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Sunday, August 3, 2025
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On August 3 and the Days of Rage: Act, mobilize and escalate for Gaza and the prisoners; break the siege and end the genocide

“We call for active and massive participation on this national and global day in defense of our prisoners and our people in the Gaza Strip, to expose the brutal crimes of the occupation against them, and to support their rights and just cause….We look forward to making the 3 of August a pivotal day in all parts of Palestine, in the refugee camps and the diaspora, in our Arab and Islamic world, & among all the free people of the world, to support our people in Gaza and our free prisoners in the occupation’s prisons.” – Ismail Haniyeh, 29 July 2024

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins in the collective call for action on 3 August and throughout the first week of August, for days of rage and action in solidarity with Gaza, the prisoners, and the Palestinian people and their liberation, from the river to the sea. As the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide enters its 666th day of escalation — after over 77 years of a genocidal project being implanted in the region at the behest of imperialist powers — it is more urgent than ever for people around the world, especially in the heart of the imperial core, to organize, escalate, and answer the calls of the workers and students of Gaza, and of the heroic Palestinian resistance, for action to break the siege, liberate the prisoners and end the genocide.

The ongoing escalated genocide in Gaza is being carried out not only through bunker-buster bombs and artillery shells, but also through the massive use of the weapon of starvation against the Palestinian people. While the Zionist regime, with the full participation and complicity of the imperialist powers, has besieged Gaza for over 18 years, since 2 March 2025 it has almost entirely cut off entry of basic supplies and food, blocking access to the United Nations and internationally recognized food distribution projects like UNRWA and the World Food Program, initiating the US-Zionist death traps of the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (actually a CIA-private military contractor joint project), and funding and arming collaborator gangs to attack and steal aid trucks whenever they do enter, particularly to UN facilities.

As a result of the Zionist siege, Gaza is currently facing a level 5 famine, entirely created by the Zionist military machine and its imperialist backers in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and fellow European Union powers. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been massacred at GHF “aid sites” — a mechanism to concentrate, surveil, abduct and ethnically cleanse Palestinians — while over 160 Palestinians, including 92 children, have been martyred due to starvation and malnutrition. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that over 1,200 elder Palestinians have been martyred in the past 2 months due to the effects of starvation and lack of health care, due to the all-out assault and destruction of the Palestinian health system by the Zionist war machine. While U.S. “mediator” Steve Witkoff, who appeared on stage alongside lead Trump donor and far-right Zionist advocate Miriam Adelson to pledge his support for the genocidal entity, appears at the GHF “aid” site in Rafah for a photo opportunity, Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif revealed that occupation forces were using suppressors (silencers) to shoot aid seekers in order to reduce the visibility of the crime amid the media attention.

Far from an “honest broker,” Witkoff and the United States — which claims to be a mediator while directing and arming the genocide — have repeatedly used ceasefire negotiations to instead slander the Palestinian resistance while presenting a false image to the public of the world, which is increasingly outraged by the widely shared images and testimonies of genocide and engineered starvation. While repeatedly claiming that an agreement is “near,” these parties have instead repeatedly rejected any kind of dignified ceasefire and instead plotted more war crimes and crimes against humanity, including ongoing aggression targeting Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, not to mention the massive outbreak of settler violence and military attacks throughout the West Bank of occupied Palestine.

At the same time, over 10,800 Palestinian prisoners — in addition to Lebanese and Syrian prisoners — are living the experience of engineered starvation and slow assassination inside the occupation prisons. Just days ago, Palestinian prisoners’ associations announced the martyrdom of Sayed Jamal Abu Rajab, the 75th identified Palestinian prisoner martyred inside the occupation prisons since 7 October 2023. The Palestinian prisoners are being subjected to extreme torture and abuse alongside malnutrition and denial of medical care, while the leadership of the prisoners’ movement have been held in complete isolation — and repeatedly beaten — for 22 months. In the prison camps like Sde Teiman and Anatot, Palestinians — especially from Gaza — are routinely subjected to sexual assault, physical violence and mass starvation. Palestinian prisoners are women and men, children and elders, from all political backgrounds — targeted as part of the ongoing assault on Palestinian existence and resistance.

Throughout the genocide, the heroic resistance, particularly the armed resistance, continue to confront the occupation and impose a cost upon the genocidaires with unparalleled bravery and commitment to the struggle. In every area of Gaza where the occupation claims that the resistance has been eliminated or defeated, a new operation emerges to prove that the opposite is true. In fact, the occupation has utterly failed to achieve its stated military objectives of freeing its prisoners or eradicating the resistance. It is instead seeking to rely on political and diplomatic power to achieve these goals, as the resistance in Gaza has blocked them on every occasion. Let us be clear — demands for a “demilitarized Palestinian ‘state'” or the “disarmament of the resistance,” whether in Palestine or Lebanon, are demands to continue the genocide without repercussions and achieve what they have failed to do on the battlefield. In fact, it is the weapons of the Resistance that are currently standing as the foremost shield of humanity in the face of a vicious death machine wielded by Zionism and imperialism.

August 3 and the first week of August take on an even more significant meaning when we recall that the call to action for August 3 in 2024 was the final public statement and call to action of the martyred Palestinian leader, Ismail Haniyeh, Abu al-Abed, the leader of Hamas and a national leader of the Palestinian people, who was assassinated by the occupation in Tehran, Iran, on 31 July, only two days later, alongside his companion, Waseem Abu Shaban. This assassination was, like the genocide itself, a coordinated attack with the participation of the U.S.; on the same day, the Zionists assassinated Lebanese resistance leader Fouad Shukr of Hezbollah, while the U.S. bombed Iraq, targeting four leaders of the Iraqi resistance.

He was renowned for his high level of principle and commitment to Palestinian liberation and national unity, and for his rejection of the unjust and unacceptable conditions placed upon the Palestinian people — indeed, the attempt to bargain Palestinian lives for basic rights and dignity. As he declared, “The fortresses will not fall, the strongholds will not be breached, they will not snatch our positions from us, and we will not recognize ‘Israel.'” Throughout generations of struggle, the Palestinian people have made clear that the martyrdom of their leaders will not hold back their struggle; as we mark 3 August one year later, we must also make that clear internationally, and make Haniyeh’s last call to the public one that resonates through the years, for action and solidarity.

Those principles are perhaps more urgent than ever, with the Palestinian cause facing multiple forms of attack: of course, the genocide and starvation regime imposed by the US-European-Zionist aggression on Gaza and throughout Palestine, the taking of nearly 100 martyrs daily, the horrific war crimes against the population. However, the proclamations of Britain, France, Canada and other directly complicit imperialist nations (as well as of Saudi Arabia and complicit Arab reactionary regimes) about “recognition of a Palestinian ‘state'” (without actual control over land, borders and trade; without sovereignty or self-determination; ‘demilitarized’ and serving as a security arm of the Zionist regime; without the right to return of Palestinian refugees; and with the elimination of the resistance) are not about recognizing Palestinian rights but instead about a new project to liquidate those rights. In fact, these statements come as a new report reveals ongoing and widespread Canadian arms trade with “Israel” and as Britain declares Palestine Action a “terrorist” organization for confronting Zionist arms factories.

