Thread by @iyad_elbaghdadi

Yesterday, Amnesty released a report identifying Israel as sustaining an apartheid regime under international law. Israel was pissed, but also, there were Palestinians who were unimpressed. A thread about the strategic significance of the report for the Palestinian cause:

In straightforward terms: Israel can do whatever the fuck it wants to us because it's more powerful than us. It's more powerful than us because it has the explicit or tacit support of a broad segment of the "international community", and benefits from the existing world order.

As someone recently said, "The reason we cannot defeat Israel is that we are not *only* fighting Israel". We are fighting an entire world order. Nearly every global system of oppression intersects upon us. I tweeted about this previously here:

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1398977740687167489

We want to live in peace, prosperity, liberty and dignity upon our native land. We want an end to our constant humiliation. We want an acknowledgement of the grave historical injustices and successive traumas inflicted upon us. We want a true just peace to flower in the Holy Land

All of this is *impossible* so long the power differential is so severely tipped in Israel's favor. Israel holds all the cards, has global support, and faces absolutely no accountability. Meanwhile Palestinians are divided and have no responsible leadership or a national vision.

A lot of the dysfunction in the broad Palestine movement is by design; it's a feature and not a bug of the current system. But this isn't a thread about that, it's a thread about why we have to think strategically and use all emergent spaces and opportunities for our cause

It is important for us to erode our oppressors' international support, such that supporting them becomes politically risky for governments/parties globally. The shortest available path towards this is if Israel becomes widely acknowledged as sustaining an apartheid regime

If - or rather, when - this happens, is when the *actual* BDS campaigns will start. These campaigns will have the passionate backing of the global human rights community and international law scholars. This may be a few years in the future, but I think it's inevitable.

Once these campaigns spread & intensify, they will bring millions of people into the Palestine solidarity movement, allowing us to expand our reach, our resources, our network, our influence, and our power. What we do with that expanded space will be up to us. The sky's the limit

To summarize, the following strategic objectives flow into each other:
- To erode our oppressor's power and increase our own
- To erode our oppressor's international support and increase our own; therefore:
- To ensure that the apartheid framing is normalized across the world

Towards this, the Amnesty report is a watershed moment. Amnesty and HRW are the world's largest human rights organizations, and they both agree that Israel is an apartheid regime. Here's a thread from yesterday about this:

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1488419956509270018

Amnesty isn't going to liberate Palestine. The "international community" isn't going to liberate Palestine. The "global human rights community" isn't going to liberate Palestine. But this is a very important step that we need to fully heed, and use the opportunities it creates.

Yes, "international law" is hegemonic and needs to be decolonized. Yes, "the human rights framework" is hegemonic and needs to be decolonized. But to go from here to "this report is meaningless" is a non sequitur. We do not have the luxury not to use the space expanding before us

If we cannot think strategically and beyond the horizon of the foreseeable, we will always be living in waithood, waiting for that perfect imagined liberation to come, rejecting/missing strategically significant opportunities towards our liberation and return

Palestine was not occupied in a day. There were 31 years - an entire generation - between the Balfour declaration and the Nakba. Palestine's liberation is also a generation-long project. Let's open and use spaces and build power, so that a new generation can carry on our fight.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know. Leave a reply or send me a DM. And remember that anything related to Palestine brings forth strong feelings and uncovers deep traumas, so please be thoughtful and be nice.

Here's a download link to Amnesty's report, "Israel's apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity". It's 280 pages. Most of those criticizing it haven't read it. Read it. amnesty.org/en/documents/m…