With a demise toll lengthy surpassing 30,000, the displacement of 1.4 million individuals, and a famine induced on a inhabitants already bearing the brunt of a 16-year blockade, Israel’s ongoing struggle in Gaza has been unparalleled in its ranges of violence and destruction.
Additionally unparalleled has been the extent of the worldwide outpouring of public anger at what the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice has known as a ‘plausible’ case of genocide. From Jordan and Egypt to university campuses in the US and Europe, publics within the Center East and around the globe have decried the devastation and havoc wrought on strange Palestinians, and have denounced the complicity of their governments in Israel’s struggle.
Within the cultural and political regional sub-system that’s the Arab world, each nation has its ‘Palestine story’. Widespread historic and geopolitical experiences and recollections of individuals subdued by colonialism render identification with Palestinians logical. However the Palestinian trigger has additionally been used and abused for many years by dictators within the postcolonial Arab states, turning into a fixture of official discourse and college curricula.
The Tunisians have been on the forefront of demonstrations of pro-Palestinian solidarity within the Arab area. Like different Arabs, Tunisians take into account Palestinians their brethren and sympathise deeply with their battle for nationwide self-determination.
![](https://www.eurozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Protest_for_palestine_Tunis_Kassba_17-05-2021_By_Brahim_Guedich-3494-1024x682.jpg)
Picture: Bra / supply: Wikimedia Commons
From under, Tunisians have a historical past of armed resistance towards Israeli occupation since 1948, involving Tunisian militants or fedayeen within the Nineteen Seventies and onwards (described by Jean Genet in his late work Prisoner of Love). From above, nevertheless, Tunisia’s coverage on Palestine has usually been out of step with the remainder of the Arab World.
Historic legacies
This goes above all for the gradualist place on decolonizing Palestine taken by Habib Bourguiba, the nation’s first president (1957–1987). In his (in)well-known March 1965 speech in Jericho, Bourguiba made a case for ‘provisional solutions’ as a substitute for purely emotive stand-taking, which he argued would ‘condemn us [Arabs] to dwell for hundreds of years in the identical standing’ – which within the case of the Palestinians meant colonial occupation. The Tunisian president most popular avoiding Arab state-level confrontations with Israel and, above all else, was initially in favour of UN-drawn ‘partition’ borders.
The speech was not well-received by fellow Arabs, together with Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser, who deemed it too average. In hindsight, nevertheless, Bourguiba’s stage-managed method to Palestinian liberation appears to be like fairly like what, because the Nineties, has been known as the ‘two-state resolution’.
After Egypt carried out a volte face and made peace with Israel via the 1978–9 US-brokered Camp David peace treaty, the Arab League suspended its membership and moved the group’s headquarters to Tunis. In an act of help for the Palestinian resistance, Tunisia additionally hosted the Palestinian Liberation Group (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat, after it was expelled from Lebanon in 1982.
An Israeli air raid on Hammam al-Shatt, a suburb of Tunis, in October 1985 killed at the least 50 Palestinians (narrowly lacking Arafat himself) and 18 Tunisians, scary public protests. Three years later, the Mossad assassinated Khalil Al-Wazir (recognized by his nom de guerre, Abu Jihad), the architect of the primary Palestinian intifada, at his dwelling within the Algerian capital. The 2 occasions are etched into the collective reminiscence of Tunisians as a direct assault on their nation’s sovereignty in addition to on the Palestinian resistance. The assaults helped kind extra bonds of shared battle towards Israel.
These snapshots from Tunisia’s historical past are vital. They present that, whereas Tunisia isn’t related to the Palestinian query in the identical approach as Egypt or Syria, which border on Israel and have waged struggle immediately with their neighbour, Palestine has all the time been central to the Tunisian imaginary. That is vital to level out, not simply because to take action remembers Tunisia’s place within the complexities of a Center East battle born of European colonialism, which in Israel remodeled into a brand new type of settler-colonialism, occupation and serial war-making, but in addition to make clear the solidarity evident in Tunisia all through the present struggle.
Tunisian solidarity with ‘free Palestine’
For shut observers of the North African nation, Tunisians’ outrage at Israel’s struggle on Gaza, and at America’s and Europe’s full-blown help for it, is not any shock. Standard solidarity (tadamun) is seen not simply in avenue demonstrations, but in addition in on a regular basis symbolism, from the ever-present Palestinian flag to the keffiyeh worn by public figures and media personalities. In Tunisia, pro-Palestine mobilization or hirak spans each society and the state, the civic and the political.
Regardless of pertaining to a global political disaster, the general public outcries inevitably have home political significance. Assist for Palestine has develop into essentially the most sustained expression of bottom-up political dissent because the 2011 revolution that ousted the longstanding dictator Ben Ali. Such a phenomenon has implications for a rustic experiencing a dramatic (and disheartening) strategy of democratic backsliding since July 2021.
Professional-Palestine mobilization in Tunisia is stratified, rising amongst totally different socio-political groupings inside society. Parsing these stratifications permits us to attract a complete image of public opinion within the nation.
Soccer ultras and youth
First is the youth cohort not affiliated with commerce unions, scholar syndicalism, political events or organized civil society. Tunisia’s youth are barometer of the place present and future public opinion stands, since their place derives neither from ideology nor political calculus.
Among the many first manifestations of youth solidarity with Palestine since 7 October 2023 have been performances by soccer followers. Ultras specifically declare distance from politics, however not the place Palestine is anxious. At a Membership Africain match in late October 2023, ultras choreographed a tifo spectacle backing the Palestinian resistance. It was among the many first of its type within the Arab area and was echoed by ultras in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. The environment was characteristically festive. Nationalist Palestinian songs blared within the background, followers and spectators clapped and chanted, and numerous Palestinian flags fluttered within the stands. An enormous black-and-white banner learn, in English: ‘We Stand with Palestine: Resistance Till Victory’.
Weeks later, after the grinding violence had taken its ghastly toll on the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, Membership Africain ultras waved a banner honouring the 6405 children killed by Israel till that time. In a rustic the place youth are more and more depoliticized, this expression of sympathy amongst soccer followers underscores how a lot of a ‘no-brainer’ help for Palestine is in Tunisia.
