A Call for Palestinian Liberation from the Messiness of Revolutionary Movements

Jennifer Mogannam

“ثورة حتى النصر”

“Thawra Hatta al-Nasr” 

“Revolution Until Victory”

ثورة حتى النصر Thawra Hatta al-Nasr. This phrase was once the most popular slogan that both animated and captured the spirit of the Palestinian Revolution (capital R)¹, typically dated from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. While it has since appeared less often in popular lexicons, a new generation of Palestinian youth are reviving the slogan, signaling a renewal of the evocation that the path to Palestinian liberation can only be achieved through the process of revolution. When Palestinians declare revolution to be a necessary process for achieving liberation, they² are indicating tactics and strategies that refuse to maintain existing power structures, moving instead toward a process of decolonization. This slogan asserts not only revolution, but also victory, raising temporal and spatial questions. Victory, or revolution until victory, implies both something achievable and something that has yet to be achieved. So while in a sense, the Palestinian Revolution has come and gone, a revolutionary quest for victory still remains, as evidenced by the revival of the slogan today and the fact that liberation and return have not been achieved. 

One of the things I have learned in my time as an organizer and scholar is that a considerable reason why this period was called the Palestinian Revolution (and why other revolutions are also referred to in this way) is that the Palestinians declared it so. The Revolution launched in 1965 with Fatah’s first armed attack against the Zionist entity on January 1³; its strength then crystallized through the 1968 Battle of Karameh in Jordan, in which Palestinian guerilla forces successfully defeated the Zionist military assault on Karameh refugee camp. As Loubna Qutami notes, the Battle of Karameh gave rise to popular representations of the figure of the فدائي fida’i (guerilla), creating new Palestinian iconography that depicts victorious and unified resistance.⁴ The strengthening of guerilla activity became a symbol of Palestinian revolutionary agency and galvanized popular support for the Revolution as the path toward liberation and return. 

This declaration of Revolution by Palestinian political organizations came alongside the spirit of anti-colonial liberation movements globally. The Revolution asserted that Palestinians are the arbiters of their own liberation struggle—that Palestinians will assume responsibility for their self-determination. This declaration concretized the discursive articulation of Palestinian anti-colonial liberation struggle and reflected a framework of resistance praxis that Palestinian movement workers were asserting. Armed resistance was central to this praxis, but not its exclusive tenet: throughout our history, Palestinians have undertaken a variety of tactics to mobilize large bases of popular resistance. Following the 1967 defeat (النكسة, al-naksa or the setback), which illuminated the weakness of Arab military efforts, Palestinian leaders of the revolution asserted that Palestinians would spearhead their path to liberation by assuming anti-colonial resistance and decolonization as its central framework. 

There are many ways to understand the concept of revolution, document how it is enacted, and attend to the different capacities of those enacting revolution based on temporal and spatial realities and differences. And there are people who will critique or contest certain methodologies of revolution, or the label in and of itself entirely. One thing that has been made clear to me, however, is that, regardless of how we analyze the generative elements and/or fatal consequences of revolutions, it is important to center the people and/or groups who are enacting it on the ground and classifying it on their terms. Honoring lived experience and situating each moment of revolution within larger and often challenging contexts open space to understand, learn, and strengthen the Palestinian liberation movement for the future. 

Interrogating those practices is necessary to strengthen our learning and develop movement strategies over time. What were once possible modes of resistance during the Revolutionary period are no longer necessarily so, and we must contend with this change as we develop our praxes of revolution. With the end of the Cold War, the global terrain of power shifted, fracturing and challenging alliances of anti-colonial revolutionary movements that shared similar approaches to their struggles. Access to certain materials and training needed for the practices assumed in the Revolutionary period is now limited or has disappeared entirely. The way that Zionist repression operates in relation to and against movements has also changed dramatically since then. These shifting terrains play a role in determining the visions, capabilities, and implementation of Palestinian movement praxis.⁵ And while we may reclaim such slogans as “revolution until victory,” we should simultaneously interrogate the significance of this notion, accounting for decades of historical moments alongside stark transformations in the movement landscape. 