If any of these states actually seek to support Palestinian rights, the first steps that they can and must take are to impose a two-way, full arms embargo on the Zionist regime; expel ‘Israeli’ ambassadors and close their own embassies; end the criminalization of Palestinian resistance and Palestine solidarity organizations as ‘terrorists’; immediately send trucks and observers, and accompany those trucks to demand the immediate entry of aid to Gaza through the Rafah crossing with no interference or role for the Zionist genocidaires — not to mention the moral obligation to actively support the Palestinian resistance. They are instead aiming to pacify the outrage among their populations about the ongoing genocide, cover up their own complicity and protect the future of the Zionist project rather than recognizing the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people — without conditions — to full self-determination and sovereignty, not to mention return and liberation, on their entire national soil.

This moment has also highlighted the complicity of reactionary Arab regimes that have engaged in normalization with the Zionist project, from Camp David to Wadi Araba to the “Abraham Accords,” in the continuing genocide. From Egypt refusing to open the Rafah crossing to enter goods and international journalists due to the dictates of the U.S. and the Zionist entity, to Jordan criminalizing support for the resistance and even protest while shooting down drones from Yemen and Iran, to the United Arab Emirates creating a “land bridge” to evade the Yemeni blockade of the port of “Eilat” (Umm al-Rashrash), these reactionary regimes are now facing real pressure about their active complicity in the siege, starvation and genocide of Gaza at the behest of the imperialist powers. Meanwhile, in Syria, despite the government’s repeated assurances of its interest in “peace” and normalization, the occupation continues to invade, take over territory and abduct Syrians.

In contrast, at the same time, every day, in Lebanon, resisters and people of the South are targeted for assassinations in rampant ceasefire violations while the U.S. demands the disarmament of the Resistance, while Yemen continues its massive popular mobilization for Palestine alongside and fully integrated with the actions of its armed forces to actively intervene to bring an end to the genocide and cut off its supply lines in an example that should serve as a challenge to all.

This 3 August — and every day from now — must be a time for action, but also a time for escalation. 22 months, 666 days of genocide, amid rampant engineered starvation, the deliberate promotion of disease, and the mass murder of Palestinian children, adults and elders, men and women, in schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps and residential buildings. 

We join the call of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement: 

Let the first week of August become Days of Rage everywhere—especially in North America and Europe.

We call upon the masses of our Palestinian people, the allies and supporters of the resistance, and all anti-colonial forces around the world to raise their voices loud and clear, take to the streets, besiege Zionist embassies, and turn every public square and city into a point of direct confrontation, until the siege is broken and the aggression is ended.

We must stand up for the martyrs, and for the imprisoned martyrs that the occupation continues to jail after death, and witness for them. Stand up for the wounded, for the health care workers fighting to save lives under the bombs. Stand up for the heroic resistance fighting every day for a free Palestine. Stand up for the prisoners, confronting the occupier daily behind bars, holding fast to freedom.

  • Confront the arms factories that trade with the occupation or are owned directly by occupation companies — like Elbit Systems — with blockades and direct action. Shut down the economy of genocide.
  • Besiege the embassies of the occupation and its complicit imperialist partners. Shut them down and make it impossible for them to carry out their genocidal business. 
  • Shut down streets, government buildings and institutions of the imperial core. The genocide is an emergency. Every day, Palestinians are being massacred and it is clear that the imperialist states will not exert pressure for the genocide to end unless their own interests are on the line directly. 
  • Continue the escalations at the embassies of complicit Arab reactionary regimes. These regimes must be concerned about their own futures in order to create counter-pressure to the Zionists and imperialists. 

Wherever you are, organize, escalate and act. Ramp up our organizing and our mobilization, be louder, more visible, and create a greater obstruction for the business of the war machine. It is clear that the genocide will not end so long as its perpetrators enjoy impunity; if we cannot rely or wait for the courts, we must impose popular accountability through action. 

The Palestinian resistance is today on the front lines defending Gaza, Palestine, the Arab nation, the Islamic world, and all of humanity. Our actions must live up to the example they set every day, to end the human-made famine, end the starvation, end the genocide — and fight for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.

 

Samidoun Belgium: On the Repression of Popular Movements

Last week the Belgian federal government passed a bill that Prime Minister Bart De Wever says will finally put an “end to extremist and radical organisations”. Despite only being the first step in a long legal procedure, de Wever has stated that the law is directed towards Samidoun, Code Rouge and any other organisations that “encourage violence”, by making it easier to dissolve them.

The bill follows the leaked OCAM report which describes the recent mass actions of Code Rouge and Stop Arming Israel as signaling a transition from peaceful climate activism to extremist violence. A transition that the report argues, has been led by radical far-left organisations such as Soulèvements de la Terra, Gauche Anticapitaliste, and climate activists participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

The extremist violence in question? The dismantling of infrastructure and materials owned by the multinational agro-buisness Cargill and the Zionist-owned company Elbit System, both responsible for the wholescale destruction of nature of societies across the world. And the political support of the Palestinian resistance, who continues to defend Palestine against a genocidal state that have sought to occupy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians the last 77 years.

Far from an accident, the new wave of repression responds to the intensification of Israel’s man-made famine. A famine, in which the 2.2 milion people living in Gaza are now entering the “fifth stage” where the entire population face death by starvation.

Instead of pressuring “Israel” to allow aid into Gaza, the fascist Arizona government have launched a media campaign that shifts attention from the genocidal violence in Gaza, to the ‘threat’ of extremist violence in Belgium. A strategy that seeks to convince the public that political support of armed resistance, or the use of vandalism, is more violent than Belgium’s participation in a genocide.

This tell us that the government is less concerned with an increased threat of violence, than it is subjugating dissent.

Far from an accident, the state recognises the loss in their legitimacy by continuing to support a genocidal regime, and now sees the need to use further brute force and blatant propaganda to protect their rule. In this light, the proposed legal framework needs to be understood as laying the foundation for the increased repression and persecution of popular movements that threaten the fascists hold on power.

Repression that builds on the violence and persecution of the pro-Palestinian protestors at the Bourse, systemic racism and Belgium’s colonial history.

The protests, led by a group of young Gazans living in Belgium and organising with the Ahrar Collective have made the Bourse a place where people can gather to express their outrage at the genocide and European complicity. A place where the Belgian people can voice their solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance. In response, they have been brutally repressed by the police on several occasions, with Palestinian refugees being hospitalised, arrested, and threatened with deportation. Arrests, that are part of an long-standing, but unsuccessful, attempt to silence the protest and target the Palestinians at their centre.

The violent arrests reflect a broader context of racist police and state violence. Parallel to the violent arrests of the Bourse protestors, the Belgian police have killed four people, including Fabian, an 11-year-old boy, Christophe Amine, Jidel and recently an unnamed 19-year-old. Their names are added to an ever increasing list of people murdered by Belgium’s police force.

When confronted by the mourning of their victims’ families at the Marche Blanche for Fabian, the police resorted to further violence by deploying anti-gang forces equipped with flash-ball guns to violently disperse the march.