Syndicalist organisations
Tunisian syndicalists in each their commerce union and scholar iterations have traditionally aligned themselves with the Palestinian trigger. This time is not any totally different. The Tunisian Normal Labour Union (UGTT), the nation’s largest commerce union, has led the mobilization and group of solidarity protests. With its huge nationwide constituency and well-oiled organizational equipment, the UGTT has lengthy been well-placed to spearhead protest coordination.
An announcement revealed on the Union’s Facebook page on 10 October 2023 from the UGTT Secretary Normal, Noureddine Tabboubi, set the tone. Tabboubi known as on members to ‘help our Arab individuals in Palestine towards brutal Zionist aggression’ by collaborating in a 12 October protest march taking off from the UGTT headquarters in Belvedere to the centre of Tunis. Confirming how un-controversial help for the Palestinian resistance is throughout the spectrum of usually ideologized civil society, Tabboubi signed his assertion, ‘glory to the resistance and eternity for our individuals’s martyrs’.
Notice right here the tone of collective possession of the Palestinian trigger. Shifting rapidly and adeptly, the UGTT has been essentially the most distinguished head of the National Committee for Supporting the Resistance in Palestine. The Committee contains a lot of partisan and civic forces, amongst them leftist and pan-Arab events (WATAD and El Chaab), the Nationwide Order of Tunisian Attorneys, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the Tunisian Discussion board for Financial and Social Rights, and the Tunisian Affiliation of Democratic Girls.
In and outdoors the Nationwide Committee, the UGTT has successfully drawn on its rank-and-file members throughout sectors and areas to take part in solidarity actions for Palestine, together with protests in addition to fundraising for humanitarian help to Gaza (members have been inspired to donate the equal of a day’s pay). The UGTT has additionally held cultural actions with such titles as ‘Palestine is our Trigger’ on 10 November 2023. These occasions are events for political engagement and socialization of members and the broader public into the Union’s involvement in what has been the area’s most distinguished political problem and battle for many years.
On 15 January 2024, the UGTT received Hamas officials in Tunis to debate ‘the union’s willingness alongside its companions to interact in humanitarian initiatives in help of the Palestinian individuals to mitigate their struggling and [the effects of] the assaults they face by the Zionist enemy’. The UGTT, as a commerce union belonging to the International South, views Hamas within the context of the battle for decolonization and liberation. The legacy of anti-colonial historical past stays sturdy. Subsequent door, the French have been defeated in a bloody guerilla struggle with out which Algeria wouldn’t have received independence in 1962. It was these exact same French colonisers who murdered one of many UGTT’s founding fathers, Farhat Hached, in 1952. In sympathising with Hamas, Tunisia’s highly effective left-leaning union is aligning its personal place with that of its rank-and-file.
Together with different political forces in Tunisia, the UGTT sees western democracies’ rejection of violence on the a part of the Palestinian resistance as simplistic. As a part of the civil society ‘Nobel Quartet’ of 2015, the UGTT’s democratic credentials have been confirmed in the course of the processes of institution-building and dialogue resulting in the adoption of the 2014 structure. However for the UGTT, western help for Israel within the first months of the struggle has eroded the European stance on democratic norms and human rights.
College students
Scholar syndicalism has additionally had a robust presence in Tunisia’s hirak for Palestine over the previous 9 months. Tunisia’s scholar motion has historically mirrored the organizational construction and mobilizational capability of the UGTT inside the college, with the Normal Union of Tunisian College students (UGET) and the Tunisian Normal Union of College students (UGTE) framing scholar activism, as they’ve carried out on quite a few earlier events all through Tunisia’s postcolonial historical past.
In early Might 2024, journalism college students on the College of Manouba’s Institute of Press and Data Sciences (IPSI) arrange what they dubbed Shireen Abu Akleh Camp, named after the Aljazeera journalist gunned down by Israeli forces whereas reporting in Jenin in 2022. Not in contrast to American college students’ demand that their universities divest from firms linked to Israel, IPSI college students insisted that the establishment sever its ties to the German Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for its pro-Israel statements in October 2023. However in contrast to their US counterparts, their place was suitable with that of decision-makers, coverage elites and directors, and the Manouba college students managed to persuade the ISPI management to finish its relationship with the German basis.
This episode illustrates not simply Tunisians’ solidarity with Palestinians, but in addition their defiance of overseas governments seen to be enabling Israeli what Tunisians – like many Arabs – take into account the genocide (ibadah) in Gaza. On the Tunisia Bookfair in late April, for instance, attendees protested on the participation of the Italian ambassador, chanting ‘Italy is Fascist!’ and ‘Freedom for Palestine’, till the ambassador was escorted out. The Nationwide Committee of Assist for the Resistance in Palestine has additionally known as for the expulsion of the American and French ambassadors.
Feminists and girls’s rights activists
A part of the civil society panoply in Tunisia are feminist and girls’s organizations, which have joined coalition-coordinated protest for Palestine. They’ve condemned Israel’s struggle on Gaza from the angle of ’ladies’s experiences and sought to present voice to their solidarity in artistic methods. On 25 November ladies additionally organized a silent ’protest they known as ‘Place your coronary heart on my coronary heart, my mom (expensive)’. The title got here from the phrases uttered by a grief-stricken mother in Gaza who, upon encountering her slain daughter, was adamant that she maintain her youngster one final time. The protest march within the capital was meant to exhibit a ‘funereal silence’, in accordance with one of many organizers; ladies, she mentioned, felt like they ‘needed to scream’ however have been helpless to cease the struggle.
Throughout an occasion that was a part of the UN’s ‘16 days of activism against gender-based violence’ in November 2023, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women underscored the parallels between home and wartime violence – what feminist theorists name the continuum of violence. Like ladies elsewhere within the area and around the globe, some ladies in Tunisia are victims of bodily abuse by the hands of their husbands; however in Gaza, all ladies are at present topic to genocidal violence. A Palestinian feminist activist visitor reiterated this message and applauded the truth that sister activists in Tunisia have been higher located than these in another international locations within the area (maybe with much less vociferous civil societies) to propagate the message of solidarity.
