Idea(l)s of Anti-Domination in the Global Sumud Movement

Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza turns twenty next year. In the context of state-to-state violence and of an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination, the Israeli action is unique, subverting so many authorities at once: the ICJ, the ICC, the UNGA, and countless international and regional civil society organisations. Since the blockade began, Israel has inflicted catastrophic levels of suffering to impose its will upon the Palestinians first and the region second, disregarding core international legal protections. The latest settler attack against European diplomats, coming off the heels of a similar altercation with a member of the US congress, also highlights Israel’s contempt for the norms of diplomacy, a disposition that it applies to its allies as well. 

For those struggling for Palestinian liberation, the blockade’s anniversary gives pause for reflection. To a near universal degree, states across the world have remained passive before the plight of Palestinians, corralled like livestock and terrorised as target practice. Peoples across the world are sympathetic, to be sure, but their sympathy — like their principles — fades when juxtaposed with the foreign policy of the United States. Those few states that are supportive exercise their solidarity inconsistently, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly, and often performatively. Were it not for the Palestinian resistance, the United Nations (via UNRWA), and countless activists, it is safe to assume that Israel would have done far worse to a population it holds captive.

It is with this anniversary as watermark that the Global Sumud Movement (GSM) held their recent congress. Activists and lawyers from around the world gathered in Kuala Lumpur this past week to deliberate the aims and strategies of the movement, with a view to achieving greater coordination across the multifarious national and regional teams. I was honoured to address the congress and speak with their legal team. In this post, I revisit the ideas I shared including the many ways Israel dominates the Palestinians and some humble ideas about anti-domination, especially in the context of the blockade and the GSM’s activism.

Before proceeding, I restate a caveat I underlined at the congress: I am neither an expert on the GSM nor a movement lawyer. Rather, I am a fellow traveller in the struggle, interested in domination and resistance in Palestine and in anti-colonialism more broadly. At best, these ideas will stimulate further reflection within the GSM and other solidarity movements. Moreover, while some readers may be growing impatient with my repeated posts about Palestine, I make no apology: the “Gaza model” of genocide that Israel Katz celebrates and seeks to export across the region is a stain on humanity that, counterintuitively, is accelerating the end of the zionist project.* God willing.

The Nature of Domination

My keynote began with a passage from the consultative report the GSM’s legal team prepared. Setting out the movement’s vision, participants articulated their central goal in laudable terms: to advance “a just world free from Zionism, colonial oppression, environmental destruction, exploitation, and all forms of domination.” Laudable as it is, such a wide-reaching ambition necessarily provokes questions about the nature of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Targeting zionism seems self-evident, but does adding capitalism, imperialism, racism, and settler-colonialism writ large bolster or dilute the movement’s focus? Each system of domination feeds into the other – they interlock as Vincent Lloyd would say – demanding a multi-pronged approach. Still, what do we gain and what do we lose when the net is cast in such an encompassing manner?

Lloyd built upon Philip Pettit’s familiar definition: domination exists where one party is able to impose its arbitrary will on another, interfering as it wishes without suffering any penalty for its behaviour. While this definition is simple, maybe even simplistic, it evinces domination’s key elements: multiple parties, an unequal relationship, a desire and an ability to exploit the inequality, arbitrariness in the exercise of will, and an absence of accountability. Pettit’s remedy is non-domination, which he regards as a status to be conferred by members of a political community who remove the capacity for arbitrary interference. His representation of non-domination is limited as it leaves the dominated waiting for salvation from the very institutions responsible for their domination. Sound familiar?

Instead of Pettit’s passive approach toward non-domination, I prefer the practice proposed by Steve Biko, among others. Since waiting is a form of dependence, Biko advocated for anti-domination as a practice exercised from below (or performed via acts of resistance as Lloyd explains). Non-domination as struggle has two aims: first, to take away the dominant party’s ability to impose itself and, second, to ensure it is held accountable for its behaviour. While the directness is welcome, it can also mislead since the devil is in the details and domination is a devilish dynamic, working across three registers simultaneously, each of which is exemplified in Israel’s domination of Palestine.

First, Israel dominates Palestine by controlling land, water, food, taxes, borders, entries and exits, among others, and in doing so it arbitrarily controls the material world of the Palestinians. This is true in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, all of which are occupied and the first of which is also blockaded. Will Israeli soldiers allow Palestinians through the checkpoints today? Maybe. Will they permit aid trucks into Gaza? Probably not. Will they fire upon fishing boats today or tomorrow? Wait and see. Arbitrariness is key in nurturing a relation of domination, as each whim reminds the other side of their subservient status. To empathise with this dynamic, imagine yourself as the parent of a child who requires dialysis, forced to wait at a gate for hours while a tinpot soldier contemplates whether to permit your child’s access to medical care. Throughout, you know that your pleas or your child’s suffering are irrelevant to the decision. It is impossible to imagine any parent remaining sane under such conditions.

