Manal Tamimi (right) speaks to a packed house at La Parcería in Madrid. (Photo: John Collins/Weave News)

Flyer advertising Manal Tamimi’s appearance in Madrid.

As the news from Palestine continues to be dominated by the horrifying details of Israel’s ongoing assault on the people of Gaza, it remains important to keep an eye on what is happening in the occupied West Bank. While the world’s attention is directed elsewhere, Israeli soldiers and settlers alike have been ramping up their already-high levels of violence against Palestinians who are trying to hold on to their land and homes while living under a stifling system of colonial apartheid.

On March 3, more than 100 people showed up in Madrid, Spain, to hear a first-hand report from Manal Tamimi, a Palestinian activist whose family has been at the center of these resistance efforts in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. The talk was sponsored by BDS Madrid in collaboration with hosting venue La Parceria, a cultural center organized by immigrant activists seeking to promote “thought, creation, and action” in Madrid.

In a talk that was both moving and sobering, Tamimi spoke passionately about the ongoing struggle of West Bank Palestinians at a time when the Israeli state’s machinery of violence appears to be more emboldened than ever thanks to the active and passive support of governments the world over.

Beyond portrayals of heroic “supermoms”

Readers may be familiar with the Tamimi family from reports on the nonviolent resistance activities they have led in Nabi Saleh, particularly the weekly protest marches that began in 2010. Perhaps most famous is Ahed Tamimi (Manal’s niece and subject of the 2022 biography They Called Me a Lioness), who emerged as a youthful symbol of Palestinian resistance in 2017 when she was arrested after being filmed defiantly slapping an Israeli soldier.

Also in 2017, Al Jazeera profiled Manal in a short video, describing her as a “supermom” for her involvement in resistance activities alongside the work of maintaining her family in Nabi Saleh.

In the video, which was shown at the beginning of the event in Madrid, Manal implicitly responds to the racist arguments sometimes put forward by defenders of the Zionist project that Palestinians are motivated by a “culture of death.” Echoing the powerful words of the spoken word artist Rafeef Ziadeh, Manal insists that the opposite is the case:

“It’s kind of refusing to die in silence. If I have to die, I have to make a big sound of my death so everybody will hear about it and will know what and why we are resisting. But at the same time, I don’t want to die. Because my resistance is about life, about hope, about dreams, about beautiful future. It’s not about death.”

Perhaps concerned that her Madrid audience would be too quick to surrender itself to the heroic image presented in the Al Jazeera video, Manal tried to distance herself from what the “supermom” label may imply. Describing the chronic uncertainty and stress associated with life under a colonial military occupation - for example, the constant fear that one’s children won’t return from school - she emphasized that she and others like her are just normal people living in extraordinarily oppressive circumstances. “We try to keep living this life, but everything happening is against us,” she said. “In the end, we are human beings. We are not a machine. We are not a superhero. We have feelings, we have fear, and we have strength.”

On the ground: mass arrest, assassination, apartheid

Much of Tamimi’s talk was devoted to reporting on the escalation of Israeli repression since October 7. She described a climate where Israeli colonists, working hand in glove with the military, have a “green light” to intimidate, assault, and even kill Palestinians. Anyone who tries to resist, she said, is arrested or assassinated; many people “have lost their lives…just because they tried to protect their families.”

In the aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza, Tamimi confirmed what many observers such as the International Crisis Group have reported in recent months: that other aspects of Israel’s apartheid regime have also intensified. This includes the expansion of military checkpoints, the enforcement of rules preventing Palestinians from using roads designated for Jews and Jews only, and the use of “administrative detention” (a bureaucratic euphemism for arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial). Thousands have been arrested throughout the West Bank since October.

On the latter issue, she noted that Israeli troops at checkpoints have been aggressively searching vehicles and seizing people’s phones, essentially criminalizing the feelings of solidarity between Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. “They search phones for any video, any photo related to Gaza and what’s going on there,” she said. “If they find a photo or whatever, even a photo of a child in Gaza or a martyr or a prisoner, they will arrest this person and put him under administrative detention for incitement.” She also noted that the growing number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has coincided with increasingly repressive measures in these spaces.

An abdication of global responsibility: “we are alone”

A sign at a Madrid demonstration in October 2023 calling for an immediate break of diplomatic relations with Israel. (Photo: John Collins/Weave News)

As I’ve reported extensively over the past several months, the Spanish people have responded in significant numbers to the call to oppose Israel’s genocidal actions. Political figures such as Ione Belarra, leader of the leftist Podemos party, have consistently demanded that the Spanish government cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. Madrid and other cities such as Malaga have seen major demonstrations in support of Palestinians. Most recently, there has been a growing call from activists to spotlight and put an end to the robust arms sales that continue to exist between Spain and Israel.

In her remarks in Madrid, Tamimi acknowledged the recent increase in global solidarity with Palestine, including in Spain, and said she was moved by these actions and expressions of support. At the same time, she provided an unflinching assessment of where things stand in terms of the global balance of power when it comes to the Palestinian struggle. Despite the existence of major protests in dozens of countries, she said, “we can’t see any change on the ground” because governments around the world continue to enable, or actively fuel, Israel’s actions.

When asked about the role of the Arab states, Tamimi admitted that “this is what is more painful for us, that our [Arab and Muslim] brothers are…supporting our killing.” She called out Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for his refusal to open the country’s borders to Palestinians fleeing Gaza, and she bitterly condemned the “new generation” of Arab leaders who were “raised by the US and Europe” to play a servile role vis-a-vis Israel and its Western allies.

Faced with a world full of governments who are perpetually complicit with Israel’s crimes, Tamimi starkly characterized the situation of Palestinians living under occupation:

“After October 7th, we lost faith in everything. We lost faith in international law, international humanitarian law…We lost faith in justice, freedom, and equality. I’m sorry to say this, but this is the truth: we are alone, and the message that we get from the world is that you can die, we don’t care…”

She linked this intolerable reality back to the question of what is happening in her own community in Nabi Saleh, where the struggle is a struggle “to find a way to resist alone, to keep resisting alone, because we know that it’s only us.”

The role of civil resistance

As noted above, Tamimi’s talk was organized by local activists associated with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) framework, which is modeled on the approach that helped bring an end to formal apartheid in South Africa. Such forms of nonviolent pressure highlight the importance of linking forms of resistance happening on the ground with forms of civil resistance elsewhere, particularly in the West.

BDS stickers distributed at the Manal Tamimi event in Madrid. (Photo: John Collins/Weave News)

Currently, for example, BDS activists are seeking to rally public support behind efforts to boycott major corporations such as Carrefour and Hewlett Packard for their active roles in the Israeli occupation. At Tamimi’s talk, local activists were selling not only t-shirts and Palestinian keffiyehs, but also stickers calling out these corporations for their complicity.

Here again, however, Tamimi’s clear-eyed perspective made it impossible for anyone in the audience to take refuge in self-congratulation or premature celebration. While making a distinction between governments and civil society, she insisted that when it comes to the daily realities faced by Palestinians, nothing will change until governments change their policies.

Unstated but implied in this observation was the exhortation for people in Spain and elsewhere to hold their governments accountable. After all, if the people of Nabi Saleh can find the courage to face down the forces of military occupation, the rest of us should be able to find the courage to face down our own leaders as they continue to lend shameful and often decisive support to a state that continues to wage a settler-colonial war against the Palestinian people.