On Worldwide Girls’s Day 2024, the UGTT issued a statement stressing the humanitarian plight of Palestinian civilians. It started by decrying the plight of ladies and youngsters in Palestine, who’ve comprised 70% of individuals killed by Israel within the raging battle. The ‘credibility’ of worldwide agreements meant to guard susceptible ladies and youngsters have been questionable, the assertion declared, happening to say that the failure of states and governments who self-identify as standard-bearers of human rights to guard Palestinian ladies and youngsters had brought on a ‘ethical disaster’.
For feminists and girls’s rights activists, as this assertion implies, the brutal struggle in Gaza is an affront not simply to human rights norms normally, however to the rights of ladies and youngsters specifically; Israel, they argue, has inflicted gendered hurt on a complete society. Now that gender equality and girls’s empowerment have develop into world markers of respect for human rights and total wellbeing, the West’s refusal to even acknowledge, not to mention remove this hurt renders a lot of its human rights discourse problematic, so Tunisian feminists declare.
Media and tradition
Protest and public statements aren’t the one measures of Tunisian attitudes to Palestine. Media and cultural articulations of solidarity have emanated from each state and society. After 7 October, Tunisian radio, tv, print and web platforms have been inundated by information reviews, opinions and evaluation, similar to in most different international locations within the area and certainly the world.
9 months later, the protection is not wholly targeted on Gaza. However from the semi-official Al-Watania TV to privately owned radio like Mosaique FM and the print and on-line Assabah, tales on Gaza and the West Financial institution, the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, the Biden administration and different regional and worldwide developments nonetheless run very often. The general tenor is decidedly pro-Palestinian.
Cultural output has additionally been notable. Quickly after the violence broke out, the Ministry of Tradition hosted a concert ‘in solidarity with the Palestinian people’. Belting out songs from Palestinian folklore, the occasion included performances by Jordanian singer Macadi Nahhas and Tunisia’s personal Lotfi Bouchnak, alongside the Tunisian Symphony Orchestra. Proceeds went to Gaza via the Tunisian Crimson Crescent.
In a just lately launched tune devoted to Palestine and titled ‘O My Nation’ (Wa Ummatah), Bouchnak laments the ‘mirage’ of western human rights, which allow bloodshed towards Palestinians and the Arab individuals. He doesn’t mince his lyrics, directing his poetic and musical ire extra towards the West than Israel: ‘And the West grants to the occupier a cannon/In order that it kills kids and girls.’ But the tune ends on a defiant observe. ‘Within the pulse of individuals stays a trigger’ – the liberation of Palestine, which Bouchnak predicts will spur an Arab ‘renewal’.
Music faucets into deep emotional investments in and affective responses to the search for Palestinian emancipation – echoing, maybe, Tunisians’ and different Arabs’ personal seek for freedom. Past expressing commiseration over shared catastrophes and anger over injustice, music can transfer people and teams to motion.
Along with protesting, some Tunisians have joined regional and world campaigns to boycott overseas firms who do enterprise with Israel. (Studies counsel some American firms lively within the area, together with McDonald’s and Starbucks, have began to really feel the pinch.) Tunisian activists have additionally been urging the boycott of French grocery store chain Carrefour and American Coca Cola, amongst others, usually via social media messaging. Artists have additionally taken political positions. Well-known Tunisian actress Hend Sabri’s resigned from her UN World Meals Program Goodwill Ambassador put up in objection to ‘hunger’ in Gaza even earlier than dire UN warnings of an ‘totally man-made catastrophe’.
In an age of violence and dehumanization, considerable creativity is obvious in a type of ‘counterculture’. Right here is the place civil and inventive society excels. After the Tradition Ministry cancelled the annual Carthage Film Festival, deliberate for late October 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinians, aesthetically and politically minded youth moved to curate ‘resistance cinema’. Movies about Palestine have been displayed on the partitions of public areas, together with the French Institute, which had been lined over pro-Palestine graffiti quickly after struggle broke out.
Palestine solidarity from under appears to have had the ultimate phrase, disruptively making use of public house to disseminate artwork for the individuals, by the individuals. None of us have forgotten the very political graffiti surfacing on the time of the 2011 revolution. The decision for Palestinians’ freedom deserve as a lot pleasure of place because the slogan ‘Tunisia is free’ over a decade in the past.
Political and partisan actors
Palestine solidarity involves the fore within the actions and phrases of varied social actors, some organized, others much less so. However finally, the violence in Israel-Palestine and relations with Israel’s allies are additionally essentially the stuff of formal politics. The President, who fancies himself guarantor and embodiment of ‘true democracy’, subsequently finds himself in a paradoxical place. Whereas the state beneath Kais Saied limits basic freedoms, political pluralism and civil society, it goes out of its strategy to encourage protest and dissent on the problem of Palestine.
A minimum of twenty opposition politicians, from Rachid Ghannouchi (chief of Islamist Ennahda) to Ghazi Chaouachi (Democratic Present) and Abir Moussi (Free Destour Social gathering, Ennahda’s arch-rival) have been in detention since July 2021. A lot of them stay in jail. But the President appears invested in Tunisian solidarity with Palestine, public demonstrations included. Saied and his supporters, just like the El Chaab celebration, in addition to his opponents, just like the National Salvation Front (whose most substantial partisan element is Ennahda) are all clear on denouncing Israel’s struggle, issuing scathing criticism of western international locations and declaring solidarity with Palestinians.
It might be that the Tunisian state beneath Saied is thereby camouflaging different sticky political issues just like the Constitutional referendum of 2022 and the parliamentary elections of 2022–23, which a lot of the voting inhabitants both ignored or boycotted. The presidential elections this autumn, that are anticipated to favour an incumbent victory, may also be an event for criticism of Saied.
But regardless of Saied’s populist encouragement of pro-Palestine protest, one level have to be made. At a time of low voter turnout, Tunisians mobilize for Palestine. It is a type of ‘vote’ for a political trigger that continues to be worthwhile for a lot of and seems untouched by the final political malaise that has gripped the nation over the previous few years. The cry ‘free Palestine’ is the defining slogan of Tunisians’ solidarity, for which they require no permission or invitation to precise, whether or not from the President or anybody else.
No normalization on the Tunisian horizon
After the democratic revolution in Tunisia in 2011, Palestine has constantly featured within the (re)development of a nationwide id. The preamble to Tunisia’s (first and final) democratic constitution of 2014 pledges help for ‘all simply liberation actions, on the forefront of which is the motion for the liberation of Palestine’.
