Palestine and the Arab Uprisings

Reviewing historical landmarks in Palestinians’ civil resistance, this chapter shows that, if any nation in the region had a tradition of people’s power, it was the Palestinians. Nonetheless, despite significant grievances and identification with Arab brethren, Palestinians did not launch a rebellion in 2011. This chapter explores why the Arab Spring did not spark a Palestinian spring. It argues that this outcome did not depend primarily on regional diffusion of a revolutionary mood, transnational activist networks, or the demonstration effects of successful tactics in neighbouring countries. Rather, it was a product of Palestinians’ own internal circumstances. Given the devastating toll of the uprising that began in 2000, Palestinians generally longed for calm and recovery more than revolutionary upheaval. Their spatial, political, and affective conditions did not facilitate mass-scale mobilization, even as localized acts of violence and non-violent resistance continued, and another war devastated Gaza in 2014.