ON Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across their historic homeland took part in the largest collective action the region has seen in decades.

Workers across Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel and even refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan withheld their labour in a show of unity and defiance against Israel’s long-held policy of fragmenting the Palestinian people.

Commercial centres across the West Bank were deserted, shops in the ancient markets of Jerusalem’s Old City tightly shuttered to protest at violence against Palestinians, the bombing of Gaza and looming evictions of families in East Jerusalem.

Observed widely, the general strike brought significant disruption to several Israeli sectors exposing the country’s dependence on its occupied population. 

While strikes are a common tool of resistance for Palestinians, many shared the feeling that Tuesday’s action was something different.

“It is kind of unprecedented in our history that it should be so widespread,” Akram Salhab, a Palestinian activist in East Jerusalem, told me last week. “We are really seeing the new generation rising up and taking its future into its own hands.”

Since the Nakba when more than 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homeland in 1948, as the state of Israel was created, they have been separated both geographically and by their differing experiences of Israeli colonialism. 

Over the decades Israel has tried to isolate Palestinians into different and dispersed societies – Gaza, the West Bank, within Israel, East Jerusalem and refugees outside of historic Palestine – to sever their sense of shared identity and resistance. 

“Refugee camps from town, West Bank from Gaza and outside from inside – all these divisions are designed to fragment us,” Salhab explains. 

But the activist believes the events over the last week demonstrate that these efforts have failed, with some referring to the collective action as the “unity intifada,” or uprising.  

“The main measure of our strength is whether we can unite as a people and we have,” he says. 

“The fact that we are all able to be in this moment 73 years after the Nakba and we have on our hands what looks like a mass popular uprising across all of historic Palestine and the camps and diaspora is already an incredible achievement.”

Originally called by the Arab Follow Up committee – the Palestinian leadership in Israel – the general strike was picked up and spread across historic Palestine by youth and grassroots groups.

That the strike was led by the people, and not the Palestinian leadership, has also given many a renewed sense of hope. 

“The young generation is here, it is out on the street, it is determined, it is sick and tired of the old generation and the political leadership that has stagnated and they want to move on with the struggle for liberation,” Fairouz Sharqawi, the director of Grassroots Al-Quds, an organisation that works to combat attempts by the Israeli occupation to fragment Palestinians communities in Jerusalem, tells me. 

“This time it was really led by the people – that is what is so amazing about it.”

Sharqawi believes that Israel had been counting on the young generation becoming less politically aware and dropping the struggle for liberation. But recent days have shown this is far from the reality on the ground, with the Palestinian youth leading protests in East Jerusalem and across the country. 

“I think the young generation is showing us all that they are more committed than other parts of our people,” she says. 

The uprising erupted after multiple pressures on the Palestinian people finally came to a head. Recent weeks have seen Israeli forces attempt to restrict Palestinian freedoms during Ramadan, attacks on worshippers at al-Aqsa mosque and the attempted evictions of families from East Jerusalem. In Gaza, 11 days of brutal bombardment by Israeli forces has killed 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. 

The new wave of resistance was kindled in Jerusalem before spreading to towns and cities within Israel.

The participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20 per cent of the population in the Jewish state, in the general strike is particularly viewed as a testimony of the enduring unity of the Palestinian people. 

This is because Palestinians living within the Jewish state, unaffected by some of the worst aspects of Israel’s brutal occupation, are often accused of dismissing the national issue.

Amir Toumi of the Haifa Youth Movement, one of the strike organisers, tells me that Palestinian citizens of Israel experience an identity crisis. 

“We are born in our homeland in Palestine but in a state that doesn’t accept us because it is a Jewish state and we are not Jewish,” he says. “We are born into this state where we don’t know what we are.

“People in general were disconnected because everyone thinks about their welfare, they don’t want to get into politics. They think our lives are much better than other Palestinians, why would we really get involved?”

But Toumi stresses that the events of the last weeks have shown that this attitude is changing. 

“Now more than ever we see Palestinians who have never expressed political opinions before really joining the effort because now they see that the whole system of Israeli discrimination is against us as Palestinians even if we are citizens,” he explains. 

The mobilisation of Palestinian citizens of Israel has also been forced by settler violence against their communities. Lynch mobs, incited by Israel’s far-right parties, have attacked Palestinians in recent days, aided by the Israeli police (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/16/palestinian-protests-in-israel-...). 

As a result, they widely respected the general strike, hitting Israeli sectors that have a high proportion of Arab workers including construction, transport, sanitation and catering. 

Building sites, which are totally reliant on Palestinian labour from both sides of the Green Line, fell silent on Tuesday. Only 110 out of the 65,000 Palestinian construction workers from the West Bank went to work in Israel, paralysing sites and causing estimated losses of £30,000, according to the Israeli Building Association, which admitted: “We cannot build without them.” 10 per cent of all bus drivers in Israel did not show up to work, resulting in the cancellation of around 300 journeys while some 5,000 cleaning staff also walked out. 

Israeli media reported that a number of McDonald’s chains were forced to close, while delivery services reliant on Palestinian workers ceased operations for the day. 

Those striking turned out onto the streets in droves. For Toumi, who has always strived to unite Palestinians in Israel with the wider struggle, the last week has brought him hope. “People I never thought I would see in the street are bringing their kids to the protests, they are raising their own flags in their neighbourhoods. It’s extraordinary.”

Awad Abdel Fattah of the One Democratic State Campaign and former general secretary of the Palestinian National Democratic Assembly (NDA) tells me that the strike surprised the Israeli government. 

“People within the Green Line have been locked out as if they have forgotten their identity and their belongings with the Palestinian people so now they are surprising everybody by saying we are still united,” he says. 

“Now they are acting again as one people.”

But the action has not come without consequences. Many Palestinians were issued with illegal dismissal notices, while protesters have faced a brutal crackdown across the country.

In the week up until May 19, 26 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank including a child, while 675 have been injured according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. In Israel, more than 900 Palestinians have been arrested, including journalists. Israeli police have not arrested a single Israeli over the violence, despite armed settler gangs targeting Palestinian communities. 

Fattah says this is being done to repress the intifada and prevent it from spreading, but stresses that attempts to quell the uprising will not succeed.

For many Palestinians the awakening of their shared sense of unity is too strong to simply go away. 

On Tuesday, protesters in the West Bank’s northern cities of Tulkarm and Taybeh could see Palestinians striking in unison in villages on the other side of the apartheid wall. “I feel proud,” Abdel-Karim Dalbah, a journalist and activist from Tulkarm, tells me as he recalls the moment villages on the Israeli and West Bank side united in protest.

The sense of shared unity was also keenly felt in Jerusalem, Sharqawi says. “Though there are still physical barriers between Jerusalem and the West Bank, I think that collective action helped us see these physical barriers disappear and people feel connected again.”

While there is a prevailing sense of hope, activists I spoke to also have mixed feelings. “What happened in Gaza and now what [is] happening in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem I am heartbroken but also proud and feel that something will happen,” Dalbah tells me. “We are united all around the world. I think we will continue the uprising.”

As Fayrouz says: “We are one colonised people with one struggle for liberation and freedom.”