The particular kinds that such help ought to take has for years been fodder for debate in Tunisian overseas coverage. The query of normalization with Israel has repeatedly arisen in response to developments on the regional and worldwide ranges. US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 was one such event. Then, the El Chaab celebration and the leftist Standard Entrance tried to resuscitate laws that may criminalize normalization, after such a possible regulation had been rejected by the Nationwide Constituent Meeting (2011–2014). El Chaab and the Standard Entrance complained that the ruling coalition, made up of the now-defunct Nidaa Tounes (the celebration of then president Beji Caied Essebsi, who died in 2021) and Ennahda, had blocked the laws.
For years, Ennahda has confronted accusations that it let the issue of normalization slide when it held or shared energy (2011–2021). The explanation, in accordance with critics? Defending the celebration’s or Tunisia’s regional relations with some Arab states and, extra importantly, with western states who bestowed monetary and army largesse. Even when no anti-normalization regulation was handed beneath its rule, Ennahda has lengthy denied allegations that it opposed such a political place. Some Ennahda members retort that Essebsi and his ministers even held up the invoice again in 2017. Saied’s coup that froze after which dismissed Parliament in 2021 killed one other alternative to cross an anti-normalization that was on the desk on the time, in accordance with this narrative.
As a ‘darkish horse’ candidate for the presidency in 2019, a part of Kais Saied’s broad common enchantment was his declared readability on the problem of Palestine. Normalization needs to be thought of ‘high treason’ or khiyanah ‘uzma, he declared within the presidential debate with the media mogul Nabil Karoui. Saied’s opponent, already mired in corruption allegations, was seen as smooth on Israel and accused of getting ties to an Israeli lobbying agency. Saied thus actually made his title on standing up for Palestine and towards the settler-colonial insurance policies of Israel.
The language of the 2022 constitution went even additional than that of 2014. All peoples ‘have the precise to determine their very own future’, the Preamble states, ‘the primary of which is the precise of the Palestinian individuals to their stolen land and the institution of their state after its liberation, with its capital positioned in honourable Jerusalem’. Saied’s perceived backtracking within the wake of the Gaza struggle, when he blocked the anti-normalization invoice being debated within the rubber-stamp parliament, was subsequently positive to impress public ire. Nevertheless, protests have had thus far little coverage consequence, and Palestinians nonetheless face tough visa requirements, regardless of the efforts of some MPs earlier than July 2021.
Regardless of sustaining its opposition to Kais Saied’s coup, Ennahda is cautious to insist that it has no qualms with the president’s place on Palestine, which appears generally in sync with public opinion. This didn’t stop Ennahda members criticising Tunisia’s abstention within the first UN Normal Meeting decision calling for a ceasefire, nevertheless. Regardless of the purpose for Ennahda’s previous failure to supervise passage of an anti-normalization regulation that seems consistent with public sentiment, Saied has himself not prioritized codifying prohibition of this laws.
Tunisia’s public and political elites are crystal clear of their condemnation of Israel’s struggle in Gaza and their blame of western governments, that are seen as having enabled Netanyahu’s defiance of a ceasefire and criticism at home. Notably because the 2020 Abraham Accords, debate in Tunisia isn’t about whether or not to normalize with Israel, however about how to ensure an anti-normalization stance. Right here ‘excessive state pursuits’ are at stake, with many speculating that worldwide stress to normalize has not skipped Tunisia.
However regardless of the more and more doubtless prospect of Saudi Arabian normalization, Tunisia seems to stay firmly opposed. Even beneath Saied, the nation’s high-level politics appear extra consistent with public opinion than in home issues, equivalent to common participation and illustration in authorities, fundamental civic and political freedoms, political pluralism and alternation of energy.
Prospects
The Palestinian trigger is creating traction worldwide. College protests and the extraordinary police crackdowns from Columbia to UCLA have seen to that. Solidarity with Palestine in Tunisia ought to subsequently be seen inside this broader world context. The controversy over Israel’s actions and the position of western international locations, particularly the US, the UK and Germany, as members within the gut-wrenching violence filmed and watched dwell internationally, isn’t confined to anybody geography. It’s in all places. Maybe for the primary time in historical past, Palestine not appears to be simply an ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’ problem, however a world trigger drawing solidarity throughout geographies, cultures and political techniques.
The American agenda for normalisation within the wake of Gaza faces uphill battles in international locations like Tunisia. Will probably be very tough for individuals to entertain the thought of creating diplomatic ties with Israel, given the colossal destruction and precarity within the wake of the struggle. Palestinian statehood can not however be a prerequisite for future normalization, whichever international locations are prepared to entertain it subsequent. Tunisia isn’t at current poised to be one among them.
Lastly, it might be an irony that battle and struggle strengthen public mobilization or hirak. However what we have now witnessed over the previous 9 months is paying homage to the 2011 protests and revolutions. May or not it’s a ‘rehearsal’ of types for the following Arab Spring?
Right here a observe of warning is critical. Because the starting of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, western governments have proven nice hypocrisy in relation to making use of norms of common sovereignty, worldwide regulation and human rights. The West is now seen within the Arab world and past as being complicit in genocide. However as a result of the Euro-American democracy agenda is so broken, the struggle has strengthened authoritarianism within the Arab international locations. Actions talking out for democratic governance now have even larger problem getting via to Arab audiences.
There’s thus a double weaponization of dissent. The voices of Arab peoples, together with Tunisians, are raised towards Israel, but in addition towards the EU, the US and particular person leaders (‘genocide Joe’). Concurrently, Arab dictatorships have been strengthened of their course of democratic backsliding. If the West will be so hypocritical in its adherence and safety of fundamental human rights, individuals ask, then why not dispose of the objective of democracy, too?
That is the error of policymakers from Biden and Blinken to Scholz and Macron. Western international locations have had no small half to play in what UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has known as a ‘long-standing settler colonial strategy of erasure’ in Gaza, in flagrant violation of worldwide regulation. That the general public voices expressing solidarity with Palestine are democratic ones, inside and outdoors western international locations, is yet one more paradox.
The Arab world is already starting to tilt towards China and Russia, the BRICS and the International South usually. As all the time, the way forward for the area is unsure. However the Palestinian trigger is right here to remain.
