Some lessons and reflections while observing Sheikh Jarrah from afar this past week // Thread

1. The quiet on the Palestinian street that international observers are fond of pointing to – using terms like apathy, indifference, and pacification - are not signs of stability, acceptance, acquiescence or defeat. They are an indication of wishful thinking not of reality.

2. The real fragmentation that Palestinians suffer from, as a result of stratified legal rights and restrictions on movement, does not correspond to fragmentation in national sentiment, as the mobilization of 48 Palestinians – and other Palestinian constituencies - can attest.

3. The myth of partition is fragile and the green line is nothing more than an imagined temporal and geographic divide; Israelis and internationals decrying Sheikh Jarrah from their Palestinian homes west of the green line are exhibiting an untenable hypocrisy.

4. Said differently: Sheikh Jarrah is a lightning rod that shows one cannot condemn Israeli policies there while acquiescing to Zionist/Israeli practices of territorial consolidation and population transfer that have unfolded/continue to unfold throughout the land since pre-1948.

5. Terms Palestinians have long used to describe their struggle – including ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and apartheid – have made it into the American hallways of power, with congresswomen like @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN leading the necessary realignment.

6. Moribund Palestinian politicians try using Jerusalem as an excuse to hold onto the status quo by deferring elections. Jerusalem shows an alternative path, as Pals have historically done when faced with the ineptitude of their elite leaders, by mobilizing on the street.

7. The veneer of legitimacy that Israel’s supreme court tries to cultivate in legalizing annexation and occupation crumbles under international scrutiny – meaning: under-utilized international pressure has been a key driver of Israeli expansionism.

8. Home demolitions and population transfers are not one-off instances of abuse; they are systematic policies of demographic engineering. Sheikh Jarrah, and Jerusalem, are microcosms of broader efforts to sustain Jewish territorial control from the river to the sea.

9. Money and international aid are being actively rejected by Palestinians mobilizing on the ground; the issue, again, is not one of humanitarianism and charity but of politics (look to point 1 for more on wishful thinking around pacification).

10. Israel's racialized application of power – through the courts, the police force, the border agents, the mayor, etc. – has been on full display in Sheikh Jarrah, and in the racist marches ripping through Jerusalem today, which are not an aberration but a symptom.

11. At the core of this is the crudeness of attempting to legalize a narrative of return for Jews to properties in Sheikh Jarrah while millions of Pals are denied any semblance of the same right. It is this racialized duplicity that sits at the heart of the entire episode.