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7 July 2021

The Palestinians Will Not—and Cannot—Be Ignored

Rashid Khalidi

The intense violence in Israel and Palestine in May resembled similar episodes in recent decades. But it also had several distinct features, chief among them the newfound unity of Palestinians everywhere. Palestinians rose up together in the face of the divisions that Israel has imposed on them and those created by the shortsighted partisanship of their leaders. They mounted demonstrations throughout the country in response to Israel’s heavy-handed repression in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and its bombardments of Gaza that killed over 250 people. Israel tried to squash these protests, leading to eruptions of mob violence mainly directed against Palestinians in cities inside Israel such as Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa. Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinian protesters in the West Bank. Then on May 18, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, inside Israel, and in diaspora communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere mounted a general strike, the first to encompass all of historic Palestine since the six-month general strike of 1936.

The deck remains stacked against the Palestinians, however, and a new Israeli government seems no more likely than its predecessor to cease its abuses and the policies that have made

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