TOWARD
THE NEXT
INTIFADA

COLLECTED
WRITINGS OF
BASEL AL-ARAJ
Though we dor't have much of it in English—this is, to our knowl-
edge, everything—Basel al-Araf's writing speaks for itself, both in its
concrete content and in the way it hangs together, secured by a signa-
ture method of thinking. His aunt tells us that “his idea of knowing was
actually trying.” He understood Palestine from the vantage of an incom-
plete revolutionary event which drew closer with every word and deed
spoken and done in its service. This loyalty was not to this or that es-
tablished party, but to what the revolution in occupied Palestine could
become. The result is a collection of compact, precise essays, always an-
chored in the tactical necessities of the revolutionary moment

Lake Effect Collective
AN ICON
FORALOST
GENERATION

Jaclynn Ashly - Oct. 12, 2020

Since his killing, Bassel al-Araj has become one of the most recognizable
icons in Palestine. The image of the revolutionary activist - a pharmacist
by trade and education and unafiliated to any of the existing Palestinian
factions - his signature black-framed glasses perched on his nose, a gun
strapped over his shoulder and wrapped in a checkered keffiyeh, adorns
neighborhoods up and down streets in the occupied West Bank.

And al-Araf’s influence on friends and fellow activists has grown even
stronger more than three-and-a-half years after the 31-year-old was killed
in a stand-off with Israeli forces in al-Bireh on the outskirts of Ramallah on
6 March 2017. His death was deeply disturbing to Palestinians, not least
because of the role of the Palestinian Authority. His family accused the PA
of complicity in his killing,

Al-Araj, along with five others, was arrested by PA security forces at the
end of March and the beginning of April 2016 and held for nearly six
months on allegations of planning an attack on Israclis, Isracli media re-
ported at the time. They were subjected to torture and il -treatment in jail,
prompting them to launch a hunger strike until they were released in Sep-
tember 2016. He came to be known as the victim of security coordination
between the PA and Israel, which he vocally opposed through his writing,

Eventually, most of the men were rearrested by Isracli forces and put in
administrative detention ~ imprisonment without charge or trial. Al-Araj,
however, had gone into hiding. It took months until the Isracli military
located the activist and marched into al-Bireh where a two-hour stand-off
ensued

At the time, he was armed with a Carlo submachine gun ~ a homemade
Palestinian gun based on a Swedish design - and an M16 rifle, the Israeli
military said. It was also reported that he was killed by Israeli forces after
he had run out of ammunition.

“We've been missing the spirit of revolution that we had before Oslo and
before the creation of the PA,” said Jamal Juma, a prominent Palestinian
activist and coordinator of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 3
(The Oslo agreement, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization in 193, gave birth to the Palestinian Authority.)

“Bassel acted as a kind of mirror to those legacies of resistance. He was an
intellectual; he was criticizing everything and he was brave.” Juma said
al-Araj was a hero for a new generation that is in need of a message: “That
they are still here and still resisting - and nothing, not even Oslo, can stop
this tradition of resistance.”

Resistance is possible

Sheerin al-Araj remembers her nephew as a “simple and humble boy.”
“Bassel was very down to earth,” she told The Electronic Intifada. “He
didn't even believe in himself initially, but he was the most curious per-
son I've ever met in my life. Ever since he was old enough to read, all my
books started disappearing. I can't find any of my books anymore.”

Al-Araj so0n set out on a lifelong journey researching revolutions and fig-
ures from around the world - from Palestine, Vietnam, Algeria and South
America to France ~ and became absorbed in various analyses, philos-
ophies, political ideologies and theories. Among the books found at his.
shelter were those written by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and Mahdi
Amel,a Lebanese Marxist assassinated in Beirut 30 years ago.

He had an “encyclopedic knowledge” of Palestinian history, said Ahmad,
a close friend, who requested that The Electronic Intifada use a pseud-
onym out of fear for his personal security. “He knew every character and
every little detail. He knew our whole history by heart. His storytelling
was something that really affected us,” Ahmad said. “It was like he lived
with the characters. He would bring all these historical Palestinian figures
to lfe. He knew the stories behind the stories.”

He took this wealth of knowledge to the Popular University, an informal
education project focused on teaching topics that are neglected in main-
stream Palestinian university education, such as histories of resistance,
settler colonial studies, the political economy of exploitation in Palestine
and various other topics.

Al-Araj taught a course called “Palestinian resistance since the inception
of settler-colonialism,” in which the activist took students through more
than a century of Palestinian resistance, from Palestinian Ottoman history
up until Isracl's military assaults on Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2012, in which
more than 1,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed. These were not
just stories or lessons for al-Araj. He believed that for Palestinians to ade-
quately respond to their current political situation, they had to look back.
to their history and find direction from their own unique traditions of
resistance.

“I think what we suffer from, at least on the level of the so-called political
leadership, is that these people are basically now turning defeat into an

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ideology and an institution called the Palestinian Authority, where they
cooperate with the Israelis,” Ahmad said. Defeat has also become a “way
of life” in Palestine, Ahmad told The Electronic Intifada, particularly in
the occupied West Bank, where society has shifted into new modes of con-
sumerism and lives are predicated on free market capitalism and individ-
walism.

According to Ahmad, al-Araj represented the “reection of defeat” - and
was willing to give his life for it. “We cannot accept Palestinian defeat
[...] because settler-colonialism doesn’t leave any room for you to accept
it; its aim s to eliminate you as a person and as an identity,” he told The
Electronic Intifada.

Al-Araj attempted to help those around him realize that “resistance is pos-
sible,” Ahmad said. “Resistance is something that can give Palestinians a
new horizon. Something other than these ideologies of markets, consum-
erism, defeat and cooperation with colonialism that the PA represents.”

‘Authentic voice”

Al-Araj had a great impact on those he met. Ahmad described him as
someone who talked a lot, was constantly telling stories, cracking jokes,
while also openly confronting those he disagreed with. “He was not shy
about confronting people,” Ahmad told the Electronic Intifada. That also
caused people to criticize and scorn him, his friend said.

But if al-Araj was talkative and social with friends, he was considered a
loner by his family in al-Walaja, the small village between Bethlehem and
Jerusalem where he was born, and was often misunderstood by those clos-
estto him. “He spent most of his time at home in front of a computer and
reading,” Sheerin said. “So for us, he was this isolated boy. If he speaks
about anything, it's always something far-fetched. No one gave him a lot
of attention and not many people could understand him.”

It was not al-Aras political thought that set him apart from other activ-
ists. In fact, many young Palestinians hold similar ideologies. But Bassel
was significant because he was “truly authentic,” Ahmad said. “He was
true to his word and that's something we miss today in Palestine.”

“Bassel's idea of knowing was actually trying,” Sheerin told The Electronic
Intifada. “This man was not just thinking theoretically, he was very much
applying what he said. He knew that things cannot just be said. It has to
be tried and applied.” Sheerin recounted a conversation theyd had - one
of many that would last for hours on end, debating and discussing various
resistance strategies and theories. Al-Araj had asked Sheerin about her
work with women in their village which is set to be almost entirely encir-
cled by Israel’s separation wall

Sheerin explained her idea for a recycling project. It did ot take long for
al-Araj to begin downloading resources from the internet and litter his

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 5
house with scattered items that he attempted to recycle. “Bassel was some-
one who knew that you couldn’t just throw words at people or encourage
them to do things that you yourself don't know how to do,” Sheerin said.
He approached resistance and activism the same way.

In 2010, he studied the popular resistance movements that were emerg-
ing in villages like Bilin and Nabi Saleh, where weekly protests are held
against the Israeli occupation. But after a few years, he concluded that the
methodology was ineffective, Sheerin said. He then redirected his energy
into equipping Palestinians with historical and theoretical knowledge for
when the right time comes to resist. “He was generating this [sense of]
heroism around Palestine and planting it in others,” Sheerin explained.

He quit his job as a pharmacist partly because the pharmacy sold Isracli
products when Palestinian alternatives existed and began researching full
time, Ahmad said.

But an apparently spontaneous 2015 uprising - sometimes referred to as
the habba, sometimes as the “intifada of individuals” ~ changed al-Araj's
political trajectory. According to his friends and family, he believed that
this was a significant uprising and decided that he wanted to be a part of
it

“The entire Palestinian story’

‘The young activist was outspoken about his support for armed resistance.
But Sheerin had always assumed it was just another one of their theoreti-
cal debates that they had engaged in for many years. “Bassel always told
me that you can't say something without doing it,” Sheerin said. “You
can't tell people that this is the right way and not be prepared to do it
yourself. But I never thought he would take it to this step.” The family was
“shocked” by al-Araf’s arrest and his subsequent assassination, Sheerin
said

“The minute he was arrested was when his family started learning more
about him. The family didn't really understand what he was doing or why
he was doing it. But it was after his death that they started to realize why
he had quit his pharmacy career and that he wasn't just a crazy man who
decided to do something out of the blue.”