With a demise toll lengthy surpassing 30,000, the displacement of 1.4 million individuals, and a famine induced on a inhabitants already bearing the brunt of a 16-year blockade, Israel’s ongoing struggle in Gaza has been unparalleled in its ranges of violence and destruction.
Additionally unparalleled has been the extent of the worldwide outpouring of public anger at what the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice has known as a ‘plausible’ case of genocide. From Jordan and Egypt to university campuses in the US and Europe, publics within the Center East and around the globe have decried the devastation and havoc wrought on strange Palestinians, and have denounced the complicity of their governments in Israel’s struggle.
Within the cultural and political regional sub-system that’s the Arab world, each nation has its ‘Palestine story’. Widespread historic and geopolitical experiences and recollections of individuals subdued by colonialism render identification with Palestinians logical. However the Palestinian trigger has additionally been used and abused for many years by dictators within the postcolonial Arab states, turning into a fixture of official discourse and college curricula.
The Tunisians have been on the forefront of demonstrations of pro-Palestinian solidarity within the Arab area. Like different Arabs, Tunisians take into account Palestinians their brethren and sympathise deeply with their battle for nationwide self-determination.
![](https://www.eurozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Protest_for_palestine_Tunis_Kassba_17-05-2021_By_Brahim_Guedich-3494-1024x682.jpg)
Picture: Bra / supply: Wikimedia Commons
From under, Tunisians have a historical past of armed resistance towards Israeli occupation since 1948, involving Tunisian militants or fedayeen within the Nineteen Seventies and onwards (described by Jean Genet in his late work Prisoner of Love). From above, nevertheless, Tunisia’s coverage on Palestine has usually been out of step with the remainder of the Arab World.
Historic legacies
This goes above all for the gradualist place on decolonizing Palestine taken by Habib Bourguiba, the nation’s first president (1957–1987). In his (in)well-known March 1965 speech in Jericho, Bourguiba made a case for ‘provisional solutions’ as a substitute for purely emotive stand-taking, which he argued would ‘condemn us [Arabs] to dwell for hundreds of years in the identical standing’ – which within the case of the Palestinians meant colonial occupation. The Tunisian president most popular avoiding Arab state-level confrontations with Israel and, above all else, was initially in favour of UN-drawn ‘partition’ borders.
The speech was not well-received by fellow Arabs, together with Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser, who deemed it too average. In hindsight, nevertheless, Bourguiba’s stage-managed method to Palestinian liberation appears to be like fairly like what, because the Nineties, has been known as the ‘two-state resolution’.
After Egypt carried out a volte face and made peace with Israel via the 1978–9 US-brokered Camp David peace treaty, the Arab League suspended its membership and moved the group’s headquarters to Tunis. In an act of help for the Palestinian resistance, Tunisia additionally hosted the Palestinian Liberation Group (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat, after it was expelled from Lebanon in 1982.
An Israeli air raid on Hammam al-Shatt, a suburb of Tunis, in October 1985 killed at the least 50 Palestinians (narrowly lacking Arafat himself) and 18 Tunisians, scary public protests. Three years later, the Mossad assassinated Khalil Al-Wazir (recognized by his nom de guerre, Abu Jihad), the architect of the primary Palestinian intifada, at his dwelling within the Algerian capital. The 2 occasions are etched into the collective reminiscence of Tunisians as a direct assault on their nation’s sovereignty in addition to on the Palestinian resistance. The assaults helped kind extra bonds of shared battle towards Israel.
These snapshots from Tunisia’s historical past are vital. They present that, whereas Tunisia isn’t related to the Palestinian query in the identical approach as Egypt or Syria, which border on Israel and have waged struggle immediately with their neighbour, Palestine has all the time been central to the Tunisian imaginary. That is vital to level out, not simply because to take action remembers Tunisia’s place within the complexities of a Center East battle born of European colonialism, which in Israel remodeled into a brand new type of settler-colonialism, occupation and serial war-making, but in addition to make clear the solidarity evident in Tunisia all through the present struggle.
Tunisian solidarity with ‘free Palestine’
For shut observers of the North African nation, Tunisians’ outrage at Israel’s struggle on Gaza, and at America’s and Europe’s full-blown help for it, is not any shock. Standard solidarity (tadamun) is seen not simply in avenue demonstrations, but in addition in on a regular basis symbolism, from the ever-present Palestinian flag to the keffiyeh worn by public figures and media personalities. In Tunisia, pro-Palestine mobilization or hirak spans each society and the state, the civic and the political.
Regardless of pertaining to a global political disaster, the general public outcries inevitably have home political significance. Assist for Palestine has develop into essentially the most sustained expression of bottom-up political dissent because the 2011 revolution that ousted the longstanding dictator Ben Ali. Such a phenomenon has implications for a rustic experiencing a dramatic (and disheartening) strategy of democratic backsliding since July 2021.
Professional-Palestine mobilization in Tunisia is stratified, rising amongst totally different socio-political groupings inside society. Parsing these stratifications permits us to attract a complete image of public opinion within the nation.
Soccer ultras and youth
First is the youth cohort not affiliated with commerce unions, scholar syndicalism, political events or organized civil society. Tunisia’s youth are barometer of the place present and future public opinion stands, since their place derives neither from ideology nor political calculus.
Among the many first manifestations of youth solidarity with Palestine since 7 October 2023 have been performances by soccer followers. Ultras specifically declare distance from politics, however not the place Palestine is anxious. At a Membership Africain match in late October 2023, ultras choreographed a tifo spectacle backing the Palestinian resistance. It was among the many first of its type within the Arab area and was echoed by ultras in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. The environment was characteristically festive. Nationalist Palestinian songs blared within the background, followers and spectators clapped and chanted, and numerous Palestinian flags fluttered within the stands. An enormous black-and-white banner learn, in English: ‘We Stand with Palestine: Resistance Till Victory’.
Weeks later, after the grinding violence had taken its ghastly toll on the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, Membership Africain ultras waved a banner honouring the 6405 children killed by Israel till that time. In a rustic the place youth are more and more depoliticized, this expression of sympathy amongst soccer followers underscores how a lot of a ‘no-brainer’ help for Palestine is in Tunisia.
