Will the Arab Spring reach Palestine?

For over 9 months now protests, strikes and revolutions have rocked the Arab world. Now there are signs it will erupt in Palestine.

When the first demonstrations broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank demonstrated in solidarity and with their own demands for democracy and equality. These protests were brutally crushed by both Fatah (the ruling party in the West Bank) and Hamas (the ruling party in Gaza).

Now a number of national, regional and international issues are intersecting in a way which will make an uprising by the Palestinians, and a confrontation with Israel almost inevitable.

In September, the Palestinian Authority (Palestine’s government, controlled by Fatah) is forcing a vote at the UN on whether Palestine should be recognised as a nation. While the vote will be symbolic, it will force the issue of the continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel. If the vote passes it could embolden the Palestinian National Liberation movement. If it falls, it will enrage tens of thousands who will rightly see the votes failure as a result of US political and economic bullying on behalf of Israel. 

The force unleashed by the mass rebellion across the Arab world has reverberated in Turkey. The Turkish government is now being more confrontational with Israel and has said it will send it’s Navy to escort the next freedom flotilla to Gaza.

The Egyptian revolution and has moved beyond mass protests into general strike action by hundreds of thousands of workers trying to break the power of the military dictatorship. The anti-imperialist feelings of the Egyptian masses are being felt ever stronger, as when thousands assaulted the Israel embassy and ransacked it in response to Israel killing 5 Egyptian soldiers.

In Syria the rebellion continues, and the Israeli state knows full well that if Bashar Assad is deposed then the Syrian masses could quickly turn their anger on Israel, as the Egyptian masses have.

In Israel itself a mass protest movement against poverty, for more equality and a stronger welfare state has emerged, organising demonstrations of hundreds of thousands. Although it does not challenge of even raise the issue of Israel’s occupation, it is destabilising the Israeli government, at a time when it is under immense pressure internationally.

With a Palestinian movement emboldened by the UN vote, and with Israel hemmed in by Egypt, Turkey and Syria, and dealing with its own mass protest movement, the autumn looks like we will see the struggles of the Arab Spring arrive in Palestine with full force.