According to Sheerin, al-Araj’s death also served to unite al-Walaja, which
had been divided over social and political disagreements.

“We have a lot of problems with the Israclis and we were divided over
how we should confront them. But everyone came together with his death.
‘The whole village came to Bassel’s funeral and mourned as if it was their
own son who was killed,” Sheerin said.

s assassination elevated him to the status of an icon. Many Palestinians
who had never heard of al-Araj began familiarizing themselves with the

6| TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
activist's writings and ideologies. Juma believes it was a combination of
his personality and the manner of his death that has made al-Araf's story
50 resonant among Palestinians, and more powerful than those of other
Palestinian activists who have been killed by Israeli troops or spies.

“Bassel was an intellectual and at the same time he believed in armed re-
sistance,” Juma said. “He brought together these two things that remind-
ed people of the fighters of the 1960s and 1970s ~ like Ghassan Kanafani
and Mahmoud Darwish ~ when the armed struggle was connected to the
arts, literature, and intellectualism. And at the end he didn't surrender,”
Juma added. “He was killed fighting. He died with his gun next to him.
Up until the last moment he was resisting.”

Juma said that reflection of an oft-told past resistance as well as the em-
bodiment of an anger that is widespread among Palestinian youths has
made him a representative of an entire generation. “Young people saw
themselves in Bassel. He represented the anger inside them that they can't
express. They saw in Bassel the entire Palestinian story the uncertainty
of the future, the fear, the dignity and the spirit and desperation for rev-
olution”

Ahmad says he thinks al-Araj still has an influence on a new generation
of activists and youths who are “looking for different ways to confront a
hopeless situation.” His influence is hard to point out in a concrete way,
Ahmad said, but its “there in the background.”

Sheerin told The Electronic Intifada that the central reason young Palestin-
ians were attracted to al-Araj after his death was because “he was honest
in every single thing he did or said ... to the extreme. His honesty s what
made him an icon,” she said. “We dream of having leaders with the kind
of honesty that Bassel had. He is the dream for all of us and he is the kind
of person we want to lead us. He lived up to his word.”

But the ones who were impacted the most, according to Ahmad, were
those who knew him personally. “For him Palestine was the sole purpose
of every litle fiber in his being. He had this energy around Palestine and
a hope in the Palestinian cause that you see in very few people. Nobody
was as energetic” Ahmad said. Al-Araf's singular quality, according to
Ahmad, was his optimism. Bassel, Ahmad said, saw Palestine as “the an-
swer to his existential questions.”

“He truly believed and he had hope. He committed himself 24 hours a day
to the struggle ... That's what made him so central and influential for a lot
of us, because we saw hope in him. That energy is what we really miss.”

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 7
WHY DO WE
GO TO WAR?

Basel al-Araj - April 5, 2021

My dear friend,

Starting from today, I will be writing for you. [ will write with the amaze-
ment of children and with a faith that the prophets have, and I will never be
worried about what I am writing, If live, 1 will discover either the dreams
of children and their fantasies, or I will discover the visions of the prophets,
and what I have written down here shall never harm me if I die.

You, my friend, are variegated. Sometimes I see you as a male, and at other
times as a female. Sometimes I see you as my comrade-in-arms and strug-
gle; at other times, I see you as a political opponent. Sometimes I see you
as one of my great teachers; at other times, I see you as one of my friends.
For you, my friend, are nothing short of everyone I ever knew. In any case,
each letter will represent a self-dialogue with some friend, a comrade, or a
professor, and perhaps sometimes the dialogue will be with more than one
person.

Do you know when the most intense monologue I create in this solitude of
mine is? I's when my cigarettes start to run out, and tonight, my friend, I
have half a dozen left, so let me tell you what's on my mind.

My dear friend,

I don't really know why I start thinking every time I run out of cigarettes,
but I remember how one of my other friends described me as “primitive.”
Do you recall, my dear, what I told you one day: “The city will kill both of
us. My hatred for it and my longing to escape its urbanization will kill me,
and you will be killed by your ever-lasting greed for the city and its urban-
ization"?

In all cases, I found some humor in the explanation concerning my prim-
itivism and cigarettes: an explorer asked once an Inuit, “what is on your
mind?”, and sothe latter answered, “there is no need to think. 1 have enough
food for now.” The Inuit starts working his mind out when the food runs
out, and so s the case for me when my cigarettes start to run out

Itis unfortunate that many of the things I used to say were taken seriously,
even my nonsense and jokes about feminism, for example. You would al-
ways find someone who would take them seriously and argue with them,

8| TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
5011 consider it my duty here to say that, unfortunately, I have no claim to
the truth, so do not search for it here and subject everything I say to doubt,
even if I say it with a heart full of the prophets’ faith. Rather, make room
for thinking, even if I formulate my thoughts with childlike terms and ex-
pressions. As Ali Al-Wardi said: “Nothing invented by the human mind is
more horrible than the plot of truth and reality.” Therefore, here, Iwill claim
neither truth nor reality, for I am following the doctrine of our teacher who.
said, “The truth is nothing but the path that you take in your truth-seeking
journey.”

My dear friend,

Why do we go to war? Of course, this is a question that haunts me alone,
and I believe this question is one for all humanity. This question, in the
adult world, is like asking children how they came into this world. Let me
beliberated from a search for the elegance of words or the flow of ideas, and
let me be liberated from generalizations or particularities. This question has
been my companion for more than 20 years; I searched for its answer in the
depths of books and the hearts and minds of professors. I searched for its
answer in the biographies of heroes and martyrs, for you, my dear friend,
know that its answer is directly related to the issue of heroism and martyr-
dom. Finally, 1 found that this question doesn't baffle me alone, but almost
everyone I know, friend or foe. As you know, the “counterinsurgency” lt-
erature buzzes with this question.

Perhaps it's been eight months since my life began to take its proper course,
since my first disappearance, then my imprisonment, and here we are in the
midst of my second disappearance. Since those days, some things began to
reveal themselves to me, and I do not know the reason. Isit experience and/
or fear, anxiety and/or clarity of mind and devotion—I do not know the
exact reason, o even if allucination, hallucinations of solitude? Is ita
break from reality or an abstract clash with reality?

Have you read Omar Al-Farra's poem, “The Men of God on the Day of
Conquest in Lebanon?” He traces the footsteps of these men, so1, like Omar
Al-Farra, searched and traced the path of such men, the geography of hero-
ism, martyrdom, and the history of self-sacrifice. Oh God, how humble Iam
when I walk through these mountains and go down these valleys. There is
1o comparison to my humility when | am here, even in prayer. I have been
searching for an answer to this question on a journey that has lasted me 20
years. I search “for the truth and the missing faces,” as my teacher would
Say about me. Now, let us get back to the question.

My dear friend,
Why do we go to war?

One day, you asked me the question, “What is wrong with the motivation
for struggle being an individualistic, personal motivation?” while express-

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 9
ing objection to a certain piece of paper. This is not important. What i im-
portant on that day was that you told me about the story of Jasser Al-Bar-
ghouthi’s cell, that young man who commanded one of the most important
resistance cells in the West Bank during the Second Intifada. You told me
that he decided to carry out his first operation because he was slapped in the
face by a soldier at a checkpoint. Although I kept track of everything that
was published about it back then, and although I know that the creation
of the cell was not motivated by that slap, I still got carried away thinking
about it,and still | asked you to narrate to me the cell’s story, even though |
know more about it than you. The reason behind that was that I liked your
narrative much more than the official one about Jasser Al-Barghouthi, and
s the slap was not what determined the man’s choices. Your narrative ig-
nited my imagination, in the words of our poet friend

Let us stand here and take a look at all the stories known to history that
involved heroism, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. The world's narratives,
including those of our enemies, have a common denominator. The question
that lingers is: why do we go to war? The motivations, the duty, patriotism,
the escape from troubles, religious and class beliefs, the duality of good and
evil, of truth and falsehood, of revenge and greed? Maybe all of these mo-
tivations do exist. But they are not what make all of humanity's narratives
so similar, for every dogma of faith has one that counters it, every line of
patriotism has one that nullifies it, and so on. So for each one of those moti-
vations, there exists one that counters or nullifies it on the other side of the
battle.

