This paper explores Palestinian political activism in Egypt in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. This last year the Arab world has witnessed a number of breathtaking upheavals against oppression. As Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemenis, Syrians, and Bahrainis, among others, struggle for freedom in their respective and differing contexts, the key issue of Palestinian self-determination remains on the margins. For many in the Arab world, the decades old authoritarianism that persistently eroded civil society, stifled development, and repressed all forms of political dissent was wedded to both US and Israeli economic and political interest in the Middle East. Egyptians in particular witnessed the consolidation of alliances that enriched a small number of elites and multinational interests at the populations' expense. The Egyptian call for liberation that focused on “bread, freedom, and social justice” ousted president Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and oppressive regime. At various instances, the centrality of Palestine to the movement in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt was hard to miss. In many ways, Mubarak’s decades long “cold peace” with Israel signified the loss of national dignity and the erosion of Egypt’s role as a regional leader. Indeed, many political parties established after Mubarak’s ouster rushed to present different political visions on how to resolve the Palestinian question. However, while Palestine is central to political discussions and visions, Palestinians as agents continue to be marginalized. At the core of this marginalization are the understudied and overlooked experiences of Palestinians living in Egypt. Refugees from both the 1948 and 1967 wars, both Egyptian and Palestinian national narratives have erased these Palestinians and their experiences. Over the last six decades they have been subject to oppressive laws, social stigmatization, and dire economic conditions. Under the Mubarak regime, Palestinians suffered under the surveillance of security forces and through restrictions on movement, trade, and political participation. How did the fall of the Mubarak regime influence Palestinian life in Egypt legally and politically? Through in-depth interviews, this paper explores the political participation, forms of activism, views, and visions of Palestinian activists residing in Egypt. By engaging the Egyptian revolution’s influence on the practices and ideas of these activists, this paper sheds light on Egyptian political potentialities as well as Palestinian strategies and challenges in a rapidly shifting political context.

From virginity tests in Egypt to the World Press Photo of the Year for 2011 (a –portrait of a niqab adorned Yemeni woman holding a half-naked wounded male relative in her arms), the issues of gender equality and sexuality have been central to discussions on the ongoing Arab revolutions. The emphasis on the role of women in these revolutions, the “gender solidarity” in Tahrir Square or what some called the “ethics of Tahrir,” and Tawakkul Karman’s Nobel peace prize, appeared to signal social change alongside political upheaval. Yet, young Arab activists were disappointed when out of five hundred and eight seats in the Egyptian Parliament, only seven women were elected and two appointed as members. Nonetheless the images of a variety of women in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain fearlessly leading demonstrations and unabashedly demanding a participatory role provided visual and moral inspiration to women throughout the Arab world. For Palestinian women, these images and experiences were a welcome corrective to now two decades of the professionalization of women’s movements. As scholars have shown, since the Oslo Accords the framework of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has effectively contained and muffled the dynamic and influential Palestinian women’s movement, subject it to the conceptual and practical conditions of foreign funding and at times implicating it with the corruption associated with the Palestinian Authority. In this dilapidated context, the last year of revolution inspired Palestinian women to return once again to an activist and community based framework in their struggle against both colonial and social oppression and domination. This paper charts a map of the role of women’s movements in Palestinian politics today. It explores how the last year of Arab revolutions influenced Palestinians visions of and strategies for gender liberation and equality. Did the revolutions, in all their varieties and complexities, provide alternative models for organizing dissent and popular mobilization? Was social hierarchy challenged or reified? This paper reveals how different strata of Palestinian women, across class, rural-urban, and generational divides engaged these questions and reformulated their visions for the future of gender equality and popular resistance.

A New Generation of Palestinian Revolutionaries? The Arab uprisings that began in the winter of 2010 highlighted social movements’ use of demonstrations, general strikes, and civil disobedience to achieve political and economic objectives. These tactics, what some scholars have called “innovative contentious politics,” have been deemed as either too weak or altogether absent in the Arab world. The conventional narrative has long held that Arab dissidents and activists were too fragmented to establish influential new institutions and develop modes of political advocacy that could shake, much less topple, authoritarian regimes. Yet, in Tunisia and Egypt, the agents of contentious politics, such as labor unions and youth movements, are now difficult for anyone to dismiss. Similar actors are innovating new strategies and visions are on the rise in Palestine as well. Yet their social backgrounds, characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses are much less obvious. Today, advances in communication technologies, the rise of a new Arab revolutionary language and practice, and the erosion of the traditional Palestinian liberation struggle, as represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have all powerfully intersected to reshape Palestinian politics. These factors, together with the relentless Israeli occupation and an overall regional economic recession, have inspired Palestinians across various regional and class divides to forge new political strategies. By drawing on fieldwork, theoretical research on the innovation of “contentious politics,” and a historical analysis of Palestinian social movements, this paper identifies the social and political backgrounds of a new generation of Palestinian activists. It explores how these activists have interacted with, learned from, and contributed to broader Arab revolutionary movements and politics. Furthermore, it reveals the intricate networks that Palestinians have used to exchange information, experience, and visions with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa. This paper pays particular attention to the specificity of the Palestinian experience and the multiple ways in which Israeli occupation as well as political and geographic fragmentation in a post-Oslo reality have influenced the structure, power, and tactics of these new actors. At the same time, the paper contextualizes the Palestinian struggle within a broader regional revolutionary context. In doing so, it sheds light on both the influence of Arab revolutionaries as well as the resurgence of civil disobedience, strikes, and demonstrations in Palestine.

Uprisings sweeping throughout the Arab world since the Winter 2010 have dramatically altered a decades-long status quo characterized by militarism and authoritarianism. The shifts have given new meanings to citizenship, civic participation, and self-determination. Among the most affected populations are Palestinian refugees living throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Should those populations be forced to flee in new flows of forced migration, it is unclear which legal regimes will facilitate their movement. The recent case study of Palestinian refugee resettlement from Iraq offers significant lessons. The US war on Iraq has meted widespread devastation upon its civilian population, including immense forced migration in the region. Approximately one million Iraqis have become refugees. Moreover, at 2.8 million, the number of internally displaced Iraqis constitutes the largest internally displaced population in the Middle East. These figures do not account for the forced migration of Palestinian refugees who took refuge in Iraq in 1948 and later in, 1967. Since 2003, only 13,000 of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees remain in Iraq. The resettlement of those refugees uncovers some of the challenges to protecting Palestinian refugees under existing legal regimes. What can these lessons tell us about Palestinian refugees in Syria? To reflect on various possible scenarios in Syria for Palestinian refugees, this paper traces the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Iraq. What was the role of the US administration and the Office of the United National High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)? In what ways did these various parties lobby or use legal tools in their efforts? How can we imagine a similar situation unfolding in Syria, where the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) and not UNHCR governs, if Palestinian refugees are forced to flee the country. While UNHCR has a global protection mandate, UNRWA’s protection mandate only exists in specific countries in the Middle East? What type of legal challenges and humanitarian frameworks will these refugees face? What roles will UNHCR and UNRWA play and how will they collaborate? This case study offers many lessons to international agencies about the protection gaps for Palestinian refugees who continue to be set apart from the world’s refugee populations. It also sheds light on the challenges facing protracted refugee populations and the obstacles they face in political conflict and crisis.