Noura Erakat

portait of Noura Erakat

CÉLINE SEMAAN: We are seeing a rapid transformation. The international governments, the majority of them, are acknowledging a Palestinian state. What does that mean? And is that helping us? Is that stopping the genocide we are witnessing?

NOURA ERAKAT: This question is really interesting, as it’s being posed after Trump and Netanyahu basically presented their ultimatum to the Palestinians, which is to surrender to permanent occupation that now includes the United States. Gaza will be severed from the West Bank, and statehood is completely off the table. Let me start from that position and work backward, and say, notice how none of the states that endorse the Palestinian State have come out in full opposition to Trump’s plan, even though Trump’s plan is unequivocally saying that statehood is off the table. Or if it is on the table, it’s going to be a process controlled by Israel, but not a process controlled multilaterally by other legal principles.

What we see demonstrated is the shallowness of the earlier recognition bid for a Palestinian state. It means nothing, given that the very states that said they recognize it are now endorsing the Trump plan.

Why is that? For me, that’s not surprising at all, because the recognition of Palestine for many of these states was a way to appease their insurgent domestic populations who want their government to act. These very governments that are actually complicit in the ongoing genocide. They pivoted towards recognition without sanctions or other diplomatic commitments. At best they are endorsing the status quo wherein Palestine is recognized as a state (in 2012, it was recognized by a majority of General Assembly members) It’s not a member of the United Nations because it was blocked by the US and the Security Council.

It has been recognized as a state, so all of the privileges and the rights it would get from that recognition, Palestine already enjoys, which is why it can bring this petition to the International Criminal Court. What they should have done, and should still do, is abide by their legal obligations, which means not recognizing Israel’s unlawful presence in the West Bank or in Gaza, per the ICJ (International Court of Justice) decision of July 2024. They could prevent genocide by ending all of its support for arms and trade with Israel. Instead, the international community has regressed even from that position and is now endorsing a plan that will basically enable Israel and the United States to remain in Gaza permanently. We’re in a very, very dismal place, diplomatically. They don’t want to deal with this. And as soon as they can get a ceasefire, they’re going to wrap it up. They’re going to normalize and rehabilitate Israel once again. They’re going to act like nothing happened.

portait of Noura Erakat

CÉLINE: We have protests all around the world. The world is against the occupation in a way that it has never been before. But it’s not yet the governments that are mobilizing, just the people around he world. Do you think this bottom-up approach is going to be sufficient for us to enact change, or do we need to have a top-down endorsement from governments around the world?

NOURA: The bottom-up approach is absolutely critical and necessary to mobilize the top, where diplomacy happens, where we can see trade sanctions, where we can see pressure placed on Israel. There is a power incongruency between Israel, a nuclear state and the eighth most significant exporter of weapons in the world, and a stateless people. Palestinians will not prevail against Israel without international support, primarily by ending the harm they’re already causing through their financial and military support of Israel. The bottom will do the work that is necessary to mobilize their governments and shift us into a different future. But it will not be enough without those diplomats also shifting and responding to these calls.

We’ve seen a response. We’ve seen Spain impose sanctions. Colombia has imposed sanctions on the transfer of coal. We’ve seen a number of European countries halt the transfer of arms. South Africa has gone to the ICJ to hold them to account and to establish this as a matter of law. All of that is a response to the bottom up, which is the most important element. But in the long term, we need these states to stop causing harm. They’re all complicit. They’re all the problem. We’ve been here before.

This is precisely what happened in 1993 when Palestinians agreed to enter into the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self- Government Arrangements, also known as the Oslo Accords. That was in December 1987, when, at the height of the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Israel was isolated, the nature of its occupation was made clear, and the exclusion of Palestinians by the United States from any kind of diplomatic process was conceived as short-sighted. And in that moment, Palestinians entered into Oslo and saved Israel from itself. Really, the terms of the Oslo Accords were the terms of autonomy, never the promise of Palestinian statehood. And the reality that we live in today is one that the Palestinians themselves agreed to in 1993, and, in their own words, they entered into this trap, “on faith.”