And you realize, my friend, that in practice, there is no revolutionary ide-
ology or a reactionary conservative one. Nor are there religions, lines, o
currents that follow the same dichotomy, not even nationalities or identities
or a people’s structure. All of these carry an intrinsic opposition. And it is
nothing more than an interpretation. I advise you to read about the Castil-
ian battles against the Andalusian Muslims. You will notice that you feel
like you are reading a narrative that's familiar to you from the stories of
the Islamic conquests: a story about that weak, barely-armed frightened mi-
nority that turned to God in the depths of the nights,crying and begging for
victory, and with the sun up, those same people became knights that turned
towards their strong, numerous opponents in a fierce attack that ended with
the latter's defeat. All of the stories involving patriotic, nationalistic class
and religious heroism follow the same line.

My dear friend,

My grandfather used to tell me about the story of the Druze revolution
against the Turks. The story that the cause of the revolution was a verse of
ataba,” and although T know the historical “facts” about that revolution, 1

* The ataaba is a traditional Arabic musical form sung at weddings, festivals, and
other occasions,

10 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
have always been amazed by my grandfather's narrative.

‘Take, for example, the enemy’s narratives about their own heroes. Cross out
the names and the fighting parties, and listen to the narrative. You will find
yourself engaging with it. Man, since you are interested in movies, note, for
example, the movie “We Were Soldiers” by Mel Gibson. Despite our full
and unconditional sympathy for the Vietnamese, we definitely fell in love
with Mel Gibson's character and his heroism. By the way, compare this mat-
terto the movies “The Patriot” and “Braveheart” by the same actor.

My dear friend,

Tapologize for stretching out the question. Why do we go to war? We go ot
looking for romance. The romance of war, that creates a new type of human,
for no one stays the same after experiencing war. We chase this romance,
and nothing ignites romance more than war. I recommend that you read a
book titled “Memoirs of Soldiers.” This book has amazed me and informed
me about things I couldn't express previously with human language.
Maybe language has never failed you or our poet friend, and so you will
never know what it's like to be unable to express your thoughts. It is true
that we go to war to seek romance, and perhaps I was ashamed of admitting
this to myself. You know how much of a cliché this term has turned into. [
used to run away from this romance whenever it tried to sweep me away,
and I used to try and make sense of all those motives. We're too arrogant to.
‘admit this reason but we all know that what draws us towards heroism and
martyrdom is the same thing that we are so ashamed to admit: romance.

Retroactively, | went back to what I used to write about the biographies of
those heroes, only to find out in hindsight that I used to unknowingly admit
it—that we seck romance—all along through the language I used to write
with. Let me also tell you that, even though I believe now more than ever
in the absurdity of putting words onto paper, I stll do it until this moment
with romance as my motivation: the thought of seeing your smile or your
tear (and I know you don't shed tears anymore), the thought of a tear or an
emotion expressed by someone reading it, the thought of hearing a word
of flattery, and so on. This is what motivates me to write. And so, all other
attempts to explain or find an answer to the question are not answers in
themselves but are escapes from the answer; they are an attempt to ratio-
nalize romance.

We behold and explain the moment with these motivations. The question
“why am I here?” cannot be answered except with patriotic, religious, na-
tionalistic, and personal motives and so on, but I can look at the past through
a romantic lens, and I can see the future that way, too. Maybe the reason is
that romance doesn't exist in the first place; perhaps it is only a mirage that
we are doomed to forever chase. We see it when we look behind. We see it
when we look forward so that we chase it again, only for it to escape us. And
i the moment that we finally catch romance, it turns out to be nothing more

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 11
than a few whiffs or ephemeral moments of contemplation that end quickly
before the material world submits you again to your own reality.

Romance will collapse before your eyes from the first second you start
walking on your path toward it; it will evaporate between your fingers at
the start of your first real collision with reality, like smoke.

And let me tell you that my romance for war collapsed with my first step
into the mountains, and yet, I sill used to see it in front of me. T would run
behind it, entrap it, and try to catch it while it was still dragging me down,
and despite all of this, those few days were the most beautiful moments.
of my life. As we say in our dialect, “glory is to be found on the peaks of
the mountains,” and while we were in prison we added to it: “Glory is to
be found on the peaks of the mountains and mountains are to be found in
the chests of men.” And again, we found ourselves in prison following the
same pattern of chasing romance. And so, do you know what hope is? It is
the swift pursuit of this romance and faith that you will reach and capture
it. I reach my moment where I get the urge to cough, and the smoke of my
cigarette blinds my eyes. With that, my romance escapes me again, but only
for me to find it in the future. Giving lectures in prison about the “modern
history of Palestine,” and the desire to explain that history in order to find a
rational logical answer, helped me and others endure the pain of prison. All
of those attempts to explain it have done nothing but give me a clear vi
of the path leading to an oasis of romance.

Now, the story of our Gazan friend who was hiking in the valleys of Al-Rad
‘and Nablus in her first experience with the mountains. It was the first time
she walked on the rocks. I asked her days before the hike about her impres-
sions of the mountains. Her impressions were purely romantic. On the day
of the hike, all of her bones nearly shattered. She completely fled from the
romance she had been searching for. The next day, after she confirmed that
she was repentant from climbing, she wrote the most beautiful text about
the experience of hiking and recalled the history of heroism and martyrdom
that she knows is linked to the mountain. When she transformed her experi-
ence to the past tense, she was able to see the romance in it

It comes to my mind to ask, “what is romance in the first place?” And I
find myself as you once described me, “a man of faith, not doubtful.” I
am absolutely sure that I do not need to define this, as certain as Nazik
Al-Malaika, the Arab nationalist poet, when she said that some things that
you feel and experience do not need a definition. So I will not ask you
‘about its meaning o its linguistic roots.

And you, the academics, are always striving to remove magic from things
by défining and interpreting them, thinking that you will reach the truth.

On these rainy days, I will tell you that I do not need an explanatory frame-
work to explain the cause of rain, whether the reason is Thor's hammer or
Allah's mercy on his servants, or science’s interpretation of this phenome-

12 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
non. I want none of this; L only want my constant amazement and my fool-
ish smile whenever it rains, to seem like the frst time, the experience of the
wonder of children, and the magic of the world.

Why do I say this about academics? I remembered the way they write
history. They remove all romanticism from history, so most people do not
like to read history, even though it is possible to write history with ameth-
odology that preserves its romanticism. These are sound and appropriate
tools of analysis and a serious historical methodology, but they cannot be
taken seriously by any other academic if they do not take away the magic
from things, the magic of romanticism.

And honestly, I don't know why there i this hostlity of modernity towards
romanticism. Do you know, for example, that the first practical applications
of modem chemistry and physics were originally to add magic to things?
But modernity is like poison in honey. It gives you the illusion that it wants
the magic, attractiveness, and romance of things, and once it takes firm
control over you, it takes away all of that from you. Notice, for example,
the “primitive” man's dealings with technology and the beginning of his
knowledge of it. Note, for example, how wireless communications stole our
minds in its beginnings (1 told you about our story with the frst telephone
that entered our neighborhood)

At first, you see the magic of things. Then, here we are; we have taken that
magic away from everything and it no longer surprises us.

Why do we need romanticism?

Iwould argue that if not for some man having a mad romance that is only
a thread of hair away from banality, the history of humanity wouldn't
have been of any importance worth mentioning. My friend, imagine how
our Prophet Muhammad was on the run, chased down, frightened, and
starving, and yet, when he was caught by Suraqa bin Malik, he didn't have
anything but to promise Suraqa all the cavalry of Khosrow IL. If Suraga
had happened to be a modernist, rational, realistic person, he would have
firmly tied the Prophet, handed him over to the Quraish, and collected his
bounty of one hundred camels. “Man, you're an escapee, and Quraish,
with all s fools and masters, is chasing you and you're promising me
the cavalry of Khosrow?” But fortunately, fate had given our Prophet
Muhammad someone like Surdqa with a vast imagination, with wild
dreams, and with a romanticism excessive enough for him to take the
Prophet for his word and let him go. I am certain that Suraqa was told,
“You naive fool!” at least once after that.

We need romance to continue our existence. I don't see how we can survive
as humanity without romance.

Twilltell you something about war and romanticism. When Napoleon came
to Egypt, he was encountered by the Mamluks with their long mustach-

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 13
es, their Sicilian swords, and with their vessels and shields on their horses.
Only a few moments afterward, the bullets and cannons of Napoleon filled
the ground with Mamluk bodies.

At that time and up until recently, most historians, intellectuals, and au-
thors described the mentality of the Mamluks as “primitive” in comparison
to that of the modernist Napoleon, and they have attributed exaggerated
stupidity and naivety to the Mamluks.