Syndicalist organisations
Tunisian syndicalists in each their commerce union and scholar iterations have traditionally aligned themselves with the Palestinian trigger. This time is not any totally different. The Tunisian Normal Labour Union (UGTT), the nation’s largest commerce union, has led the mobilization and group of solidarity protests. With its huge nationwide constituency and well-oiled organizational equipment, the UGTT has lengthy been well-placed to spearhead protest coordination.
An announcement revealed on the Union’s Facebook page on 10 October 2023 from the UGTT Secretary Normal, Noureddine Tabboubi, set the tone. Tabboubi known as on members to ‘help our Arab individuals in Palestine towards brutal Zionist aggression’ by collaborating in a 12 October protest march taking off from the UGTT headquarters in Belvedere to the centre of Tunis. Confirming how un-controversial help for the Palestinian resistance is throughout the spectrum of usually ideologized civil society, Tabboubi signed his assertion, ‘glory to the resistance and eternity for our individuals’s martyrs’.
Notice right here the tone of collective possession of the Palestinian trigger. Shifting rapidly and adeptly, the UGTT has been essentially the most distinguished head of the National Committee for Supporting the Resistance in Palestine. The Committee contains a lot of partisan and civic forces, amongst them leftist and pan-Arab events (WATAD and El Chaab), the Nationwide Order of Tunisian Attorneys, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the Tunisian Discussion board for Financial and Social Rights, and the Tunisian Affiliation of Democratic Girls.
In and outdoors the Nationwide Committee, the UGTT has successfully drawn on its rank-and-file members throughout sectors and areas to take part in solidarity actions for Palestine, together with protests in addition to fundraising for humanitarian help to Gaza (members have been inspired to donate the equal of a day’s pay). The UGTT has additionally held cultural actions with such titles as ‘Palestine is our Trigger’ on 10 November 2023. These occasions are events for political engagement and socialization of members and the broader public into the Union’s involvement in what has been the area’s most distinguished political problem and battle for many years.
On 15 January 2024, the UGTT received Hamas officials in Tunis to debate ‘the union’s willingness alongside its companions to interact in humanitarian initiatives in help of the Palestinian individuals to mitigate their struggling and [the effects of] the assaults they face by the Zionist enemy’. The UGTT, as a commerce union belonging to the International South, views Hamas within the context of the battle for decolonization and liberation. The legacy of anti-colonial historical past stays sturdy. Subsequent door, the French have been defeated in a bloody guerilla struggle with out which Algeria wouldn’t have received independence in 1962. It was these exact same French colonisers who murdered one of many UGTT’s founding fathers, Farhat Hached, in 1952. In sympathising with Hamas, Tunisia’s highly effective left-leaning union is aligning its personal place with that of its rank-and-file.
Together with different political forces in Tunisia, the UGTT sees western democracies’ rejection of violence on the a part of the Palestinian resistance as simplistic. As a part of the civil society ‘Nobel Quartet’ of 2015, the UGTT’s democratic credentials have been confirmed in the course of the processes of institution-building and dialogue resulting in the adoption of the 2014 structure. However for the UGTT, western help for Israel within the first months of the struggle has eroded the European stance on democratic norms and human rights.
College students
Scholar syndicalism has additionally had a robust presence in Tunisia’s hirak for Palestine over the previous 9 months. Tunisia’s scholar motion has historically mirrored the organizational construction and mobilizational capability of the UGTT inside the college, with the Normal Union of Tunisian College students (UGET) and the Tunisian Normal Union of College students (UGTE) framing scholar activism, as they’ve carried out on quite a few earlier events all through Tunisia’s postcolonial historical past.
In early Might 2024, journalism college students on the College of Manouba’s Institute of Press and Data Sciences (IPSI) arrange what they dubbed Shireen Abu Akleh Camp, named after the Aljazeera journalist gunned down by Israeli forces whereas reporting in Jenin in 2022. Not in contrast to American college students’ demand that their universities divest from firms linked to Israel, IPSI college students insisted that the establishment sever its ties to the German Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for its pro-Israel statements in October 2023. However in contrast to their US counterparts, their place was suitable with that of decision-makers, coverage elites and directors, and the Manouba college students managed to persuade the ISPI management to finish its relationship with the German basis.
This episode illustrates not simply Tunisians’ solidarity with Palestinians, but in addition their defiance of overseas governments seen to be enabling Israeli what Tunisians – like many Arabs – take into account the genocide (ibadah) in Gaza. On the Tunisia Bookfair in late April, for instance, attendees protested on the participation of the Italian ambassador, chanting ‘Italy is Fascist!’ and ‘Freedom for Palestine’, till the ambassador was escorted out. The Nationwide Committee of Assist for the Resistance in Palestine has additionally known as for the expulsion of the American and French ambassadors.
Feminists and girls’s rights activists
A part of the civil society panoply in Tunisia are feminist and girls’s organizations, which have joined coalition-coordinated protest for Palestine. They’ve condemned Israel’s struggle on Gaza from the angle of ’ladies’s experiences and sought to present voice to their solidarity in artistic methods. On 25 November ladies additionally organized a silent ’protest they known as ‘Place your coronary heart on my coronary heart, my mom (expensive)’. The title got here from the phrases uttered by a grief-stricken mother in Gaza who, upon encountering her slain daughter, was adamant that she maintain her youngster one final time. The protest march within the capital was meant to exhibit a ‘funereal silence’, in accordance with one of many organizers; ladies, she mentioned, felt like they ‘needed to scream’ however have been helpless to cease the struggle.
Throughout an occasion that was a part of the UN’s ‘16 days of activism against gender-based violence’ in November 2023, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women underscored the parallels between home and wartime violence – what feminist theorists name the continuum of violence. Like ladies elsewhere within the area and around the globe, some ladies in Tunisia are victims of bodily abuse by the hands of their husbands; however in Gaza, all ladies are at present topic to genocidal violence. A Palestinian feminist activist visitor reiterated this message and applauded the truth that sister activists in Tunisia have been higher located than these in another international locations within the area (maybe with much less vociferous civil societies) to propagate the message of solidarity.
