonization should be part of an 
anti-authoritarian struggle. To me, that's just what has to happen."

Hassan expands the meaning of anarchism beyond mere anti-state or 
anti-colonial authoritarianism. He refers to the Palestinian novelist 
and Arab nationalist Ghassan Kanafani, noting that although he 
challenged the occupation, "he also challenged patriarchal relations and 
bourgeois classes." "That's why I think we Arabs - anarchists from 
Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain - have to start reformulating anarchism 
in a way that reflects our experiences of colonialism, our experiences 
as women in a patriarchal society, etc."

Being part of a political opposition will not save you," Ramadan warns. 
"For many women, resisting the occupation also means acting agai

https://telegra.ph/Observaciones-sobre-el-movimiento-anarquista-en-Palestina-05-06
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