But I see things from a different perspective. I can see that the Mamluks
were aware that they were only a few moments away from certain annihi-
lation, and yet, they refused anything except to welcome that annihilation.
Do you know what it s like for a person to be raised their whole life on the
values of knighthood and bravery? And then someone comes in and tries
to take all that away from them. The Mamluk knights knew that, and they
refused to give up the romance of confrontations, knighthood, bravery,
and death.

Somewhere else, and decades after that event, a similar event to that of the
Mamluks came into existence. It has been portrayed in the movie “The Last
Samurai,” and by the way, the soldier that fought alongside the Samurai
was French, not American. The movie portrays the epic of the last battle,
and similar to the battle between the Mamluks and Napoleon, one can no-
tice the romanticism in the scene that portrays the killing of Katsumoto.

Several decades later in World War I, two-thirds of the British army was
annihilated in the first two months of the war. Do you know why? The
memoirs of English officers of the British military aristocracy tell us the an-
swer. There, they realized that the war as they knew it had ended, and there
was no longer any possibility or place for the knights and the brave after
this day. After the Germans slew them in the same manner as their Maxim
machine gun (the pride of their military), there they realized that they were
finished. However, a large number of that military aristocracy did not want
to abandon the romance of war and chivalry, only to fall dead to miserable
suicidal missions of the nature of the heroics of last stands, and they went to.
their deaths with all courage

In World War I, Europeans kneww that the first thing that modemnity killed
was romance. So what does it mean when you sit for months in trenches
and death snatches you without looking into the eyes of your killer or feel-
ing the rush of his spear in your chest? There, they were snatched away by
death, by shells falling from the sky that they could hardly see, or by the
whistle of an officer ordering them to advance one yard to die outside their
trenches. Modernity killed romanticism, and itis still destroying it

Note, my dear, that you can tell the story of the martyrdom of any martyr
in the Second Intifada, and that the climax of the event is not their life but
the moment of their death, except for those who were martyred by smart
missiles from planes. One can narrate the life of Ahmed Yassin with exces-

14 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
sive romance and absorb the lightness of the sheikh's spirit into your own
being. However, at the moment of his martyrdom, in his last battle, you
cannot describe it in more than ten words in 30 seconds, unlike the martyrs.
who fell during direct confrontation and armed clashes with the enemy. Do
you remember our conversation about the martyrdom of Louay Al-Saadi?

Even your observations and criticism of the paradoxes of the 2014 war were
that it made most of society a passive audience awaiting death. You objected
to a death that is not surrounded by a romantic narrative. You know that
the balance of power between nations is determined by the “potential ener-
gy” and “Kinetic energy” (a crushing energy). And you know that potential
energy—and its function in war —is to transform into a crushing force. I be-
lieve that the possibility of creating romantic narratives around martyrdom
and heroism is one of the most important elements of potential energy, in
which we outperform our enemy.

We can narrate ten thousand romantic stories about heroism and martyr-
dom in the last decade alone, narratives that, once picked up by society,
can transform from a buried, potential energy into an enemy-crushing
force. On the other hand, our enemy does not have more than 50 similar
stories from 2006 until now. This is an actual manifestation of our pro-
fessor's saying that the enemy has lost every ability to produce heroes.
‘The age of post-modemnity or liquid modemnity—it is not important to me
what you refer to it as. What is important to me is that this s the era of the
death of romance and the end of heroism. And surely you know that we,
Palestinians, live outside of this era. We live in a colonial Palestinian era,
surrounded by a post-colonial, post-modern world, and so, we are still
able to produce romantic narratives.

Allow me to address you and our poet friend: do you remember our friend’s
statements about how much the narratives found within the ‘48 Palestine
communities are charged with imagination? And how this disappears in
other narratives? Notice how stories about heroism and victory are the ones.
that are filled with popular fantasies and romanticism, like the story of the
wheat seeds inside the pocket of the martyr from Kafr Kanna.” Whilst the
narratives that retell the stories of victims are swift, rigid, dull, boring, and
nothing more than documentations devoid of any imagination.

And notice, too, how the stories of heroism are narratives lush with ro-
manticism, while the ones about victimhood are brief. This for me can
only mean that nations are vanquished when they give up romanticism.
Sometimes after admitting defeat, the defeated party tries to hold on to
what is left of its dead romance, and so what does it produce? We here
can see some sort of a banal fantasy being produced, something akin to
superhumans that we usually see in Bollywood or in mid-70s and mid-80s.
Hollywood. And I am not talking about superhero comic movies such as

*Kafr Kanna is a Palestinian village in the accupied interior (48 lands),

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 15
Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, where that kind of wild imagination
should be allowed; no, what I mean here is works like Rambo, for exam-
ple. Iam fully convinced that Rambo, and Amold Schwarzenegger's mov-
ies and other movies from that era, were nothing more than mere attempts
to salvage that American romanticism we have seen killed by the guns of
Vietnam. And so, all of these movies, in addition to their bad quality, have
a rude, offensive, and comny character to them, and on top of that, they
resort to appropriating their enemy’s romanticism in order to feed their
own narratives. A clear example of this is the tricks that we see Rambo use
in Vietnam, which were stolen from the actual Vietnamese.

Or perhaps, we can look to Indian movies, which exaggerate in vulgar-
izing the heroism they portray and make up ridiculous romantic stories
because, and I am not quite sure here, the popular imagination in India
has no other choice left but to save its lost romanticism. For me, this phe-
nomenon correlates with the caste system found in India.

Itis worth emphasizing here that there is a fine line separating romance
from vulgarity, and there is also a fine line between constructive romantic
narratives and mythological narratives that lack sound analytical tools.
When asked about the martyrs of this Intifada, you will only see men
rushing with all their speed, carrying their knives and rifles, as if they
were trying to grab something that they sce and that we do not see. This
phenomenon is nothing but the romance of war.

“Such is the craft of knights, to revolt without guarantee. The spirit of a man
is not enthusiastic, but combative. We are fighters, we are not shopkeepers,”
as stated in the novel “Freedom or Death” by Nikos Kazantzakis. This was
the answer of the fighter, the Caribbean teacher, to Commander Kambata
Ross, when he asked for firm facts before moving Russian and Greek ships,
supplies, weapons, and soldiers. The teacher called this spirit “insight "
Perhaps it is the same as Ali Shariati's “shrewdness,” and it is perhaps a
descriptive abstraction of what romanticism is.

And 1 find myself smiling when | accuse Nikos of stealing that saying from
our popular Walaj chant called “Waw."" We say:

Do not consider us foreigners, O Wi
We do not sel spces.

We are the protectors of the women

On the day that there s a aid on the women.

Finally, perhaps the friends who experienced my anger in my attempt to
defend the path of the martyrs would forgive me when they were scratch-
ing the outer surface of the romanticism of the martyr and the heroism in
my consciousness

* From Walaja, Basils home village near Bethichem. Wanw” is the penultimate letter

of the Arabic alphabet and constitutes the only leter of the word “wa,” meaning
“and.”

16 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
EXITING LAW
AND ENTERING
REVOLUTION

Basel al-Araj - 2024

Peaple ran at the sound of bullets. They partook in the fray, not asking why
ar how. The countrymen against the French. All is clear and it takes place
even if the dispute is over triviality or if the fight is between drunkards.
“The French colonizer is then an enemy, and resisting the enemy is a duty.
I those days, as | moved from one howse to the next, I understood the mean-
ing of Tbrakim Al-Shankal’s words about resistance against the colomizer,
about national spirit, enthusiasm, initiative, solidarity, about hatred in the
eyes, mouths, and hands, the hatred for everything that is French and anyone
who cooperates with the French, be they landowners or Aghas, conumaners or
those who are weak in spirit and conscience. As for those who fought in battle
and escaped arrest, they were honored by the city and 1 was among them. I
the one who had been in one world and suddenly found himself in another. 1,
the one who became a patriot without understanding the meaning of patri-
atism as the others whom God had blessed with consciousness and courage
had understood it

Hanna Mina, The End of a Brave Man

In the literatures examining peoples’ revolutionary history, there recur
some exceptional and divisive individuals who fuse revolution with hero-
ism, crime and violations of law with tradition and custom. The accounts
o their lives are often similar in terms of origin, circumstance, trajectory,
and ending Most crucially, they are similar in how they are received: in all
of these cases, the public is divided over how to deal with these accounts.
Some consider these individuals to be petty criminals and outlaws, while
others see them as heroes,

‘The Arabs were familiar with this phenomenon since well before Islam,
as it was represented by the groups of vagabonds known as Saalik, the
most famous of whom was Urwa bin al-Ward, nicknamed Prince of the
Sa‘alik. These groups of men who broke with custom and tradition, con-
fronting the economic, social, and political systems of their tribes, were
either shunned by the tribe, or themselves fled the tribe. When hard times
fell on the tribespeople, they would gather around the Sa‘alik, who tend-

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 17
ed to their needs. When normality was restored, the tribespeople would
again repudiate the Sa‘alik and forsake them.