At the same time, Israel dominates Palestinians in an ontological register, deciding who counts as a person entitled to speak, to be heard, and to be trusted. Israel thus controls when Palestinians can speak, to whom, and what they can say, just as it polices what they can read, write, and even think. Since Israel has designed an entire system of surveillance to stifle their ability to communicate freely, Palestinians never know who is listening, whom they can trust, or what they can share. Trust becomes a high-risk endeavour, forcing Palestinians to suppress a key pillar of human relations: the capacity to live as persons in community with others.

Epistemic domination is the third part of the trinity, operating alongside both as Israel sets the terms of the debate. Consider, for example, Israel’s long-running campaign against Palestinian schoolbooks which, in 2022, extended to a revocation of permanent licences for schools operating in occupied Jerusalem for teaching a native curriculum. The revocation sought to validate Israel’s version of history and to silence the experience of the Palestinians. Much of global media has gone along with this narrative, routinely forcing Palestinians to answer inane questions about Israel’s right to exist, support for armed resistance, or about anti-semitism as a uniquely vile form of racism, before they can speak to their dispossession, their suffering, or their entitlement to self-determination. By controlling history, Israel arbitrarily imposes its truth, knowledge, and morality upon the Palestinians.

The three registers operate concurrently and are mutually reinforcing. The GSM is aware of these layers of domination, hence their aspiration to end domination in all its forms. Of course, this raises the question: what does anti-domination look like under these conditions?

Practising Anti-Domination

There is no single way of advancing the cause of anti-domination, and the complexity of the mischief demands an equally sophisticated response. Consider the examples of Israeli domination outlined above. Advocating for an end to the blockade, access to aid, and ensuring that the stories and aspirations of Palestinians are heard do indeed counter domination, to some extent, and deserve support. Yet, relief falls short of anti-domination, as the blockade reveals with daily morbidity.

Each intervention must be pursued with an overriding aim: eliminating Israel’s ability to arbitrarily exercise its will against the Palestinian people, and ensuring consequences when it does. The blockade is textbook domination. While the deplorable conditions Palestinians face mean that any respite is welcome, such respite leaves the gatekeeper in place, preserving its ability to close the gate again tomorrow. Israel has tactically used aid to placate public opinion and salvage what remains of its crumbling reputation, yet, it consistently refuses to surrender its dominant position toward the Palestinians. According to the Israeli state, Palestinians are expected to remain in squalor and servitude in perpetuity, fed if they behave.

I emphasise the need for anti-domination to tackle each register because of the risk of reversal; we may achieve a gain in one register, only to see it reversed or hollowed out through the others. For example, as a result of Israel’s genocide, several Western states joined the rest of the world in recognising the State of Palestine. Recognition is a material gain and legitimises a demand Palestinians have made for several generations, and the removal of this impediment, however symbolic, can bolster the calls for an end to the blockade, the occupation, and other forms of zionist domination. Some members of the GSM advocated for Palestinian statehood, albeit via other actions. Yet, the terms of recognition reflected forms of ontological and epistemic domination. When the British government announced its intention to recognise Palestine, it framed the decision around Israel’s deplorable conduct while, counterintuitively, attaching conditions to the Palestinians: the release of hostages, disarmament, and the removal of Hamas. Similarly and quite astonishingly, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, spoke of his desire for the emergence of a zionist Palestinian state.

It seems Palestinians are entitled to self-determination so long as they endorse a violent ideology that calls for their elimination. Again, statehood is a material gain, but one hollowed out by conditions that decide who Palestinians may be and who may speak on their behalf.

Anti-Domination and International Law

Is international law an effective tool in the struggle against domination? Views on law differ, to be sure, but the answer is mixed. The conquest of Palestine was proposed by an embryonic United Nations, eager to make amends for the violence Europe committed against its Jewish population; the occupation, too, is managed by law, even as Israel violates the relevant precepts. Likewise, Palestinian self-determination, statehood, and struggle are also part of the legal framework and demand enforcement. In the context of settler-colonialism, international law has long sought to hold the stick at both ends, sanctioning conquest while supporting anti-colonial resistance.