On Worldwide Girls’s Day 2024, the UGTT issued a statement stressing the humanitarian plight of Palestinian civilians. It started by decrying the plight of ladies and youngsters in Palestine, who’ve comprised 70% of individuals killed by Israel within the raging battle. The ‘credibility’ of worldwide agreements meant to guard susceptible ladies and youngsters have been questionable, the assertion declared, happening to say that the failure of states and governments who self-identify as standard-bearers of human rights to guard Palestinian ladies and youngsters had brought on a ‘ethical disaster’.
For feminists and girls’s rights activists, as this assertion implies, the brutal struggle in Gaza is an affront not simply to human rights norms normally, however to the rights of ladies and youngsters specifically; Israel, they argue, has inflicted gendered hurt on a complete society. Now that gender equality and girls’s empowerment have develop into world markers of respect for human rights and total wellbeing, the West’s refusal to even acknowledge, not to mention remove this hurt renders a lot of its human rights discourse problematic, so Tunisian feminists declare.
Media and tradition
Protest and public statements aren’t the one measures of Tunisian attitudes to Palestine. Media and cultural articulations of solidarity have emanated from each state and society. After 7 October, Tunisian radio, tv, print and web platforms have been inundated by information reviews, opinions and evaluation, similar to in most different international locations within the area and certainly the world.
9 months later, the protection is not wholly targeted on Gaza. However from the semi-official Al-Watania TV to privately owned radio like Mosaique FM and the print and on-line Assabah, tales on Gaza and the West Financial institution, the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, the Biden administration and different regional and worldwide developments nonetheless run very often. The general tenor is decidedly pro-Palestinian.
Cultural output has additionally been notable. Quickly after the violence broke out, the Ministry of Tradition hosted a concert ‘in solidarity with the Palestinian people’. Belting out songs from Palestinian folklore, the occasion included performances by Jordanian singer Macadi Nahhas and Tunisia’s personal Lotfi Bouchnak, alongside the Tunisian Symphony Orchestra. Proceeds went to Gaza via the Tunisian Crimson Crescent.
In a just lately launched tune devoted to Palestine and titled ‘O My Nation’ (Wa Ummatah), Bouchnak laments the ‘mirage’ of western human rights, which allow bloodshed towards Palestinians and the Arab individuals. He doesn’t mince his lyrics, directing his poetic and musical ire extra towards the West than Israel: ‘And the West grants to the occupier a cannon/In order that it kills kids and girls.’ But the tune ends on a defiant observe. ‘Within the pulse of individuals stays a trigger’ – the liberation of Palestine, which Bouchnak predicts will spur an Arab ‘renewal’.
Music faucets into deep emotional investments in and affective responses to the search for Palestinian emancipation – echoing, maybe, Tunisians’ and different Arabs’ personal seek for freedom. Past expressing commiseration over shared catastrophes and anger over injustice, music can transfer people and teams to motion.
Along with protesting, some Tunisians have joined regional and world campaigns to boycott overseas firms who do enterprise with Israel. (Studies counsel some American firms lively within the area, together with McDonald’s and Starbucks, have began to really feel the pinch.) Tunisian activists have additionally been urging the boycott of French grocery store chain Carrefour and American Coca Cola, amongst others, usually via social media messaging. Artists have additionally taken political positions. Well-known Tunisian actress Hend Sabri’s resigned from her UN World Meals Program Goodwill Ambassador put up in objection to ‘hunger’ in Gaza even earlier than dire UN warnings of an ‘totally man-made catastrophe’.
In an age of violence and dehumanization, considerable creativity is obvious in a type of ‘counterculture’. Right here is the place civil and inventive society excels. After the Tradition Ministry cancelled the annual Carthage Film Festival, deliberate for late October 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinians, aesthetically and politically minded youth moved to curate ‘resistance cinema’. Movies about Palestine have been displayed on the partitions of public areas, together with the French Institute, which had been lined over pro-Palestine graffiti quickly after struggle broke out.
Palestine solidarity from under appears to have had the ultimate phrase, disruptively making use of public house to disseminate artwork for the individuals, by the individuals. None of us have forgotten the very political graffiti surfacing on the time of the 2011 revolution. The decision for Palestinians’ freedom deserve as a lot pleasure of place because the slogan ‘Tunisia is free’ over a decade in the past.
Political and partisan actors
Palestine solidarity involves the fore within the actions and phrases of varied social actors, some organized, others much less so. However finally, the violence in Israel-Palestine and relations with Israel’s allies are additionally essentially the stuff of formal politics. The President, who fancies himself guarantor and embodiment of ‘true democracy’, subsequently finds himself in a paradoxical place. Whereas the state beneath Kais Saied limits basic freedoms, political pluralism and civil society, it goes out of its strategy to encourage protest and dissent on the problem of Palestine.
A minimum of twenty opposition politicians, from Rachid Ghannouchi (chief of Islamist Ennahda) to Ghazi Chaouachi (Democratic Present) and Abir Moussi (Free Destour Social gathering, Ennahda’s arch-rival) have been in detention since July 2021. A lot of them stay in jail. But the President appears invested in Tunisian solidarity with Palestine, public demonstrations included. Saied and his supporters, just like the El Chaab celebration, in addition to his opponents, just like the National Salvation Front (whose most substantial partisan element is Ennahda) are all clear on denouncing Israel’s struggle, issuing scathing criticism of western international locations and declaring solidarity with Palestinians.
It might be that the Tunisian state beneath Saied is thereby camouflaging different sticky political issues just like the Constitutional referendum of 2022 and the parliamentary elections of 2022–23, which a lot of the voting inhabitants both ignored or boycotted. The presidential elections this autumn, that are anticipated to favour an incumbent victory, may also be an event for criticism of Saied.
But regardless of Saied’s populist encouragement of pro-Palestine protest, one level have to be made. At a time of low voter turnout, Tunisians mobilize for Palestine. It is a type of ‘vote’ for a political trigger that continues to be worthwhile for a lot of and seems untouched by the final political malaise that has gripped the nation over the previous few years. The cry ‘free Palestine’ is the defining slogan of Tunisians’ solidarity, for which they require no permission or invitation to precise, whether or not from the President or anybody else.
No normalization on the Tunisian horizon
After the democratic revolution in Tunisia in 2011, Palestine has constantly featured within the (re)development of a nationwide id. The preamble to Tunisia’s (first and final) democratic constitution of 2014 pledges help for ‘all simply liberation actions, on the forefront of which is the motion for the liberation of Palestine’.