‘The similarity between the revolutionary and the outlaw consists in their
decision to deviate from accepted “systems” and “laws.” The outlaw’s
transition to national or political action—organized or spontancous—is a
smooth one. It is not marred by the same complexities of the transitions
of members of the bourgeoisie, for example, which require a rejection of
their social class and of the rituals, customs, and material comfort it pro-
vides. The outlaw, by way of his experience in the fields of theft and fraud,
masters ways of operating outside of that law, acquires skills to deal with
arrest and investigation, and carries out operations that require high de-
grees of prior planning. These experiences are similar in their practical
logic to resistance action, even if the end goals differ.

Franty Fanon was alert to this overlap and wrote the following about these
outlavw figures in The Wretched of the Earti:

In the same way the people make use of certain episodes in the life of the
community in order to hold themseloes ready and fo keep alive their revolu-
tionary zeal. For example, the gangster who lolds up the police set on to track
nint doton for days on end, or who dies in single combat after having killed
four or fve policemen, or who commits suicide in order ot to give away his
‘accompices—these types light the way for the people, forns the blueprints for
action and become heroes. Obviously, i’s a waste of breath to say that such-
and-such a hero s a thicf, a scoundrel, r a reprobate. If the act for which he
is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against
a colonialist person or colonialist property, the demarcation line is definite
and manifest.

As a crucial sign of his attachment and love for community, his sense of
justice, and his acquisition of analytical tools which furnished him with a
lucid and serious vision, the martyr Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam said of
the outlaws: “Let them do their work because there is a manhood in that
work which we will one day transform into holy struggle, and as long as
the colonizer wants to kill our souls, these people are closer to God and to
the love of holy struggle than are those who submit.”

‘The Marxist historian Eric J. Hobsbawm understood the significance of
the outlaw or “social bandit,” whose particularities contradict the logic of
law in modern liberal states, which is based primarily on the “social con-
tract” and the “natural rights” of man to property, freedom, and life—as
outlined by John Locke. According to this understanding, banditry is an
assault on private property; it is a “criminal” act in the terminology of the
state and the classes affected by said “criminal” act.

One of Hobsbawm's books is based on a long and mythologized history
of what he refers to as “social banditry,” traceable in the popular imag-
ination of various societies, and centered around the heroics of thieves

18 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
and bandits such as Robin Hood, Rob Roy MacGregor, and Jesse James.
Hobsbawm addresses the phenomenon throughits social context, wherein
the outlaw or thief's social role is one of revenge, especially if he defrauds
or steals from a member of the dominant and tyrannical classes in soci-
ety. Hobsbawm labels this thief the “noble robber.” In other cases, such
as the Mafia in southern ltaly, the outlaw provides an alternative to the
dominant social order and relations imposed by the ruling class through
the police and other forces of oppression and containment. Hobsbawm
finds a similarity between social bandits and revolutionary heroes, such as
Che Guevara, or Vo Nguyén Gidp and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, or in the
Arab and Islamic context, those such as Abdul Karim al-Khattabi, Omar
al-Mukhtar, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Wadih Haddad, and others

In many cases, the outlaws become figures of agitation in societies that
persist in a state of submission, as they are the most capable of existing
outside of the system that imposes humiliating conditions on the living.
‘They also possess sufficient knowledge to live and sustain themselves out-
side of the dominion of unjust law. They set for themselves strict rules
that organize their world with just traditions, granting the human being
their dignity and the right to live a decent life in return for fulfilling one’s
duties. For example, if one of the outlaws confesses to the authorities o
informs on one of his companions, this is sufficient to end his trajectory
with the group.

Because outlaws are at the bottom of the social pyramid, their world is
explicit. They are not fooled by authority's tricks and lies, nor are they
subject to its discourses, tools of mediation, and manufacturing of public
opinion. The world in which they find themselves is one that s pristine in
its reality, with all its hardships, miseries, poverty, and injustice. One thus
finds that they hold justice in the highest regard and that they are the most
contemptuous of its absence.

It is important here to mention the enormous connection between any
covert movement or revolution and the underground world which ex-
ists outside of the law. The law is a tool for normalization and hegemo-
ny at the hands of power, which reserves the right to interpret or revise
said law. Therefore, revolutionary, covert movements exist on par with
the outlaw “underworld.” Revolutionary movements have always relied
on this underworld to acquire know-how, logistics, and arms, as well as
tactics of maneuvering and methods of obtaining financing, in order to
confront the enemy.

Arab, Palestinian, and International Figures

‘The figures that we will discuss all hail from the poorest and most op-
pressed classes in society, which are subjected to the greatest degree of
persecution. Most of their stories also share similar sets of circumstances

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 19
that lead to the creation of a new humanity and to moments of birth and
transformation.

We are talking about individuals whose consciousness is formed by ma-
terial experience and whose life begins with rejection by sciety. Yet they
come to be heroes: women sing of them at weddings and men hail their
names and virtues, as they become models of heroism and rebellion. We
are speaking here of individuals who are nothing but revolutionaries from
the first moment. In their qualities, virtues, and psychological composi-
tion, they are marked by courage, rebellion, boldness, and intelligence.
‘They are not deceived by embellishments nor are they ever domesticated.

Have you heard of Ibrahim, the boy who was killed in 1913, the one who
loved Fatima, daughter of the feudal lord, and who was chased and per-
secuted as a result? He realized the extent of the injustice and oppression
imposed by the state and feudal lords on the peasants and the poor, so he
formed a gang that robbed the rich and gave the poor their rights. That
boy was Hekimoglu Ibrahim, one of the most famous dissenters in the
Ottoman Empire, who became one of the most renowned icons of pop-
ular epics, whom people sing of and whose story grandmothers retell to
children in order to instill in them the highest values—deepening their
concepts of struggle, freedom, justice, equality, and love.

Hekimoglu bears some resemblance to the English folk hero Robin Hood
or to the Prince of the Sa‘alik, Urwa ibn al-Ward, but he most closely re-
sembles the Scottish revolutionary William Wallace, depicted in the movie
Braveheart, in whose case love was also the engine of revolution. And just
as Hekimoglu's lfe inspired people, so did his death. The picture of him
as a dead man cradling his Martini-Henry rifle made all the youths in the
Ottoman Empire covet that same rifle. To this day, our popular songs and
chants in Palestine recall Hekimoglu through that Martini rifl.

‘These outlaw figures are distinguished from revolutionaries only by con-
sciousness and political mission. The latter, whose social base and polit-
ical projects are created by material conditions, become a nation’s hope
and model. In his book Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara noted this great similar-
ity when he said

The guerilla fighter counts on the full support of the local peaple. This is
an indispensable condition. And this i clearly seen by considering the case
of bandit gangs that operate in a region; they have many characteristics of a
guerrilla army, homogeneity, respect for the leader, bravery, knowledge of the
terrain

According to Guevara, if the people rally around these gangs, they will be
transformed into revolutionaries.

‘This can be demonstrated by the story of the martyred Iraqi militant Su-
waiheb, the peasant who was killed by gangs hired by feudal lords in

20 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
al-Ahwar, near the al-Kahla River, in Irag in 1959. He was the first mar-
tyr after the revolution of July 14, 1958, commemorated by Muthaffar al-
Nawab, in the poem Suwaiheb, sung by Sami Kamal.

Although the people embraced these individuals as icons and heroes il-
luminating the way, the state and its law were unable to account for the
logic at work. Even when the authorities used these icons as myths in
their own state projects, they continued to consider them outlaws. Here
we may refer to the popular epic of the Egyptian folk hero, the martyr
Adham al-Shargawi, whose memory the Egyptians still commemorate
in their popular songs to this day, about whose life two TV series were
made. His story was deployed during the Nasser era, as the tide of social-
ist pan-Arabism swept over, and a film about his life was made, starring
Abdullah Ghaith and directed by Hossam E Din Mustafa, with Abdel
Halim Hafez singing the film’s mawil and folk songs. And yet, the clothes
of Adham al-Sharqawi, who was killed in 1921 at 23, are still isplayed in
the “Notable Criminals” section at the National Police Museum.