Within this wider context, we begin to understand how state repression takes shape, and how we can resist it. On the one hand, the state uses claims to violence to legitimize violent interventions. Claims that attempts to legally and morally justify the repression, while diverting people’s attention from the death and destruction that companies and the state profits from. On the other hand, it targets the popular bases of our movements by drawing a false division between ‘good protestors’ and ‘bad protestors’. A division that relies on spreading the idea that the state and the merchants of war can come to respect human life and nature if we protest according to their terms.

In the pro-Palestinian movement, this division has led to parties and organizations distancing themselves from the “bad protestors” who are facing repression, thinking that it will protect them. A strategy through which we have seen the list of people and organizations facing repression steadily increase over time.

The same is now happening within the climate movement, with politicians and organizations who have previously supported Code Rouge now taking their distance. While they do so thinking it will protect them from state repression, it is time that we recognize that the state will only stop when every collective, organisation and movement that threatens the ruling elite and their profit from war and destruction, have been dissolved.

Rather than being intimidated, the members of Ahrar, Code Rouge and the many other organisations who continue to mobilize when targeted by the state, show us how the repression they face only works to strengthen their resistance and steadfastness.

Despite the continued violence, arrests and threats of deportation, the protests at Bourse continue every day. And since the release of the OCAM report Code Rouge have shown no signs of backing down, stating instead “Even if activists managed to get their hands of the state’s many F35s and bomb the shit out of Cargill, the damage would be nothing compared to the damage this company does daily”.

They make it clear that our power is not rooted in making appeals to the Belgian state and the companies it protects, but in our collective power to organize a popular movement that the state cannot ignore nor suppress. A movement that mobilizes when it’s comrades are targeted, sending a clear signal to the state and police, that if you come for one of us, you come for us all.

We stand in solidarity with our comrades in Ahrar, Code Rouge, Soulèvements de la Terre, Stop Arming Israel and every other popular movement facing state repression and police violence.

A call from the students of Gaza: Take revolutionary action to end the genocide and forced starvation now

The following statement, by the Student Frameworks of the Universities of the Gaza Strip, comes amid the ongoing calls for days of rage and days of action in the first week of August, to besiege Zionist embassies and shut down the genocidal war machine everywhere. It is an urgent demand to escalate our actions and mobilization at a critical time for the present and future of the Palestinian people and humanity itself.

Press Statement

Issued by the Student Frameworks in the Universities of the Gaza Strip
Addressed to University Students Around the World and to All Free People Defending the Palestinian Cause

Throughout the history of nations and the revolutions of free and proud peoples, the student and youth movements have always been a genuine source and fundamental pillar in achieving the hopes and aspirations of those nations.

Today, in the face of the genocidal war waged by the Israeli occupation against the Gaza Strip—through destruction, starvation, displacement, and the targeting of an entire population for extermination—the student and youth movement stands before its most important moral and humanitarian test. In a century, no people have endured what your brothers and sisters in Gaza are enduring.

60,000 martyrs, two-thirds of them children and women.
20,000 missing under the rubble.
More than 100,000 injured.
Tens of thousands missing, detained, or forcibly disappeared.
Two million displaced citizens threatened with expulsion from their land and homeland.

Systematic and continuous starvation.
Deliberate and ongoing thirst.
Blockades on medicine, food, and clothing.
Destruction of all aspects of life—mosques, churches, cafés, stadiums, schools, universities, and even kindergartens have not been spared. Every part of life and every facility in the Gaza Strip, which has been under siege for seventeen consecutive years, has been targeted.

To our students… our young men and women…

The time has come for your powerful word, your thunderous voice, your revolutionary movement. And we are certain that the squares and streets will resound with your presence and your voices. For the sake of Gaza, its youth, its children, its women, be there, and rise to the moment.

The enemy’s embassies are before you.
Its consulates are near you.
The strategic sites of its allies that deliver military support and deadly weapons through ports and airports: all of these must be part of your uprising to confront the greatest historical injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

We are certain that you are the most worthy and the most capable of confronting the current and reversing the equation, of inflicting pain on the enemy and all who support its ongoing genocide, a genocide unlike anything humanity has ever witnessed.

The cries of Gaza’s women awaken every living conscience.
The weeping of its children under bombardment and starvation demands that every free and honorable person rise from apathy and redirect the course toward one clear equation:

The occupier and its supporters will never enjoy peace anywhere in the world as long as the genocide in Gaza continues.

— The Student Frameworks – Universities of the Gaza Strip

 

Liege Occupation Free speaks out against genocide, forced starvation, and criminalization

Liege Occupation Free, based in Liege, Belgium, issued a statement and spoke out at a public rally against the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, particularly the forced starvation and human-made famine imposed upon the Palestinian people of Gaza. In their statement, they also raised their voice against the threats of the right-wing federal Belgian government to criminalize and ban organizations they deem “radical,” including Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, as well as organizations like the environmental activists Code Rouge, or Stop Arming Israel. The right-wing “Arizona” government included a pledge to ban Samidoun in its government program, and recently began proposing a draft law to allow for organizations in Belgium to be banned solely on the basis of their political expression without a court judgment. The Liege Occupation Free statement follows:

Gaza has reached Level 5 famine according to the international IPC classification.

It has been 657 days that Gaza has been crushed under bombs,
over 21 months of massacre.

Two years of war crimes filmed in plain sight.

If Gaza has reached this point, it is not just a simple humanitarian crisis.

Palestine has been resisting colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing for over 77 years.

No, what is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis — it is a political choice!
It is the logical consequence of 77 years of impunity in which our governments are complicit.

After 77 years of Palestinian resistance, the occupation is now using the deadliest weapon — famine. Official. Organized. Deliberate.

Gaza is at Phase 5, the highest level of humanitarian emergency.
This is not just a number, not a theory. It is a sentence of collective death.

In Gaza, we see skeletal children — so emaciated by hunger that only skin remains on their bones.

Where is international law? Where is the United Nations? Are they waiting for permission from the Zionist regime — guilty of these war crimes — before acting? They do not defend human rights — they defend only Western interests!

The West — which we know is deeply racist!
When white people die, sanctions are imposed.
When it’s Black people, Arabs, Palestinians… they tell us it’s “complicated”?
But they forget that here in Belgium, we know all too well what colonization is. It’s part of our history. And there is nothing complicated about it. Everything is clear.

Today’s Belgium would make Leopold II proud.
The inaction of our government — worse, its complicity — especially in Liège, cradle of the Belgian arms industry, is just the 2025 version of our colonial history.
Our so-called right government is merely the Overton window of the far-right.

But it’s not too late — not yet… while they in their parliaments try to pass laws that even the farthest right wouldn’t dare propose, we have the streets!
While they try to intimidate us, silence us, criminalize us — we have the streets!
A Belgian government that is currently preparing a bill to authorize “home visits,” knowing full well it violates Article 15 of the Constitution!
A Belgian government actively working on a law to ban or dissolve organizations without going through the courts!

The Palestinian prisoner solidarity network, Samidoun, is the first target. Why? For having supported and highlighted Palestinian political prisoners, like our comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah — finally freed after more than 41 years in prison, though he was eligible for release since 1999!
The banning of Samidoun is an attack on freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the right to protest!
Today it’s Gaza, it’s Samidoun… but tomorrow, it will be you, it will be us!