We’re in a similar situation today where the terms of what Trump and Netanyahu have proposed are very, very dismal. The writing is on the wall. They basically say that Israel will withdraw from Gaza. They don’t set a timetable for withdrawal or even the boundaries to which they will withdraw. So, Israel can withdraw from the south or the Philadelphi Corridor and say they withdrew and met the terms. And that’s exactly what they’ve done since 1967, because the terms of Security Council resolution 242 on the withdrawal of Israel from occupied Arab territories were similarly vague, allowing Israel to make a legal argument that because it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula it has honored the terms of 242 even as it remains in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Palestinians entered a very similar trap in Oslo. It’s taken us 30 years to demonstrate that Oslo is a trap, that the peace process is a farce. Israel has been declared an apartheid regime by Israeli and legacy human rights organizations. This is the moment to keep pushing, and instead, what we’re seeing is the rehabilitation of Israel. Yet again. They want to put the genie back in the bottle, and normalize Israel’s genocide and the ongoing Nakba but it can’t be sustained. It can’t be sustained because Palestinians, like all people, will always struggle for their freedom.

Unfortunately, the last time Israeli apartheid was normalized through the Abraham Accords, the outcome was genocide. t And so, if genocide is normalized, who knows what the next outcome will be or the amount of harm that’s going to be done to Palestinians before the world gets this right. In the US, Democrats are just as bad as Republicans on Palestine. Thirty Democrats just signed on to oppose Palestinian sovereignty. Though as an indication of some change, there are some 50 members of Congress who are supporting the halt of weapons transfers to Israel.

portait of Noura Erakat

CÉLINE: We are entering a bleak time in our politics, in international politics, and in the United States. Beyond the censorship we’re facing, there’s also a lack of funding going towards progressive movements or platforms. From your perspective, what skills do we need to develop to protect our cultural freedoms, to create a cultural infrastructure that sustains the work we are collectively doing? By archiving, by putting information out there, by mobilizing, educating? From your perspective, from someone who has ties in the Global South, in Lebanon and Palestine, how can we adapt in the Global North, as diaspora?

NOURA: I would defer to the organizers who are on the ground and in the trenches. I work more in the production of knowledge, the shaping of thoughts, as opposed to organizing mass movements. There are experts who have been thinking about this. My sense is that we need to be pivoting to do much more local work. I think that our emphasis on thinking nationally, federally, and so on, is actually disempowering us because those levers are more difficult to push and pull, versus the work that we could do locally to build the alternatives we want.

The truth is that we want sustainability. We want community gardens. We want food for everyone. We want clean water that’s not monetized. Those are all things we have a better chance at achieving locally, on the municipal level, and even smaller than the municipal level.

As someone who studies Palestinian resistance, the times when Palestinians were the closest to liberation were when they got off the grid, when they organized their own schools, their own care for one another, access to their own foods, and stopped being dependent on those who can use dependency against them. That was when there was the greatest amount of potential and hope. We can think about what it means to have community governance, to be able to take care of ourselves in order to weather the storm that’s to come. This is probably the time to create alternative forms of social media because the largest platforms are all bought up by billionaires who are using them to manufacture consent and brainwash populations.

The worst thing we can do is to surrender. Instead, do the work. Do the work. Understand that we are a generation in this time, but there was a generation before us and a generation before them, and there will be generations after us. So, do not assess our potential and our capacity merely by what’s happening just in this moment, but to understand the horizon of this work and what we need, the seeds that we need to plant for future generations to be able to pick up.

portait of Noura Erakat

CÉLINE: Focusing locally also means running for local offices, being able to be more involved on a local politics level, not just delegating to whoever has the time and energy to do these types of things. We need to reinforce our values through our schools, our universities, and our communities. On the local level, a small action can make other people feel safe and emboldened to do more. Small actions may sound and feel insignificant in the grand scheme of the horrors we’re witnessing, because ultimately, it does not solve the immediate major issue we are experiencing, which is the genocide in Palestine. And it may feel like an impossible task. There are a lot of people who come to us and say, “I feel so powerless.” Ultimately, that feeds into the oppression. A solution might be to continue educating people, educating ourselves, and creating actions that inspire more actions, to keep doing things, keep doing the work, no matter what, it will end up adding up. And ultimately, it’s better than not doing anything at this point.

NOURA: I’m going to add one more thing to think about. Yes, it ends up adding up, but the other thing that we want in this process is our own freedom. It’s not just about doing it for other people and for Palestinians who deserve our solidarity, but this is also about us. It’s not just about adding up. Who are we when we don’t do anything?

portait of Noura Erakat