‘The revolutionary martyr and theorist Malcolm X is one of the most fa-
mous examples of the revolutionary outlaw. He was born to a small and
impoverished Black family, growing up under a racist system that no
sound person could accept. In 1931, when he was six years old, his father
was killed by a white supremacist group. Four of his uncles were then
also killed at the hands of whites, without trial. His mother was placed in
a psychiatric hospital

Malcolm's presence at a school for whites was sufficient to compel him to
comprehend the extent of injustice experienced by Black people, even at
the tender age of six. The seeds of rebellion and revolution were planted
in him at a young age. He learned to shout in anger, as did the character of
Mufid al-Wahsh in Hanna Mina’s novel The End of a Brave Man. Malcolm
X has said of this phase of his life: “So early in my life, 1 had learned that
if you want something, you had better make some noise.”

As he reached puberty, these protestations took on a more violent and
rebellious form. He undertook burglary and theft, and was imprisoned for
it, continuing his high school studies in prison. Afterwards, he left prison
for Boston and New York, where he dove into a world of violence, crime,
and drugs, before returning to prison.

s moment of rebirth took place in prison and he emerged a new human
s consciousness about the injustice which Black people are subjected to
across the United States had expanded. The cruelty of life in prison gave
him the knowledge and art of interpreting society’s deviant behaviors as
Fanon and Ali Shariati did, and not as the half-educated people who con-
sidered them pathologies or genetic mutations do.

Malcolm X forged his path towards becoming one of the most influential
Black leaders, partaking as well in the struggles of other nations, such as

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 21
the Algerian Revolution. His was a critical mind that could not accept lies,
deception, and quackery. He maintained that thought and theory must be.
subjected to social conditions. Then, the hunt for his life began, and multi-
ple assassination attempts were made on him until one was successful on
February 21, 1965

As for the Algerian martyr Ali La Pointe: born in 1930, he knew injustice,
poverty, and exploitation on the colonial farms in his town of Miliana in
Algeria. Then he moved to Algiers, the capital, to practice boxing, soon
stepping outside of the colonial law and being thrown in prison. There, he.
was reborn. How many national heroes were born in prison? Abu Jilda,
Al-Armit, Farid AlAsas, and Abu Kabari were also prison births, later
becoming national symbols.

La Pointe: that name which attached itself to our hero, the hero of the Bat-
tle of the Casbah, the arena over which he, Ali La Pointe, exerted his con-
trol before his rebirth, he who led several operations against the French
occupation in Algiers, aiding the revolution in its move from the moun-
tains to the cities. On October 9, 1957, the French blew up his hideout. He
was martyred along with three other heroes: the young woman Hassiba
Ben Bouali, Talib Abdel Rahman, and the child Omar, who also became
one of the many symbols of the revolution.

And here we mention the martyr hero Hussein Al-Ali, from the Arab
Saqs of the Beisan valley. He is one of the most important Palestinian
examples. Al-Ali killed a cousin who had done him an injustice. (Most of
the Palestinian examples similar to Hussein Al-Ali begin their stories in a
clash with authority starting from the bottom of the pyramid, such as the
mukhtar, then the feudal lord, and then the bourgeoisie which takes on
the face of the colonizer and its comprador.) He was chased after by the
British authorities and went underground until the Great Revolt of 1936,
then becoming one of its leaders and most important symbols. Hussein
was later martyred in a crushing battle with the forces of the British ene-
my. He was immortalized by the poet Tawfiq Ziyad in his epic Sarhan and
the Pipeline, sung by the ‘Ashigin band.

‘The beginning of every revolution is an exit, an exit from the social order
that power has enshrined in the name of law, stability, public interest, and
the greater good. Every social and economic authority necessarily inter-
sects with and is an extension of political authority. This is how these he-
roic figures can be understood and appreciated by the general public, who
are overpowered, as though by instinct. From there, we understand the
hostility of social, economic, and political authority towards these figures,
and its use of the law as a tool to tarnish their image and criminalize them.
We therefore also understand the smooth transition from the outlaw into
the revolutionary—the one who resists.

22 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
DISMANTLE IT
AND LET
THEM FALL

Basel al-Araj - Oct. 12, 2020

Iwas writing an article with the title “Why the Palestinian Authority must
be dismantled” when a friend of mine shared with me the program of the
Israeli Herzliya Conference taking place that year. I was surprised to learn
that senior Palestinian Authority figure Sacb Erekat, along with Prince
Hasan of Jordan, were taking part. I decided to change the title to “Di:
mantle it and let them fall.”

S0 why must we abolish the PA and bring down its leaders?
The Harkis

During the Algerian war of independence, many Algerians ~ at least
150,000 - joined the French army and secret police, and fought against the
revolution. These so-called Harkis have a share of the blood of a million
martyrs on their hands. The majority of them belonged to the class that
benefited from the French occupation.

‘The situation in Palestine has many of the same features of what was hap-
pening in Algeria shortly before the revolution.

Itis no secret that there is a comprador class directly benefiting from the
existence of the occupation, and the current situation gives great privileg-
esto that small fraction of society. Let us avoid taking up arms against one
another. Let us dismantle it and let them fall

The state is the death of the revolution

Following the success of the Cuban revolution, Che Guevara and Fidel
Castro disagreed over this dialectic. Guevara believed that revolutionaries
needed to be freed from the burden of the state so they could export the
revolution. Castro disagreed. But the reality is that Guevara was right and
Castro was wrong,

‘Their disagreement concerned a state with all the attributes of a state. So
what about hal a state? Guevara’s analysis can be applied to the Palestin-
ian question as well: After the 1993 Oslo accords were signed between Is-
rael and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the obligations and duties

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 23
of the state became a burden on the back of the revolution, at the expense
of liberation,

And after the Zionists fled Gaza in 2005, Hamas was incorporated into
the Palestinian Authority and became constrained by a truce that was con-
stantly renewed in deference to its governmental responsibilities and du-
ties. So that we may be free of this burden, dismantle it and let them fall

Corruption

‘There is a lot to be said, but 1 will focus here on political corruption, asitis
the most widespread form of corruption, found wherever you look, from
the top of the pyramid all the way to the bottom.

From the Palestinian Authority to the legislature, all the way down to the
national level, through parties and factions, the institutions of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, public organizations and trade union groups —
all have lost their legitimacy.

According to the Basic Law, we must wait for elections in order to choose
alternatives, so we became hostages to Hamas' anger over Sakher Habash
spouting blasphemies or Habash's anger for someone being 30 minutes
tardy.

When they agreed on anything, it was to strip 41.8 percent of refugees (ac-
cording to 2008 UNRWA statistics) of their rights to elect representatives
in the national council, in order to maintain the stability of the Hashemite
monarchy in Jordan.

And they removed 14 million Palestinian citizens of Israel from their
agenda. S0 to end this corruption, dismantle it and let them fall

A contractor from within

‘The Oslo accords transferred all the burdens and duties of the occupation
to the PLO without restoring any rights, making it the cheapest occupa-
tion in history. Let us get rid of those burdens. Dismantle it and let them
fall.

The culture of Oslo

When I hear stories from elders about the culture and morals of Pales
ian society during the first intifada, I'm genuinely shocked. It's as if they
are talking about a totally different world

When ook at this society, I see it overrun by consumerism and individu-
alism, a lack of morals and principles, the spread of feelings of inferiority
and colonized thinking

Joining a political party has become about reaping the benefits, not about
offering sacrifices and struggle. When I see all this | realize that in order to.
rid ourselves of this shame we must dismantle it and let them fall

24 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
Security coordination

I cannot say that I know what security coordination with lsrael is because
I haven't read any official document describing what occurs during those
meetings (which violates the most basic principle of good governance,
transparency). But it is enough for me to cite Issa Qaraqe in his article on
the end of security coordination. Dismantle it and let them fall.

Begging
We started to beg for anything, for what is worth having and what s not,
especially after Arab states started giving large sums to the PLO and ma-
jor countries started paying despite themselves just to pacify the revolu-
tionaries. This affected the independent decision-making ability of Pales-
tinians that Yasser Arafat fought his whole life to protect without giving
in. So to end the begging, dismantle it and let them fall

The legitimization of gangs

After Oslo, setlers were given the legitimacy to be on our lands. But the
worst is perhaps yet to come, where dreaming of Acre will be a crime,
owning Ghassan Kanafani's story Return to Haifa will be against the poli-
¢y of the state and the horse of Mahmoud Darwish, which was left behind,
will become an illegal migrant.

Is it any wonder that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas insists he does not want
to undermine Israel's legitimacy? What I find most strange is Abbas’ con-
stant apologies for our people’s struggles. So dismantle it and let them fall.

In order to determine everything it would take to dismantle it and let
them fall, I would need all 20 years of negotiations and the number of
words spoken by Sacb Erekat at the Herzliya Conference, but these eight
points are enough to create a charge sheet against those who must fall

We will become like the ancient Israclites roaming in the desert without
shelter if we remain in this condition between profiteers.