The particular kinds that such help ought to take has for years been fodder for debate in Tunisian overseas coverage. The query of normalization with Israel has repeatedly arisen in response to developments on the regional and worldwide ranges. US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 was one such event. Then, the El Chaab celebration and the leftist Standard Entrance tried to resuscitate laws that may criminalize normalization, after such a possible regulation had been rejected by the Nationwide Constituent Meeting (2011–2014). El Chaab and the Standard Entrance complained that the ruling coalition, made up of the now-defunct Nidaa Tounes (the celebration of then president Beji Caied Essebsi, who died in 2021) and Ennahda, had blocked the laws.
For years, Ennahda has confronted accusations that it let the issue of normalization slide when it held or shared energy (2011–2021). The explanation, in accordance with critics? Defending the celebration’s or Tunisia’s regional relations with some Arab states and, extra importantly, with western states who bestowed monetary and army largesse. Even when no anti-normalization regulation was handed beneath its rule, Ennahda has lengthy denied allegations that it opposed such a political place. Some Ennahda members retort that Essebsi and his ministers even held up the invoice again in 2017. Saied’s coup that froze after which dismissed Parliament in 2021 killed one other alternative to cross an anti-normalization that was on the desk on the time, in accordance with this narrative.
As a ‘darkish horse’ candidate for the presidency in 2019, a part of Kais Saied’s broad common enchantment was his declared readability on the problem of Palestine. Normalization needs to be thought of ‘high treason’ or khiyanah ‘uzma, he declared within the presidential debate with the media mogul Nabil Karoui. Saied’s opponent, already mired in corruption allegations, was seen as smooth on Israel and accused of getting ties to an Israeli lobbying agency. Saied thus actually made his title on standing up for Palestine and towards the settler-colonial insurance policies of Israel.
The language of the 2022 constitution went even additional than that of 2014. All peoples ‘have the precise to determine their very own future’, the Preamble states, ‘the primary of which is the precise of the Palestinian individuals to their stolen land and the institution of their state after its liberation, with its capital positioned in honourable Jerusalem’. Saied’s perceived backtracking within the wake of the Gaza struggle, when he blocked the anti-normalization invoice being debated within the rubber-stamp parliament, was subsequently positive to impress public ire. Nevertheless, protests have had thus far little coverage consequence, and Palestinians nonetheless face tough visa requirements, regardless of the efforts of some MPs earlier than July 2021.
Regardless of sustaining its opposition to Kais Saied’s coup, Ennahda is cautious to insist that it has no qualms with the president’s place on Palestine, which appears generally in sync with public opinion. This didn’t stop Ennahda members criticising Tunisia’s abstention within the first UN Normal Meeting decision calling for a ceasefire, nevertheless. Regardless of the purpose for Ennahda’s previous failure to supervise passage of an anti-normalization regulation that seems consistent with public sentiment, Saied has himself not prioritized codifying prohibition of this laws.
Tunisia’s public and political elites are crystal clear of their condemnation of Israel’s struggle in Gaza and their blame of western governments, that are seen as having enabled Netanyahu’s defiance of a ceasefire and criticism at home. Notably because the 2020 Abraham Accords, debate in Tunisia isn’t about whether or not to normalize with Israel, however about how to ensure an anti-normalization stance. Right here ‘excessive state pursuits’ are at stake, with many speculating that worldwide stress to normalize has not skipped Tunisia.
However regardless of the more and more doubtless prospect of Saudi Arabian normalization, Tunisia seems to stay firmly opposed. Even beneath Saied, the nation’s high-level politics appear extra consistent with public opinion than in home issues, equivalent to common participation and illustration in authorities, fundamental civic and political freedoms, political pluralism and alternation of energy.
Prospects
The Palestinian trigger is creating traction worldwide. College protests and the extraordinary police crackdowns from Columbia to UCLA have seen to that. Solidarity with Palestine in Tunisia ought to subsequently be seen inside this broader world context. The controversy over Israel’s actions and the position of western international locations, particularly the US, the UK and Germany, as members within the gut-wrenching violence filmed and watched dwell internationally, isn’t confined to anybody geography. It’s in all places. Maybe for the primary time in historical past, Palestine not appears to be simply an ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’ problem, however a world trigger drawing solidarity throughout geographies, cultures and political techniques.
The American agenda for normalisation within the wake of Gaza faces uphill battles in international locations like Tunisia. Will probably be very tough for individuals to entertain the thought of creating diplomatic ties with Israel, given the colossal destruction and precarity within the wake of the struggle. Palestinian statehood can not however be a prerequisite for future normalization, whichever international locations are prepared to entertain it subsequent. Tunisia isn’t at current poised to be one among them.
Lastly, it might be an irony that battle and struggle strengthen public mobilization or hirak. However what we have now witnessed over the previous 9 months is paying homage to the 2011 protests and revolutions. May or not it’s a ‘rehearsal’ of types for the following Arab Spring?
Right here a observe of warning is critical. Because the starting of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, western governments have proven nice hypocrisy in relation to making use of norms of common sovereignty, worldwide regulation and human rights. The West is now seen within the Arab world and past as being complicit in genocide. However as a result of the Euro-American democracy agenda is so broken, the struggle has strengthened authoritarianism within the Arab international locations. Actions talking out for democratic governance now have even larger problem getting via to Arab audiences.
There’s thus a double weaponization of dissent. The voices of Arab peoples, together with Tunisians, are raised towards Israel, but in addition towards the EU, the US and particular person leaders (‘genocide Joe’). Concurrently, Arab dictatorships have been strengthened of their course of democratic backsliding. If the West will be so hypocritical in its adherence and safety of fundamental human rights, individuals ask, then why not dispose of the objective of democracy, too?
That is the error of policymakers from Biden and Blinken to Scholz and Macron. Western international locations have had no small half to play in what UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has known as a ‘long-standing settler colonial strategy of erasure’ in Gaza, in flagrant violation of worldwide regulation. That the general public voices expressing solidarity with Palestine are democratic ones, inside and outdoors western international locations, is yet one more paradox.
The Arab world is already starting to tilt towards China and Russia, the BRICS and the International South usually. As all the time, the way forward for the area is unsure. However the Palestinian trigger is right here to remain.