What does "Free Palestine" mean?

The struggle of any oppressed, colonized people is essentially the same.

They want to exercise the right to self-detemination.

They want the freedom, time and space to develop their own systems and institutions of government and civil society.

They want to regain control of their land, property and resources.

They want an end to the violence and war that inevitably accompanies colonialism.

They want to learn the truth about what happened to the many murdered, tortured and disappeared members of their society, and for those displaced abroad to be able to return.

They want a fair recompense for the wrongs that have been done (though this is rarely achieved).

Palestine is no different, although as an extreme case of settler-colonialism with an aim of removing most or all of the indigenous peoples, the struggle has its own characteristics.

The Palestinians have never been allowed to have a meaningful say on their own future.

Not when modern Zionist immigration started by buying land from absentee landlords based in Damascus or elsewhere.

Not when the British conquered Palestine and issued the Balfour Declaration, to create a "Jewish home" in Palestine, without any involvement of the local people.

Not when the British and others decided to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one, with a separate state of Jordan across the river.

[I acknowledge exceptions to the generalizations I have listed.

Chosen  representatives of the non-Jewish majority in Palestine were invited to testify to a series of commissions during British rule, but the general populace had no say.

Palestinians were involved in the infamous Oslo negotiations and agreements. But Arafat and his team kept it a secret from their people and never allowed them a say on the disastrous outcome.]

To bring this right up to date, consider the current American proposal for some sort of truce in Gaza. We are told that Israel is sending a team to Qatar for indirect negotiations. But both the Americans and the Israelis are saying that Hamas must accept the proposal in its entirety.

The media in Israel and the West are full of criticisms of the Palestinians for allegedly saying "yes, but".

Hamas, after consulting with other Palestinian factions to the best of its ability, in extremely difficult circumstances, wants guarantees that Israel will not resume its campaign of mass murder, starvation, war crimes and destruction in Gaza whenever it decides it wants to do so, as it unilaterally did to end the previous truce (no doubt resulting in death and suffering for the remaining Israeli hostages, as well as for the population of Gaza).

Hamas is being told that it is “unacceptable” to want guarantees against, going other things, further bombardment from air, sea and land.

In other words, it is not a proposal to be negotiated; it is an ultimatum from Israel and the US, two of the most powerful nations on Earth, who view the Palestinians as lesser beings, inconveniently impeding their expansionist plans.

The struggle of the solidarity movement must be for Palestinians to have the time, the space and the freedom, to discuss and choose their own future.

Ultimately, this will have to involve the Israeli people as well. It is delusional to say that they will all "go back to Poland and Brooklyn", or similar phrases which are bandied about.

For one thing, the majority of Jewish Israelis are descendants of the Jews who were forced to leave the Arab countries after 1948. Msny of them had to surrender their citizenship to be allowed to leave. I don't think too many will be going back to those countries.

Unlike in Algeria or South Africa, in Palestine the colonists and their descendants are not a small minority in a much larger native population.

Nor will the Israelis make meaningful concessions, much less accept that their state and society, based on ethnic supremacism, must be decolonized, until they are compelled to do so.

I do not mean compelled by violent means. Telling Israelis that they must all leave their country makes them more determined to stay, and therefore to crush Palestinian resistance.

This is where a solidarity movement is important, not just in pressing for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, and to end our own countries' direct and indirect involvement in genocide, but in pursuing strategies of boycott, divestment and sanctions, and a general isolation of Israel as a pariah state.

This was an important part of supporting the South Africans' struggle for liberation. It is even more important for the Palestinians, who lack the support of neigbouring and coninental countries, which South Africans had.

Because of the strategic and ideological importance of the Israel project to countries like Britain, the US and NATO, and arguably to the neocolonial rulers of Arab States, efforts to suppress, divide, defame and neutralize the solidarity movement can be expected to intensify.

The authoritarian laws and enforcement resources used for this purpose will be used against other dissenting and protesting groups.

Preparation, determination and political and moral clarity are essential to advance our struggle.

In solidarity.