International law’s effectiveness depends on which of its principles is invoked and on whose behalf. To illustrate, although self-determination is a settled principle that Europeans were quick to advocate for Ukrainians, they stuttered when Palestinians demanded the same. Historically, international law has proven an effective tool in the pursuit of domination and only occasionally useful in the struggle against it and, where it helps, it helps mostly in the material register. It sometimes intervenes in the epistemic — the ICJ’s advisory opinions — setting limits that Israel then ignores with impunity. In short, we use the law for what it can do to the powerful, and expect little from it for the dominated.

Does this mean that international law is irrelevant in the struggle? Not exactly. Some members of the GSM are mobilising to persuade states to give effect to the opinions of the ICJ and to enforce the ICC’s warrants. If states were to act, select members of GSM’s legal team — like many international lawyers around the world — believe the blockade, the occupation, and the state of apartheid would end or, at a minimum, that the situation would become markedly better for Palestinians. There is validity to this view, though the risk is equally plain: enforcement would still leave zionism intact.

With or without the occupation, with or without the blockade, zionism remains an expansionist ethno-chauvinist ideology committed to land conquest and the elimination of the native population. The UNGA said as much declaring in Resolution 3379 (1975) that “zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” only to revoke that determination in a subsequent resolution, after Israel made its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference conditional on revocation. The revocation is an example of reversibility: an epistemic gain, the recognition of a racist ideology, was undone through diplomatic leverage. Without zionism’s proscription, Palestinians remain vulnerable to the threat of Israeli domination, for Israel has long regarded itself as above international law and entitled to kill Palestinians with impunity, as members of its government repeatedly proclaim.

How Does (Israeli) Domination End?

According to Lloyd, every system of domination has a primal scene, a single relation in which its whole logic becomes visible. Where we locate the primal scene is where anti-domination becomes meaningful. The primal scene of domination in capitalism is the theft of labour, and unions claw back time, wages, and liberty (material targets). The primal scene of domination in patriarchy is rape, and feminist activists champion safety, equal rights, and accountability (material and ontological targets). The primal scene of domination in settler-colonialism is dispossession, and anti-colonialists make land claims and insist on recognition of both their humanity and their epistemes.

For the zionist settler-colonial project, the primal scene is the Nakba or catastrophe of 1948, which has continued at pace. Economic conquest, dehumanisation, and denial radiate from that scene, which explains why the end of the blockade, the right of return, and the proscription of zionism all stand at the centre of the GSM’s vision. This complicates anti-domination in the context of Palestine for zionism’s primal scene transcends all three registers. For the GSM and for other Palestinian solidarity movements, the challenge is therefore to design a programme of anti-domination that restricts Israel’s arbitrary will and imposes consequences, while also relieving domination’s worst effects as these manifest on Palestinian lands, bodies, and identities. What makes the challenge even more discombobulating is the tension between building forms of power that do not depend on nation states while also pressing governments that actively enable Israeli domination. It is an impossible bind, much like the one Palestinians find themselves in.

And so I close, as I often do, with a sentiment expressed in a Ghassan Kanafani book. In Men in the Sun, three Palestinian men try to cross into Kuwait hidden in the empty tank of a water lorry. The driver is held up at the border. When he finally opens the tank, he finds the men dead. Kanafani closes the novel with the driver’s question: “Why didn’t you knock on the sides of the tank?”

The GSM knocks in every register. Its boats knock on material domination, seeking to break the blockade. Its congress, which was deciding on strategy, vision, and Palestinian voice and leadership, knocks on ontological domination, as does the prosecution of Israeli soldiers secured in Istanbul by the Türkiye team. And the activism each delegation pursues in their home countries knocks on epistemic domination, rejecting third party’s narrative of passivity.

Will this be sufficient in the struggle against domination? Nobody can say for, in anti-colonial struggle, the outcome is always uncertain, and always risky. I only know that anti-colonialists who wish for a world free from zionism and all forms of domination must keep knocking.

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*One comrade – a constitutional law scholar – argued that the zionist project ended in 1948 with the establishment of the Israeli state. This is not an unreasonable argument, especially when we consider that Herzl’s original aim was to establish the state of Israel in historic Palestine. While I recognise this point, I think zionism seeks more, both ideologically and geographically.

Israel’s geographic ambitions are well documented, to be sure; to this, however, we should also add the evolution of its ideological aims. Patrick Wolfe argued that not all settler-colonial movements are genocidal, even if they are eliminationist. I do not dispute this argument but draw attention to his qualification: settler-colonial movements regularly turn toward genocide when incapable of achieving elimination by other means. Despite its domination, Israel has failed to eliminate the Palestinian people or their struggle, hence its latest pivot toward the “Gaza model” of genocide.