What if in situations like this, history had shown us that only one legitimate response would remain — civil disobedience.
And let’s be clear: it would not be violent. It would not be illegal.
It would be a duty.
A duty in the face of complicit institutions.
A duty against governments who would condone this.
A duty when the political bourgeoisie tries to crush us, silence us, make us believe that “everything will go back to order.”
But their “order” would be silence around the crime.
And we, today, by being here, have chosen the disorder of a people rising up.

Listen to the speech (in French with French and English subtitles):

“Hagana Group”: Israeli Security Bases in Brazil by Rawa Alsagheer

The following article, by Rawa Alsagheer, coordinator of the Samidoun Network in Brazil and member of the Masar Badil (Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement) executive committee, was published today in Esquerda Diario in Brazil. It focuses on an Israeli security company with a major project throughout Brazil: “Hagana Security.”

Hagana Security Company: Zionism Arming Brazil

In our streets, in our buildings, and in our gated communities, a system is quietly growing. It’s not just a business project, but an ideological one. Its name: Hagana Security. And that name is no minor detail. It’s a warning—a sign of a colonial project being imported from occupied Palestine to Brazilian soil.

This article is not just an analysis. It is a political and technical indictment. But it is also a cry of resistance.

1. Nom de guerre: Colonial Memory Etched in a Brand

Hagana (Hebrew: הגנה; often spelled “Haganah” in English) doesn’t just mean “defense.” It was the name of a Zionist militia founded in 1920 to carry out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. Between 1947 and 1948, the Hagana was responsible for horrific massacres, such as the Deir Yassin massacre, and for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages.

What many don’t know is that this militia collaborated with the Nazi regime in the 1930s through what was known as the Haavara Agreement, which facilitated the transfer of German Jews to Palestine in exchange for economic privileges and joint military training. Yes, when it comes to colonialism, the most criminal ideologies can align for a single goal: occupying land and replacing its people.

In Brazil, naming a security company “Hagana” is not innocent. It is a salute to a military doctrine of occupation and segregation. It is a brand that carries blood, expulsion, and racial supremacy. It is not about “defense,” but domination.

2. From Occupied Land to the Brazilian Market: Founders as Agents of Military Doctrine

Hagana Security was founded in Brazil by Chen Gilad and José-Bernardo Markuz—both former officers in the Israeli occupation army, with direct military and intelligence backgrounds from the fields of repression targeting the Palestinian people.

  • Chen Gilad, the son of Israeli immigrants, served in intelligence units in Gaza and the West Bank, specializing in monitoring and dismantling civilian resistance networks. He brought to Brazil the doctrine of the “internal enemy,” which sees every civilian and civil society itself as a potential threat that must be surveilled.
  • José-Bernardo Markuz, also a veteran of the Israeli occupation forces, served in border control, checkpoints, and electronic surveillance projects, and participated in operations against Palestinian protesters and civil society activists. After his military service, he returned to Brazil and joined the Hagana project as head of the intelligence and technology sector.

These men didn’t bring “civil” security expertise; they brought a colonial doctrine of repression that is now being turned into a commercial service on our soil.

Their résumés are not business credentials — they are extensions of colonial war, now applied to a new market: the everyday life of the Brazilian population.

3. Technology as a Tool of Domination: From Occupied Palestine to Surveilled Cities

Hagana doesn’t just sell security services—it offers a full-spectrum model of surveillance and control, based on technologies developed in a colonial environment, the occupied land of Palestine. Some of the tools currently in use include:

  • SIGAH: A facial recognition and real-time movement analysis system.
  • SABRAH: AI platform that centralizes access control, biometrics, identification via WhatsApp, and visitor management.
  • CoSecurity: A network of blue poles with cameras in affluent neighborhoods—over 3,500 cameras and 1,200 surveillance poles across Greater São Paulo.
  • Fast Gate, Fast Pass, vehicle monitoring, drones, connected alarms, video analytics, remote concierge services: a complete ecosystem of predictive and automated surveillance.

In Gaza, these technologies were used to hunt militants, neutralize journalists, monitor children, and punish entire families for their political affiliations. Today, the same technologies are exported to Brazil and applied against poor and working-class communities. In Brazil, the rhetoric is one of “efficiency,” but the logic is the same: identify, catalog, control, punish.

The growth of the company is alarming:

• In 2023, the Haganah Group reached R$890 million in revenue.
• It is projected to reach R$1 billion in 2024, with expansion to Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, the interior of São Paulo, and the southern region.
• Today, it already employs more than 13,000 workers.

This expansion is not entrepreneurial merit but the result of exporting a racist and colonial security doctrine.

4. Official Complicity: How Does the Brazilian State Allow This?

The most alarming aspect of all this is the silence and complicity of the Brazilian state. How can a country that claims sovereignty allow a company founded by former occupation soldiers to operate freely on its land? To collect data on millions? To monitor civilian communities without oversight?

The state, through its civil and security institutions, normalizes Hagana’s presence as if it were an ordinary security company. No one questions the founders’ backgrounds. No one reviews the source of its technology. No one debates its real objectives.

Haganah operates freely in Brazil, with public and private contracts, without any critical regulation of its ties, its history, or its methods. The Brazilian government — whether out of ignorance, opportunism, or convenience — is complicit in this process. It allows a company with a colonial DNA to collect massive amounts of data on the population, control condominium entrances, record faces, track behaviors — all without public transparency, under the label of “private initiative.”

This is not a bureaucratic error. It is a political choice.
That’s why we say clearly: Hagana cannot be confronted without also confronting this complicity. All institutional, legal, and commercial ties with the company must be immediately severed.

5. The Real Project: Racialized Surveillance, Privatization of Repression, and Digital Colonialism

Haganah’s model is the armed wing of racial surveillance capitalism. In the occupied territories of Palestine, the target was the Palestinian. In Brazil, the targets are the poor, Black, marginalized, and dissident populations. The logic is the same: framing life under suspicion.

Haganah privatizes functions that are typically state responsibilities: control of public space, collection of biometric data, indirect policing, containment of populations. All of this is sold as “high-performance security.”

But what is being installed here is a tropicalized version of the Israeli occupation. An algorithmic apartheid disguised as a technological solution. The architecture of control moves through sensors, cameras, and corporate contracts. But behind it is the same ideology that bombs hospitals in Gaza and sets up checkpoints in Nablus.

6. Resistance Starts with Boycott: There Is No Future for This Project Among Us

Break all public contracts with Haganah. Break with the normalization of Zionism as a model for urban security. Break with the idea that companies can surveil entire populations in the name of “efficiency.”

To dismantle Haganah is to dismantle a high-tech colonialism project that turns Brazilian cities into occupied zones. It is to reject the militarization of civilian life. It is to say that the Brazilian people will not be a testing ground for repression techniques exported from a genocidal military occupation.

Brazil does not need more surveillance. It needs sovereignty, dignity, and freedom.

Breaking with Hagana is breaking with the silent colonization of our territory. It is rejecting submission to the empire of the camera, of data, of fear. And above all, it is an act of solidarity with all oppressed peoples — from Palestine to the Brazilian periphery.