The Palestinian revolutionary struggle historically has largely taken shape in the  شتات shatat (diaspora/Palestinian dispersal) since its post-Nakba iterations, and particularly along the borders with Palestine as well as within. As the Palestinian شتات shatat has become further distanced from their land and people facing the brunt of Zionist colonial violence over 77 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine, reclamations of ثورة thawra serve as a mode of practicing continuity in the Palestinian liberation movement. Yet, the modes and praxes of ثورة thawra must also always be shifting and evaluated within these temporal and spatial considerations. We cannot lose sight of the importance of centering resistance on the ground in Palestine in its many iterations and the reality that, while our bases grow, those subjected to Zionist violence and its direct consequences in the everyday, and those in the camps unable to return home, are at the center of our struggle. 

We can adopt this revolutionary spirit and we can build, through movement, in that direction. While doing so, we must also resist the cooptation of the term “revolution” that de-radicalizes its power, particularly in the face of the rise of identity politics as a political platform, wherein the growing challenge of individualism and superstardom is further compounded by new media, facilitating the commodification of revolutionary symbols and slogans. At a time when everything can seemingly be couched under the banner of revolution, assumed by tech giants, right-wing ideologues, profit-driven companies, and influencers alike, in the Palestinian context, these terms are material and necessary. Movements are not born of expression, but of organized action for which language is given and dialectically developed, and we must understand revolution as intrinsically tied to movements and action.

Revolutionary movements also do not take a singular form, and they are often messy, as the ebbs and flows of organizing, working in the face of varying scales of power (colonial, imperial, internal, etc.), and contextual shifts (through time, space, and the aforementioned powers) impact the possibilities of movement creation. We, in movement, in collective struggle, make mistakes, but we also find comfort and inspiration to continue in the big and small wins and grieve the immeasurable losses, fueling us to remain steadfast. As movements rise, as in the current moment, and particularly in the شتات shatat, a wave of further shifts occurs. Organizations and leaders rise, the base becomes larger and capacities grow. Simultaneously, the possibilities of internal and external vulnerability also grows. The movement becomes open to fetishization, cooptation, and the multitude of tactics may also come into contradiction with one another—even where goals may be shared. Movements have always entailed varying levels of experiential knowledges/cultures, and revolutions have typically been met with counterrevolution. As such, the opening up of intergenerational and collaborative study, engagement, and practice is necessary.

In the 20th century, victory was often discussed among Palestinian revolutionaries as the liberation of both the land and the people. It continues to be discussed as such today. But how can the liberation of land and people be an end goal, a final resting point? What does this mean? Quite literally, this aspiration is to liberate Palestinian and Arab land from Zionist conquest and to liberate Palestinian people from Zionist control. This aspiration also entails the liberation of Palestinians in exile, from refugeehood, and the facilitation of their return to their land and homes. It requires the liberation of other Arab lands subjected to Zionist expansion and conquest, and the liberation of the region from the fist of Zionist hegemony. But is that time and place the site where revolution finally ends and liberation begins? What becomes of a liberated Palestinian land and people who have been subjected to over 77 years of Zionist repression, dispersal, and fragmentation? 

While this slogan, ثورة حتى النصر Thawra Hatta al-Nasr, proposes or indexes an idea of achieving complete victory, I propose that ثورة thawra is an ongoing process. I see it as an unwavering commitment, a responsibility, and an ontological, embodied and collective practice that must be adjusted with every new moment, with every win and defeat, no matter how big or small. ثورة Thawra as a way of being requires reflexivity on the part of the movement and the self in relation to the movement. It is ever evolving, and we must attend to it along the way. In each moment and generation of revolutionary becoming, a reckoning of past, present, and future, alongside place, must guide our struggle for liberation. More other than a slogan, ثورة حتى النصر thawra hatta al-nasr is a proposition. It is a way of moving in the world knowing that the struggle for liberation persists. It is a call to concerted action for Palestinian freedom. And it is a way of revolutionary becoming, persistent and always in motion.