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 25
TODAY’S WARS
ARE STRUGGLES
BETWEEN
SOCIETIES

Basel al-Araj - 2023

Since there is talk of a ground operation, several points must be considered:

1. The Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strat-
egies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which
Arabs and Muslims have become masters through their experiences
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. War is never based on the
logic of conventional wars and the defense of fixed points and bor-
ders; on the contrary, you draw the enemy into an ambush. You do
not stick to a fixed position to defend it; instead, you perform maneu-
vers, movement, withdrawal, and attack from the flanks and the rear.
So, never measure it against conventional wars.

2. The enemy will spread photos and videos of their invasion into Gaza,
occupation of residential buildings, or presence in public areas and
well-known landmarks. This is part of the psychological warfare in
guerrilla wars; you allow your enemy to move as they wish so that
they fall into your trap and you strike them. You determine the loca-
tion and timing of the battle. So, you may see photos from Al-Katiba
Square, Al-Saraya, Al-Rimal, or Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, but do not
let this weaken your resolve. The battle is judged by its overall results,
and this is merely a show

3. Never spread the occupation’s propaganda, and do not contribute to
instilling a sense of defeat. This must be focused o, for soon, we will
start talking about a massive invasion in Beit Lahia and Al-Nuseirat,
for example. Never spread panic; be supportive of the resistance and
do not spread any news broadcast by the occupation. (Forget about
the ethics and impartiality of journalism; just as the Zionist journalist
is a fighter, so are you)

4. The enemy may broadcast images of prisoners, most likely civilians,
but the goal is to suggest the rapid collapse of the resistance. Do not
believe them

26 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
‘The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate
some symbols of resistance, and all of this is part of psychological
warfare. Those who have died and those who will die will never affect
the resistance’s system and cohesion because the structure and for-
mations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and wide-
spread. Their goal is to influence the resistance’s support base and the
families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can
affect the men of the resistance.

Our direct human and material losses will be much greater than the
enemy’s, which is natural in guerrilla wars that rely on willpower, the
human element, and the extent of patience and endurance. We are far
more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be
alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers.

‘Today’s wars are no longer just wars and clashes between armies but
rather are struggles between societies. Let us be like a solid structure
and play a game of biting fingers with the enemy, our society against
their society.

Finally, every Palestinian (in the broad sense, meaning anyone who
sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of their secondary
identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Pales-
tine, so be careful not to fail in your duty.

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 27
LIVE LIKE A
PORCUPINE,
FIGHT LIKE
A FLEA

Basel al-Araj - March 24, 2018

In the year 1895 the psychologist Baldwin coined the term “Social
Accommodation,” to describe the social balance (of a biological or phys-
ical accommaodation) created as a form of negotiating with the surround-
ing environment. Social accommodation is defined as a social process
aiming to minimize or avoid conflict. I’ a social adjustment process that
stops contlict between groups, by way of temporary or permanent consol-
idation of peaceful interaction.

‘The psychological aspects of social accommodation indicate individual or
collective behavior that aims to reconcile conflict through avoiding aspects
of negativity or animosity. This could happen through material (econom-
ic), social or psychological compensations to a section of a minority group.
Sociologists differentiate between accommodation and adaptation which
is defined as the adaptation to natural or organically existing conditions.

Accommodation could also take different forms; it may be voluntary or
forced. It could also happen through arbitration, conflict resolution or
endurance. Later Ermst Haeckel used the concept of “the ecology” to in-
dicate the relation between humans and the organic or non-organic envi-
ronment. Ecology became the science that studies the interrelationship of
organisms and their environments.

Tcan't tell why and when this relationship started between the Palestinian
(Luse it here broadly to include the Levantine and not just mandate Pales-
tine) and the porcupine. Was the animosity due to interest in hunting it for
its delicious meat, and the myths about its healing properties including
for male fertility? Or was it simply because porcupines were damaging to
farmers and their agricultural crops?

‘The porcupine is a rodent mammal and is very similar to hedgehogs but
is bigger and has multiple names. In fus-ha Arabic its called Al Shayham
and its scientific name is Hystrix indica. Its body is covered with spikes
10-35 cm long (4 to a little over 13 inches) used for self- defense. It weighs

25 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
4t0 16 kilograms (9 to 351bs) and I do recommend trying out its meat.

Porcupines are night animals that live underground in relatively large
hole that connect to a network of tunnels, where it also creates rest spots.
‘The porcupine uses various techniques to get in and out of its hole, mak-
ing the animal seem paranoid, or, what we call in Palestine, has a “high
sense of security” . A scientist named Prater is one of the most renowned
scientists that studied porcupines. The porcupines that live in our region
are fully vegetarian, mostly eating the colocynth plant known for its bit-
temess, which is why it s not recommended to hunt porcupines with
sguns, if bullets hit the liver or the spleen it makes its meat very bitter.

‘The porcupine has a significant presence in the Palestinian popular mem-
ory and folk stories. Palestinians told endless stories about the porcupine,
they describe it as a strange creature; it cries and wails like humans, it has
hopes and wishes. It is said that it is like humans in that if it gets upset
it aims its spikes on its predators to hit them. It only wanders around
at night; lonely and solely contemplating, getting attracted to smells, to
fruits, and roots. The porcupine is quiet and isolated. Though it can wail,
itis lonely; its pain is deep, but its grudge is deeper stilljust as it is with
its hunter.

When hunting, the first lesson to leam is to observe the prey’s behavior
closely. Palestinians studied the porcupine closely and learned everything.
about it (1 went out on two hunting trips on which we were very lucky
but we did not share our kill with anyone). The hunter needs to learn how
to adapt (not to accommodate) with the life and behaviors of its prey to
be able to hunt it. But what happened is that the Palestinian took on the
porcupine’s behaviors completely, including during danger, becoming a
porcupine himself.

One Eid-al-Adha_my family slaughtered five sheep, and I took part in
the event; [ helped in skinning and cutting of the meat. Unfortunately, the
sheep had fleas and I got some on me. I tried really hard to catch them and
Kkill them but it was exhausting, it made me paranoid. I was only able to
get rid of them by taking a bath where my battle with the fleas was termi-
nated through combing my body with hot water and soap.

‘The flea is a tiny flightless insect of the Siphonaptera order, mostly living
as a parasite on other animals, mostly mammals. It's about 1 to 4 mm.
(0.04 to 0.16 inches). It normally moves through a pair of long back legs
and stings its host causing itchy red spots.

‘The flea has fascinating fighting strategies and techniques; it stings, jumps.
and stings again avoiding hands or feet trying to stomp . It does not
Killits host (meaning it does not kill the entire functions of a dog host for
example), what it does is exhaust its host and consume its blood, causing.
constant disturbance, eventually preventing the host from being able to
rest. It makes the host nervous and demoralized. For that to happen, fleas

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 29
need to procreate, so what begins as a regional infection becomes a more
comprehensive problem when the flea procreates, stinging more areas
that are more proximate.

Mao Zedong says: the enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we
harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue. His the-
orizing on guerilla warfare can be described as a the flea war.

‘The conundrum of “how would a nation that is not industrial win over
an industrial nation” was solved by Mao. Engels saw that nations that
are able to provide capital are more likely to defeat its enemies. Mean-
ing that economic power has the final word in battles because it provides
the capital to manufacture arms. Mao’s solution however was to empha-
size non-physical (or non-material) elements. Powerful states with pow-
erful armies often focus on material power; arms, administrative issues,
the military, but according to Katzenbach, Mao emphasized time, space
(round), and the will. What that means is to avoid large battles leaving
ground in favor of time (trading space/ground with time), using time to
build up will, that is the essence of asymmetrical war and guerilla war.

Now if we're to go back to animals for our comparison, we see that the
guerilla fights it's wars like fleas causing the enemy damage similar to
what the host experiences when attacked by fleas. A huge area to defend, a
small enemy (the fleas) spread out everywhere, fast and hard to capture. If
the battle lasts long enough to exhaust the host then it will fail in the battle
due to its weakness while unable to locate the flea(s)

Robert Taber explains it

In practice, the dog does not die o anaenria. He merely becomes too weakened
(in military terms, over-extended; in political terms, too unpopular; in eco-
nomic terms, too expensive) to defend himself. At this point, the fle, having
multiplied to a veritable plague of fleas through long series of small victories,
each drawing its drop of blood,

Live like a porcupine, fight like a flea

30 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
ARMED
STRUGGLE
N PALESTINE

Basel al-Araj - 2023

Strategy

Yezid Sayigh says in his book on the Palestine Liberation Organization
that the Fatah movement never took the military conflict seriously, and
never viewed the armed struggle as an end in itself or the only path to
liberation. Rather, the armed struggle was a means by which to negotiate a
diplomatic solution. I believe that Hamas's experience in Gaza follows the
same approach. Their political leadership views armed struggle exactly as
Arafat viewed it

‘This is an essential difference between Hezbollah's experience, for ex-
ample, and our experience. It is also the difference between the Algerian,
Chechen, Vietnamese, and Cuban experiences, and our experience.