 

What the 2025 Imposed Famine in the Gaza Strip Leaves for History

The following text, written by Samidoun Brasil, was originally published in Portuguese at Esquerda Diario, for the public hunger strike against the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide and imposed starvation in Gaza and throughout Palestine in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 27 July 2025.

The Gaza Strip, a territory that before 2023 had never experienced famine, is now standing on the brink of the grave. According to the IPC (International Food Security Phase Classification) report from May 12, 2025, all 2.1 million residents of Gaza are classified at Level 3 of food insecurity; that is, at least one adult in the household repeatedly experiences physical hunger. Among them, 925,000 are at Level 4, where all adults regularly suffer physical hunger, and children in those households do not receive enough caloric intake to sustain their growth. Furthermore, 244,000 people—12% of the total population—are already at Phase 5, where the caloric intake for every member, regardless of age, is insufficient to prevent disease and death in the near term.

It is worth highlighting, among the many crimes against childhood committed by the Zionist entity — the bombed schools, the white phosphorus bombardments, the lands contaminated with D-38 uranium munitions — the total commercial blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel since 2 March 2025. The price of basic goods has skyrocketed by 1,400% in a month; yet markets remain empty. 20% of children between the ages of 6 and 59 months suffer from acute malnutrition. That is, they are unable to ingest sufficient amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, and vitamins to sustain bodily functions. It’s important to emphasize that in the history of the Palestinian Holocaust, which has lasted 20 months, children in Gaza live not only with chronic malnutrition, but also with chronic food insecurity: enduring two to four months of physical hunger every year, recurrently.

We could list increasingly complex statistical classifications here, but how can data convey the physical exhaustion of hunger? The fatigue of wandering all day through foul-smelling streets (not due to sewage) in search of a single kilogram of flour, baked into eight meager loaves to last the next four days, as reported by journalist Shaimaa Eid, writing from Gaza for the Palestine Chronicle.

Meanwhile, our natural wealth — oil reserves, iron, chromium, and nickel mines, our heritage and rightful property of the masses who build nations — is diverted from social use to fund the slaughter of our fellow peoples. In Brazil, crude oil exports by the state-owned PetroBras grew 44,000% between 2023 and 2025. In fact, the former employer of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Villares Metals S/A, exports steel directly to Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) and Israeli Military Industries (IMI), the latter a subsidiary of Elbit Systems. Despite his strong union activism during his time on the board of the Metalworkers’ Union of ABC Paulista, Lula has taken a posture that is, at best, ambiguous regarding the severing of commercial ties with the genocidal colonial state.

A superficial analysis may suggest that the famine now being experienced in Gaza is unprecedented in modern history. However, what is happening in Palestine is a tragic repetition of what has been applied to other countries and territories by a colonialist and imperialist system that has devoured the world for 500 years. As an illustration, who remembers East Timor? A Portuguese colony ceded to Australia (another settler colony) in 1941, and then conquered by the Japanese Empire that same year—a military occupation that killed 70,000 people, or 14.5% of the population at the time. Nine days after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975, East Timor was invaded by Indonesia with U.S. support. That second occupation lasted 24 years and killed approximately one-third of the territory’s population, even accounting for population growth. Today, the average height of men in East Timor is 160.13 cm and of women, 152.71 cm, a result of stunted growth caused by prolonged and deliberate famine during those decades.

And yet… despite this grim past, the Timorese people survived. East Timor is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with around 26 languages spoken daily. Between animist rituals, the colonial architecture of cathedrals, and countless local legends about the native fauna, dozens of cultures interact dialectically. The state even celebrates two independence days—one from Portugal in 1975, and another from Indonesia in 2002.

So come, comrades, let us abandon these illusions of a “Final Solution.” The occupations of Palestine —Roman, British, and “Israeli” — come and go; the Palestinian people remain. Israel’s plans are delusional, its capacity to carry out its desired occupation is collapsing, and with the deepening genocide, the regime is becoming completely dependent on the United States. Indeed, “Israel” will try to strike, wound, and starve as many Palestinians as possible for as long as it can. And it will fail. But the question that the 2025 Gaza famine leaves for history is this: how long did we allow our governments to let these colonial fantasies persist?

The human cost is immense, but far from being ghosts of a forgotten people, each of the martyrs will become a song of remembrance for men and women yet to be born. As the great Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan once wrote:

“We fight with our eyes,
We sow with our hands,
We will see the wheat fill the valley.”

Georges Abdallah returns to Lebanon, free and resisting

On Friday, 25 July, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was finally liberated from French prisons after nearly 41 years behind bars, returning in the afternoon to his homeland, Lebanon, where he was welcomed by large celebrations in the streets as well as a community event in the town of his birth, Qobeiyat. He returned with his commitment to the resistance, to Palestine, and to Lebanon, unquenched despite decades of imprisonment, speaking with a clear voice and vision to demand immediate action for Gaza and rallying around the resistance.

In a clear and powerful rebuke to the United States and France — his captors — immediately after entering the airport, he emphasized the centrality of the resistance, at the same time that these imperialist powers are attempting to force the disarmament of the Lebanese resistance, especially Hezbollah, saying:

“Of course, my return to this land was inevitable because I am certain that the resistance is entrenched in it and thus cannot be uprooted. With resistance, the road home is never lost, for me or for my imprisoned fellow comrades. Their resilience inside depends on our steadfastness outside…The resistance is not weak, it is very strong thanks to its martyrs. Its leaders are martyrs so the Resistance is strong. A weak resistance is when its leaders are traitors. Our resistance is not traitorous, its leadership are martyrs! This is thanks to the sacrifices and blood spilled through resistance. My message today is to support the resistance more than ever, more than ever. We bow our heads in honor of the Resistance’s martyrs, the very foundation of all liberation struggles…A fighter inside captivity…remains steadfast as long as his comrades are taking a leading position in the confrontation. Confrontation against the enemy yields victory and so will its continuation until the end of time, until its defeat. This is ‘Israel’s’ last chapter, there are no more chapters left.”

He urged immediate action for Gaza amid the imposed starvation and genocide created by the Zionist regime and its imperialist backers, emphasizing the complicity of Arab regimes, especially in Egypt, closing the Rafah crossing to the entry of food and aid in compliance with Zionist-imperialist orders:

“The resistance in Palestine must continue and intensify. It must be up to the level of the current situation where we see children as moving skeletons. You look at them and you see skeletons moving. Still, there are millions of Arabs simply watching. In Egypt, a few meters away from Egypt’s Al-Azhar; and a few meters away from the Kaaba of Mohammed bin Abdullah, the children of Palestine are dying of hunger, meters away from 80 million followers of Mohammed bin Abdullah in Egypt. Such a shame for all the Arab peoples, which will go down in history, even more than the regimes, whose nature is known. How many people were killed in attempts to enter Gaza? None, no one was killed. If 2 million Egyptians take to the streets, the mass killing would stop. The genocide would come to an end. It depends on the Egyptian people more than anyone else.”

