What is the role of Israelis in the Palestinian liberation movement?
Israelis and Palestinians rally for an end to the war in Gaza, at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, 24 April 2025
Fadi Shabita writes in +972 on 25 April 2025:
Like many popular struggles for liberation throughout history, the Palestinian fight against Israeli apartheid is defined by a confrontation between two distinct sides: oppressor and oppressed. Yet, like in almost every other instance — from the South African anti-apartheid movement to Algerian resistance to French colonialism — some individuals from within the ruling side have blurred this divide, choosing to oppose the mechanisms of domination and disassociate themselves from the actions of their own society.
This recurring phenomenon has consistently forced liberation movements to address difficult questions: Should they embrace dissenting voices from the oppressor’s camp or regard them with suspicion? Does active solidarity from the other side strengthen their movement or risk undermining it?
Today, the approximately 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are effectively under total Israeli control. While all of Israel’s Jewish residents, including settlers in the West Bank, enjoy full rights as citizens, Palestinians are divided into several categories — all inferior in status to Israeli Jews by varying degrees.
In the West Bank, where Israel is well on its way to annexation, the settler population has grown from 100,000 during the Oslo Accords to approximately 700,000 today. Many of the settlers are armed, backed by the state, and hold positions of political and military power. Leaders of the messianic right, once cautious in revealing their true intentions, now openly promote ethnic cleansing and Jewish supremacy.
One of the main tactics used to cover up this ongoing and accelerated colonization is to present it as conflict based on “misunderstandings” or “prejudices” between Israelis and Palestinians