+972 reports:

In recent weeks, Palestinian grassroots mobilization has gathered remarkable momentum, particularly within the 1948 territories and the occupied West Bank. This surge reflects a growing effort to reconnect with a reinvigorated wave of global solidarity that has persisted, and even expanded, despite severe crackdowns on pro-Palestinian movements across the United States and much of Europe.

All signs suggest that this momentum will continue to grow, potentially building toward a broader popular uprising, one capable of pushing back against Israel’s brutal policies toward Palestinians across the land.

The harrowing images from Gaza — emaciated children, families repeatedly driven from their homes, people being shot dead while waiting for food — have become impossible for Israel’s allies to ignore or explain away. These images have begun to haunt Western governments long complicit in Israel’s genocidal campaign, shaming them in the court of public opinion and exposing the moral bankruptcy of their silence.

Under mounting pressure from their own citizens, several Western states have recently sharpened their criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza: the unrelenting pace of killings, the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, the apparent absence of any plan to end the war.

Perhaps the most high-profile rebukes have come in the form of formal recognition (or threats of recognition) of the State of Palestine by a handful of Western heads of state, most notably France’s Emmanuel Macron. Yet such declarations, however dramatic on paper, remain largely symbolic. The “two-state solution” they gesture toward is widely seen as both illusory and inadequate — preserving Israel’s colonial apartheid regime and denying millions of Palestinian refugees their right of return.

Even if these pronouncements are unlikely to have substantial practical implications, however, they are nevertheless an important gesture of support, and a much needed morale boost to the popular movement that opens the door to a new phase of thinking and action. [Continue reading…]