At the same time, hundreds waiting immediately outside the airport doors cheered at the news that his flight had landed, at the same time as many more hundreds gathered along the old Airport Road, particularly in al-Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut. He soon emerged to greet the demonstrators, emphasizing that it was not merely a legal process, but struggle and solidarity in France and resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and throughout the region that won his liberation: “The condition of freedom is rallying around the resistance! The condition of freedom is rallying around Gaza! The condition of freedom is rallying around the martyrs of the resistance!”

After a warm and raucous welcome in the airport, his vehicle proceeded to the Airport Road, where large crowds awaited him, including a number of the mothers of the martyrs, particularly from the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood in Lebanon. The reception of Georges Abdallah highlighted that he is a national resistance leader, as he was welcomed with Lebanese and Palestinian flags, Hezbollah flags, flags of the SSNP, LCP and other left organizations, and others, collectively saluting his sacrifice and commitment to struggle, even as he emphasized the importance of the martyrs and their sacrifices.

Emerging once again, he said, “Glory to Dahiyeh! Glory to the martyrs, the heroes of Lebanon! Glory to the resistance! Glory to you all, glory to our martyred leader [pointing to a poster of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah], glory to the children of the resistance! Resistance is freedom. Rally around the resistance, rally around Gaza, rally around the masses of the resistance! Thank you to the resistance, thank you to the martyrs of Dahiyeh. Thank you to all who carry the banner of freedom!”

He then travelled north to his home village of Qobeiyat, stopping in Al-Bireh, another village in the Akkar region, along the road, where he was greeted with another welcome. All last evening in Qobeiyat and throughout the day today, he has received visitors, conducted interviews and continued to make clear his vision for the continuing resistance and his focus on the liberation of Palestine at a critical moment for Palestinians confronting genocide in Gaza.

As Georges was welcomed home, the Zionist regime continued its campaign of assassinations and aggression against Lebanon, as it killed the martyr Ali Quwsan Sadiq with a drone strike targeting him the southern Lebanese village of Barachit. These ongoing assassinations and attacks continue on a daily basis at the same time that the imperialist powers demand the disarmament of the Resistance. It also comes as reports surface that an unclear number of Lebanese prisoners, particularly fighters in Hezbollah, are being imprisoned in torturous conditions in an underground Zionist prison alongside Palestinian resistance fighters, and at least one of these Lebanese resistance strugglers was martyred inside the prisons under torture with his body remaining imprisoned, alongside the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs.

Supporters of Palestine, the resistance and Georges Abdallah also rallied internationally to commemorate his liberation and to demand urgent action for Gaza to end the genocide and confront the famine imposed upon Palestinians. In Brussels, the daily demonstration at the Bourse focused on Georges Abdallah, at the same moment that the right-wing government in Belgium is seeking to pass new laws in order to criminalize organizations like Samidoun, as well as environmental organizations like Code Rouge.

In Barcelona, people first expressed their solidarity with Georges Abdallah at a gathering confronting the eviction of the La Squatxeria social center, and then took to the streets for a spontaneous gathering in Raval to mark his release.

In Amsterdam, activists spoke and displayed photos of the prisoners in Zionist jails while marking the liberation of Georges Abdallah.

In Paris, people gathered for an emergency demonstration to demand an end to the artificially imposed famine in Gaza, and shouted, “Georges Abdallah won, Palestine will win!”

 

Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab revolutionary, had been imprisoned in France since 1984; the founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (FARL), he was accused of involvement in the FARL’s assassination of a Mossad agent and a CIA agent in Paris at the U.S. Embassy. Committed throughout his life to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and Lebanon and for a socialist and revolutionary future, he was a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The FARL was born out of the Lebanese national resistance following the Zionist invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, with the conscious orientation that the battle for liberation should not be confined to the borders of the nations targeted by imperialism and Zionism, especially as the Zionist regime pursued assassination campaigns targeting Palestinian leaders across Europe, from Mahmoud Hamshari and Wael Zuaiter to Basil al-Kubeisi and Fathi Shiqaqi.

He was convicted in a trial marked by extreme irregularities; notably, his lawyer at the time worked for the French intelligence services, the DST. While he was expected to receive a sentence of no more than 10 years, the United States intervened to demand a longer sentence, and he was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for release since 1999. French and U.S. imperialism collaborated to impose endless imprisonment on Georges Abdallah; while he pursued legal appeals repeatedly, his parole requests were denied time and again, often with the overt collusion of French, U.S. and Zionist officials. In 2013, he won an appeal for his liberation, only to be denied at the last minute when Manuel Valls refused to sign the order for his deportation; U.S. Secretaries of State, from Condoleeza Rice to Hillary Clinton, boasted of their involvement in enforcing his continued imprisonment.

Throughout this time, it was clear that if he disavowed the resistance, apologized for his role in the struggle, and accepted silence about Palestine, Lebanon and global popular struggles against imperialism and Zionism, he would be freed. He refused to do so, and the movement for his liberation grew exponentially over the past decade, as thousands marched outside the prison where he was held in Lannemezan, France. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement recognized him as part of their ranks, and he would join their hunger strikes from French prison. He never hesitated to send messages with clear politics and revolutionary zeal to every campaign for justice in France and internationally. The Collectif Palestine Vaincra in France was targeted for dissolution specifically for its effective role in demanding Georges’ liberation. Even members of Parliament and MEPs joined the call for his freedom amid the mass demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza and for the liberation of Palestine in the era of Al-Aqsa Flood. His imprisonment became an international symbol for French complicity in Zionist-imperialist genocide, as well as illustrating the harsh repression against the Palestine liberation and solidarity movements in France.

Finally, on 18 July, after nearly 41 years inside French prisons, the courts affirmed that he would return to Lebanon on 25 July, released from behind bars. This was not merely a legal victory: it was the continuing Toufan al-Ahrar, the flood of the free. Indeed, Georges Abdallah was always free: free in his mind, his spirit and his commitment to resistance and liberation. Today, as he walks free in his homeland, his path of struggle urges us all to escalate, to struggle, on the path of Gaza, Dahiyeh and Yemen, and to embrace his calls for action, for resistance, for absolute rejection of the dictates of Zionism, imperialism and their reactionary agents, on the road to victory. 

As he has ended his statements for so many years: It is together comrades, and only together, that we shall win.

Georges Abdallah will be free; Palestine will be free!

On 25 July 2025, after 40 years in prison and an entire life in struggle, Georges Abdallah will be free! 

Today, Thursday, July 17, 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal has ordered the release of our comrade, Lebanese communist and resistance fighter in the Palestinian liberation struggle, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been imprisoned for over 40 years.

After more than four decades of relentless political and judicial persecution and imprisonment by the French authorities and successive governments, after a life of struggle and steadfast resistance, after decades of mobilization by his supporters to liberate Georges Abdallah from French colonial and imperialist prisons, our comrade is finally set to be released from French custody on July 25.

Our immense joy at the announcement of this decision cannot be complete, however, until he has arrived in Lebanon—on his land, surrounded by comrades, loved ones, and family—he, whose flame of resistance has never been extinguished despite the efforts of France and its allies. Throughout these more than 40 years of imprisonment, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has stood as a symbol of struggle and determination for entire generations of activists, who have come of age in political engagement with his name in their hearts and have mobilized to demand his release. Even today, from his prison cell, Georges Abdallah remains a living symbol of the resistance of peoples against imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism—an uncompromising resistance that refuses to yield in the face of its enemies. His example has proven vital for the movement in support of the Palestinian people and their resistance over the past decades.