In these other experiences, they believed that they could defeat the great
powers that were their enemies. We came to the conviction that it was im-
possible to defeat Isracl, and we never believed that returning to Palestine
would involve changing the reality on the ground, but rather by appeas-
ing the capitals of influence in the world.

On the allegation: “The Intifada ruined us”

At the end of the 19205 and the beginning of the 19305, the Black Hand
uprising began in Palestine. It was completely crushed and its participants
were eliminated within 4 months. They were either martyred, impri
oned, or exiled. During the same period, the Communist Party attempt-
ed to launch an uprising in Vietnam, which was also suppressed and the
Communist Party was almost extinguished.

‘The important thing is that these two uprisings were two of the most ex-
cellent uprisings that humanity has ever seen: The Black Hand uprising,
which was one of the most important factors leading to the 1936 Revolt,
and the Communist Party uprising, which was one of the most important
factors leading to the Vietnamese rebellion against France. The leaders
learned from their mistakes, dealt with them, and corrected them.

People at that time did not renounce the option of armed struggle, nor

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 31
did they brood over the colonial discourse regarding the usefulness o
uselessness of armed struggle. Rather, they reviewed their experience,
analyzed it, and launched subsequent uprisings that avoided the same
mistakes. In contrast, Palestinians brood over the destruction the Second
Intifada brought, and are reluctant to engage in any future uprising for
fear of the same results.

1do not know whether Palestinians have sat down to evaluate the results
of the Second Intifada in a scientific manner, especially the results of the
Intifada’s military experience. Usually, when you hear a person talk about
the destruction, the tragedies, the losses, and the setbacks, he is reproduc-
ing Zionist propaganda, but in his own language. This propaganda is con-
stituted by multiple mechanisms and begins altering the Palestinian dis-
cursive space in a way that does not end only with the official line of the
Palestinian Authority (the line of Mahmoud Abbas). The war against us
has still not ceased, nor has the symbolic violence and hidden oppression
that are the real masters of the situation. Usually when any experiment
fails, the criticism focuses on the execution of the experiment, and not on
the theory or ideology behind it. The results were not what we could have
imagined. Was Gaza not completely emptied of settlers? And is Gaza not
reaching a stage of fortification and hybrid warfare as a result of the Sec-
ond Intifada? Were Tel Aviv and Jerusalem not hit hard by the early itera-
tions of rockets that resembled cans of bug spray? Were settlements in the
West Bank (in Jenin and Nablus) not dismantled because the occupation
was no longer able to protect them and could no longer afford the cost of
their continued existence? Did the Intifada not cost the enemy billions of
shekels? And do we not realize what the Intifada did to delay the tragedy
awaiting our people? Personally, I believe that the Intifada temporarily
delayed a new expulsion process that was being prepared

Evaluating the military experience of the Intifada, it appears that the
armed experience of the Intifada was not actually the reason for its set-
backs. Rather, there are other factors that led to this. The leadership was
not able to deal with the responsibility of organizing society and prepar-
ingit for a sustained popular war. Some also had a naive understanding of
armed struggle, and they flattened its essence to the extent that it did not
affect the surface tensions. Recall the expression: “Carry a rifle and shoot,
who will stop you?”

In addition to a lack of consciousness, as well as a lack of psychologi-
cal and social readiness, there was no proper organization of the fighting
forces. This led to incompetent leadership after the elimination of the first
rank. As this social base was completely absent, there emerged a rift be-
tween the masses and those carrying out military action.

In addition to this, there was the counterrevolution against Yasser Ara-
fat, and secret contacts and treasonous agreements were made under the

32 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
table with the enemy. There was also an absence of preparations, equip-
ment, strategy and combat tactics. The objective was the Oslo Accords (the
homeland reduced to Gaza and the West Bank). And let us not forget here
the Palestinian Authority’s dependence on the occupation for its financial,
employment, and administrative system. Finally, there was a lack of con-"
viction by some that armed struggle can change the reality on the ground.
Rather, they were convinced of its use in improving the terms of negotia-
tion, and nothing more.

In conclusion, the first thing that colonialism does is establish what is
possible and impossible for oppressed peoples. Some elements of the
oppressed people usually assist in this. This is done through direct and
indirect brainwashing techniques, so do not trust this discourse that is
transmitted and planted into our minds. Judge instead the testimonies of
our people based on trusting logic and the power of liberation.

Is Palestine beautiful?

Tam frequently asked this question. As easy as the question seems, it is one
of the most difficult questions. It is more difficult than the question “How
are you?” It is difficult to answer once you realize that the real meaning.
of the question is: “Is this narrow coastal strip worth all this blood?” We
all know that beauty is relative and that one’s environment shapes one’s.
aesthetic sensibilities, and that this differs from person to person. Here
you have to resort to comparison to arrive at an easy answer.

But Palestine, in my opinion, is actually the most beautiful place; not be-
cause of her greenness, blueness, yellowness, redness, crops, bounty, o
nature. Her beauty is that she is the one who answered my search for
meaning, and she is the one who answered my existential questions, and
whojustifies my existence and cures my chronic anxieties.

BASEL AL-ARAJ | 33
THE WILL
OF THE MARTYR
BASEL AL-ARA]J

Greetings of Arab nationalism, homeland, and liberation,

If you are reading this, it means I have died and my soul has
ascended to its creator. I pray to God that I will meet him with a
guiltless heart, willingly, and never reluctantly, and free of any
bit of hypocrisy. How difficult it is to write your own will... For
years I have contemplated such texts by martyrs, and I have been
bewildered by them. Succinct, and without eloquence, they do
not satisfy our burning desire for answers about martyrdom.

Now I walk to my death, satisfied that I have found my answers.
How foolish I am. Is there anything more eloquent than the
actions of a martyr? I should have written this months ago, but
what kept me was that this question is for you, the living. Why
should I answer for you? You should search for it. As for us, the
people of the graves, we seek nothing else but God's mercy.

‘This document was recovered from the room in which—after a two-
hour standoff and a shootout—Basel al-Araj was executed by Israeli
soldiers. It was written in a hurry, on a dirty scrap of paper.

34 | TOWARD THE NEXT INTIFADA
‘The texts in this document have been collected from various sites and
publications. Dates refer to their publication in English. Attribution
follows

BASEL AL-ARAJ: ICON FOR A LOST GENERATION

‘This short article was originally published on the Electronic Intifada
website (electronicintifada.net). It has been reproduced here with
only minor stylistic edits. It might not be very pretty or theoretically
incisive, but the editor thinks we can tell a lot about someone’s char-
acter from how their friends and family remember them.

WHY DO WE GO TO WAR? & WILL

‘This essay and several others were only published posthumously in
a collection of Basel al- Araj's writings titled I Have Found My Answers.
‘The essay is unfinished, recovered in manuscript form. Translation
courtesy of the Jisr Collective, reproduced here with minor edits.

EXITING LAW AND ENTERING REVOLUTION

‘This essay was translated and published by The Bad Side during the
opening months of the last years' genocide in Gaza. It is reproduced
without edits. You can find it digitized at thebadside.net.

DISMANTLE IT AND LET THEM FALL
Translated and published on the Electronic Intifada in 2020. Retrieved
from theanarchistlibrary.org.

TODAY'S WARS ARE STRUGGLES

BETWEEN SOCIETIES

Posted to Workers World in November of 2023, originally translated
and posted to Resistance News. Retrieved from workers.org.

LIVE LIKE A PORCUPINE, FIGHT LIKE A FLEA

First published in Arabic on Al Quds Media Network, later translated
and circulated by PYM in March of 2018, Retrieved from their website
at palestinianyouthmovement.com

ARMED STRUGGLE IN PALESTINE

‘These three pieces were translated in 2023 by Arpan Roy, under the
title “Is This Narrow Coastal Strip Worth All this Blood?.” You can
find them on focaalblog.com with a large translator's introduction.
“Strategy’ was left untitled by the translator. The second was pub-
lished by Basel on Sept. 26, 2013, the first and third were left undated
by the translator.

I we missed anything, or if you have a new translation you'd like included in
here, let us know at lakeeffectariseup.net and well update this zine!
LAKE EFFECT
COLLECTIVE

SO-CALLED
CHICAGO, IL

GLOBALIZE
THE INTIFADA

FREE THE LAND,
FUCK THE LAW

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