The establishment of Bab Al Shams, a direct action against Israel’s settlement enterprise. (Photo credit: Issam Rimawi / APA images)
SUNAINA MAIRA writes in muftah.org
The eruption of resistance villages is an extension of popular struggles in which young Palestinians have been actively involved since March 15, 2011. During Palestine’s so-called Arab Spring, a series of protests organized by youth erupted in Ramallah and in other sites across the West Bank, as well as in Gaza and within the 1948 borders of Israel among the “’48 Palestinians.”
Inspired partly by the Arab revolutions and in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners, this new “youth movement” is but one phase in ongoing resistance against Israeli occupation, colonialism, and apartheid. Nevertheless, as the second anniversary of the Palestinian youth movement approaches, it is important to reflect on a phenomenon that largely remains in the shadows of much more dramatic revolts in North Africa, and the more difficult struggle, in a sense, that Palestinian activists have been waging for democracy as well as national liberation.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 