The political responsibility taken on by Georges Abdallah from his prison cell over the past 40 years exemplifies the unique role and mission borne by all revolutionary prisoners— including and particularly the more than 10,800 Palestinian prisoners, and especially the imprisoned leaders of the Palestinian resistance. Those who confront the repressive, colonial, and imperialist prison systems, by virtue of their role before and during their incarceration, embody the advanced front of their people’s resistance to oppression.

As we celebrate the upcoming liberation of our comrade, our hearts and minds remain torn, and our thoughts turn to the more than 10,800 Palestinian prisoners enduring starvation, illness, isolation, violence, sexual assault, and targeted killings in Zionist prisons. We extend our deepest solidarity to the imprisoned leadership of the resistance—those sentenced to dozens, hundreds, even thousands of years, accumulating life sentences, yet whose certainty of being freed through the struggle of their comrades remains unshaken. We think of the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, loved ones and comrades, in the hands of the enemy, far from those they love, far from the warmth of their communities—yet who, through resistance and struggle, have built a school of struggle and a community of resistance within the Zionist prisons. Our thoughts are with the 73 prisoners who have been martyred in Zionist prisons since October 7, and with the families of the martyrs held in the morgues and “cemeteries of numbers” of the Zionist regime, where over 700 bodies of Palestinian martyrs are being held, stolen from their families, denied a dignified burial—leaving behind a gaping wound no amount of love from their people can fill. We think of all prisoners of the Palestinian cause and all revolutionary prisoners torn from their comrades and loved ones, in Zionist, imperialist, and reactionary prisons around the world. The upcoming liberation of our comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah will be their victory, and we will continue to mobilize until we can celebrate theirs as well.

As our comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah receives the news of his imminent release in his cramped cell in Lannemezan, and shares it with his fellow detainees, our hearts bleed in the face of the current situation in Gaza and the region more broadly, in the face of the genocide the Palestinian people have endured for over 21 months now. Every liberation of prisoners torn from imperialist and Zionist prisons—especially those who, like Georges, have refused any compromise or betrayal despite decades of incarceration—is a promise of future victory, of better days ahead, and of justice for the lives and futures torn apart by colonial violence.

We extend our most heartfelt and sincere greetings and thanks to the successive generations of comrades who have fought this battle with determination—to those who passed away before seeing this moment, to all those whose hearts beat in unison with our comrade, to the organizations and individuals who dedicated years of their lives, sleepless nights, and months of mobilization to build events and demonstrations; to those who chanted our comrade’s name in the streets, on university campuses, and wherever their steps led them. This is a collective victory—a victory for an entire movement—which must serve as a foundation to continue the struggle and win further victories, until the liberation of Palestine, from the River to the Sea.

Let’s continue mobilizing until July 25 and the arrival of our comrade in Lebanon!
Freedom for all our prisoners!
Glory to the Palestinian resistance!
From the River to the Sea: Palestine will Win!

The Zionist prisoners and the families of our prisoners in the enemy’s jails — Khaled Barakat

 

The Zionist Prisoners and the Families of Our Prisoners in the Enemy’s Jails
Khaled Barakat

The following article, by Khaled Barakat, Palestinian writer and member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, is published especially for the Samidoun website (originally in Arabic):

From the moment the Palestinian resistance in Gaza announced the capture of a number of Zionist soldiers and settlers during the glorious Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the issue of the Zionist “hostages” became the center of global attention. Hours upon hours of television programming are devoted to it. Political pressure is exerted, tents are erected in public squares, and tears are shed for those whom the media describe as “innocent victims.”

Meanwhile, more than 10,800 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, remain in the occupation’s cells — some for more than thirty years —without the hypocritical world so much as blinking an eye, or hearing the cries of a Palestinian mother who has waited decades for a long-delayed embrace.

The Zionist captive is presented as a wronged human being, kidnapped from among loved ones, shown through emotional family photos and touching stories broadcast night and day. Western media is diligent in feeding this narrative: the child waiting for his father, the sleepless wife, the mother who never stops crying. All this is done in complete detachment from the context of war and occupation, as if these “hostages” were not part of a military machine that destroys Gaza, besieges the Palestinians, and squats on their land.

Governments, embassies, and international organizations are mobilized to pressure the Palestinian resistance, and any attempt to demand a prisoner exchange is condemned as “humanitarian blackmail,” while the root of the crisis — the Zionist occupation and settler colonialism — is entirely ignored.

No one hears about the 73 martyrs who have died in the enemy’s prisons since October 7, 2023, or about the 10,800 Palestinian prisoners suffering in the occupation’s cells, including about 400 children, 50 women, 500 sick detainees, and some who have been imprisoned for over three decades. There is no mention of their denial of visits, medical care, and education; no mention of the children snatched from their homes at night and thrown into interrogation dungeons; no mention of the 3,600 administrative detainees held without charge or trial. There are no images of Palestinian mothers’ tears or families awaiting news from behind bars.

For the Western media machine, the Palestinian prisoner is merely a “terrorist,” not treated as a human being, and not factored into calculations of justice and conscience. The resistance’s demand for their release is painted as a moral crime, not a legitimate right.

Amid this grossly uneven struggle, the “Palestinian Authority,” along with the defeated official Arab governments, stands in a position of impotence and complicity. The Authority does nothing, save for a few hollow statements on ceremonial occasions. Its embassies practice selective deafness and deliberate muteness, taking no part in solidarity campaigns for the prisoners or in legal and political battles on the international stage. There is utter silence in the face of daily massacres and mass arrests. In fact, the Authority has reached the point of repressing popular events in solidarity with the prisoners if they dare deviate from the official line.

The security coordination with the occupation, which the Authority secretly prides itself on while publicly disavowing, is one of the direct causes of the continued and systematic arrests and the collapse of popular trust in the Authority. This cannot be excused as weakness, but must be understood within the context of a political-security function that aligns with the logic of “managing the occupation,” not resisting it, and a futile reliance on negotiations, not a struggle to liberate the prisoners.

What makes matters worse is the state of paralysis afflicting the majority of Palestinian “factions” in the West Bank. With the exception of some individual and youth-led initiatives, there is no organized movement or sustained campaign that provides platforms for the voices of prisoners’ families, exposes the realities of imprisonment, or expresses the voice of their loved ones. Active prisoner committees have disappeared. These “organizations” and so-called “human rights institutions,” which were supposed to lead the street in defense of their sons and daughters in prison, have become incapable of addressing their own constituencies, let alone the world.

While weekly marches are organized in Tel Aviv for the families of Zionist soldiers, the cities of the West Bank lack continuous actions expressing the voices of Palestinian prisoners’ mothers, fathers, spouses and children. This silence is the result of organizational decay, bureaucratic stagnation, and the political division that has torn apart the national movement.

The world’s hypocrisy is laid bare when the Zionist soldier is presented as a victim worthy of sympathy, while the Palestinian prisoner is reduced to a “security number” or accused of “terrorism.” As soon as someone hears the phrase “families of the prisoners,” they immediately imagine the families of Zionist captives in Gaza. Western media does not see the Palestinian detainees as human beings—it does not record their stories, convey their suffering, or give them a platform to speak of their suffering. In contrast, doors are thrown open for the families of Zionist soldiers in international organizations and parliaments, and they are used as political pawns to pressure the resistance.

A Palestinian mother says:

“My son has been in prison for twenty years. He grew up without me, and I grew old at his prison gate. I haven’t touched him, haven’t hugged him, I don’t know what he looks like now. Why does no one hear my cry? Am I any less of a mother than others? Or is my blood cheap because I’m Palestinian?”

But these words fall on closed ears, because their speaker belongs to the “wrong side” of the colonial equation. The world does not care, and the human rights organizations are busy counting the breaths of Zionist soldiers — not the cries of Palestinian mothers.

The experience of the resistance in Gaza has shown that the issue of prisoners is not just a negotiating file, it is a symbol of national dignity. Indeed, the cause of the prisoners and their liberation was one of the main reasons behind the glorious Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Whoever seeks equality in suffering must begin by achieving justice, and breaking the wall of silence, complicity, and hypocrisy that has surrounded us for decades.

What is needed today is not only the adoption of a balanced and humane discourse, but the forceful extraction of the prisoners’ cause and their families from the grip of marginalization, neglect, and silence—returning it to its natural and rightful place at the heart of the national liberation struggle, as a central issue.

These brave prisoners in the enemy’s jails are in fact the trusted, legitimate, and true Palestinian leadership. They are, with the armed resistance, the sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle. And whoever does not stand with Gaza and the valiant armed resistance will never stand for the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, which remains the first line of defense for Palestine.

Dignity as Leverage: A Counterframework for Palestinian Prisoner Negotiations — Rima Najjar

The following article is republished from Medium.

One table, two frameworks; power negotiates. Resistance endures; the future hangs in the balance
One table, two frameworks; power negotiates. Resistance endures; the future hangs in the balance

The U.S.-Israeli approach to negotiations with Palestinians remains fundamentally misaligned with justice and human dignity. While Israeli hostages are publicly mourned and framed as victims, Palestinian prisoners are treated as threats — statistics to be managed, not lives to be honored.

In this asymmetrical terrain, U.S. mediation reinforces Israeli security narratives, ignoring systemic abuses: rearrests, torture, indefinite detention, and the criminalization of Palestinian grief and solidarity. Incarceration becomes not a tool of justice but of demographic warfare.

Yet even within this environment, Palestinian resistance reframes captivity — not as defeat but as defiance. Through hunger strikes, courtroom refusal, and the ethic of sumoud (resilience), prisoners have transformed their bodies into frameworks of refusal. This is not passive survival — it is political agency. As PFLP’s prisoner Ahmad Sa’adat declares, “Our imprisonment is not the end of our struggle — we are the conscience of a people who refuse to be erased.”

This counterframework refuses to engage through the language of victimhood alone. It posits prisoners as political subjects — architects of strategy, not merely its symbols. Their bodies become texts of resistance, declaring humanity through suffering wielded deliberately. The ethical foundation of this model begins not with what must be demanded, but what must be refused.

Refusal is not obstinacy — it is strategy. The counterframework rejects hostage diplomacy staged as deterrent theater, denounces militarized humanitarianism where aid becomes surveillance, and repels the symbolic erasure encoded in practices like anonymous burial and re-arrest. These acts strip captives of memory and dignity in an effort to unwrite them from the historical record.

The refusal is deliberate, layered, and unyielding. Hamas and allied factions have responded to Trump’s proposed prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal with a spirit of negotiation — but not submission. They understand the logic underpinning the dominant framework: Israel retains military leverage while discarding the burdens of governance; it aims to dismantle Hamas while presenting itself as a rational actor in a “peace process.”

The asymmetry is clear: the framework is not peace — it’s containment.

In submitting counterproposals, Hamas and allied factions reframed the negotiation. Their demands reject tactical pacification and assert structural conditions for any progress. Chief among these is the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Though the upfront demand for ending the war has been softened, the insistence on written guarantees — specifically for troop retreat and uninterrupted ceasefire negotiations — signals the emergence of a political safeguard.

The notes of Hamas and allied factions further call for international oversight — preferably under UN administration — and removal of U.S.-Israeli control over aid and surveillance. Hamas and its allies understand the risks of leaving mediation tools in the hands of those invested in their containment. The counterframework demands mediation not as diplomatic theater, but as structural protection.

These positions reorient the entire frame of the negotiation. The factions are no longer reacting to Israeli terms — they’re building a system where justice isn’t deferred to humanitarian appeals but embedded in strategic architecture.

U.S. Framework vs. Palestinian Counterframework: How oppression tries to outlast resistance

Palestinian factions, far from being reactive, now hold key cards:

– Operational Leverage: Remaining Israeli captives are not just bargaining chips — they are Israel’s strongest incentive to negotiate. The factions control the timeline and rhythm.

– Political Unity: A unified front among factions strengthens their legitimacy, undercutting narratives of fragmentation and allowing them to act with moral coherence.

– Narrative Authority: By framing the negotiation as one centered on sovereignty, protection, and justice — not mere exchange — they control the moral terrain.

This leverage does not simply stall Israeli ambition — it redefines the negotiation itself.

As one analyst recently put it, “Hamas isn’t playing with borrowed cards — it’s designing its own deck.” And as Fateh’s prisoner Marwan Barghouti stated, “Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.” Here, he is not just reflecting on past failures, but insisting that dignity and sovereignty must anchor any negotiation and reframing what legitimacy looks like.

If Netanyahu responds true to form, several patterns will likely emerge:

– Delay Tactics: Publicly, negotiations will slow under the guise of security reviews and logistical constraints — buys time, hopes to fracture Palestinian unity.

– Defiance Masked by Concession: Netanyahu may appear hawkish to domestic audiences while quietly engaging mediators to preserve diplomatic cover.

– Displacement of Blame: He’ll lean on U.S. mediation to obscure accountability, portraying Israeli rigidity as consequence of “external constraints.”

But the terrain has shifted. Public sympathy, diplomatic fatigue, and the irreducibility of Palestinian refusal may disrupt his playbook.

If Netanyahu overplays his hand, dragging negotiations without movement, he risks pushing factions from tactical flexibility to strategic closure, i.e., the withdrawal of participation as a strategic response to a framework that undermines justice from the start.

The counterframework insisted upon by Hamas and allied factions isn’t designed to win negotiations — it’s meant to transcend them. Its logic is liberatory, not procedural. Ceasefires must not merely pause violence — they must erode the legitimacy of systems that reproduce it.

This means restoration of collective dignity as the barometer of success — not appeasement metrics, and the insistence on international oversight divorced from occupation logics and recognition of Palestinians as strategic participants in shaping political outcomes.

To the extent that prisoner exchanges and ceasefires are real, they must reflect the architecture built by prisoners themselves — the cost borne, the unity forged, the refusals sustained.

Resistance, in this frame, is not reactive. It is architectural.

_________________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

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