NOT many of us will want to give 2020 a backward glance as we move into the new year, with renewed hope of a better future. 

For Palestinians, 2020 was marked not just by the fight against the ravages of Covid-19 but against the attempts by Israel, supported by Donald Trump and authoritarian Arab states, to obliterate their cause entirely. 

The sketch of the deal Trump laid out when he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 was inked in full — No capital in Jerusalem, Israel given the green light to proceed with the annexation of huge swathes of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians with a series of disconnected Bantustans. 

As this plan unfolded, the finishing touches were provided by the spectacle of dictatorial rights-abusing Arab regimes lining up to normalise relations with Israel, to applause from Western political leaders.

Twenty twenty also saw a ramping up of Israel’s efforts, supported by allies, to delegitimise the global solidarity movement, seeking to separate it from other progressive movements by defining it as something rooted in hate and prejudice that should be confined to the margins of political discourse. 

Presenting the facts of the historical and ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, reasserting the right of return of those driven from their homes in 1948 and their descendants, and describing accurately the system of apartheid that continues to dispossess and oppress them, were categorised as outside the boundaries of acceptable speech and, via the mechanisms of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, rendered anti-semitic. 

This rhetoric was used to justify the introduction of laws to proscribe the right to boycott or call for sanctions against Israel.

The framework within which we need to respond to these challenges in 2021 has already been established. 

Israel’s delegitimisation campaign has emerged in response to what it correctly perceives to be the strategic threat posed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

The efforts to close down space in Britain are a function of Israel having identified Britain some years ago as the hub of the global solidarity movement. 

Our response, as always, takes its lead from the Palestinians who continue to resist on the ground and in the face of efforts to silence their voices have reaffirmed the call for BDS and reasserted the core principles that underpin it. 

Crucially they remind us that this is not a conflict between competing nationalisms to be resolved by allocations of territory but a struggle against an ongoing process of settler colonialism that has led to the establishment of a state that privileges rights to Jewish citizens via a structure of law that meets the legal definition of apartheid. 

With this understanding we are enabled to resist the attempts to marginalise the struggle by building links with all those fighting unjust racist structures of power remembering  that there is no road to a non-racist new Jerusalem that does not tackle the racism that prevails in the old Jerusalem. 

Building this narrative in 2021 will further the work undertaken in 2020, most crucially when despite huge attempts to silence such framings across the labour movement, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was able to work with trade union allies to secure the passing of a TUC motion that applied the label of apartheid to Israel’s system of oppression.  

Viewing Palestinian oppression through the lens of apartheid also enables us to resist efforts to legitimise normalisation and coexistence projects.

There is a drive at the moment, in the Westminster Parliament, with Labour Friends of Israel at the forefront, to secure political and financial support for such projects.  

This relies on a framing of conflict driven by a failure on both sides to understand one another’s stories, and thereby requiring conflict resolution from the ground up. 

This is as illegitimate as it was in South Africa where the understanding was clear that  coexistence follows the ending of oppression. 

One cannot negotiate or “coexist” with someone who has their knee on your neck. 

The legitimate pathway for Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace lies though coresistance to oppression not coexistence which leaves power structures intact.

We also need to continue to build alliances with those seeking to defend the core pillars of democracy including the rights to freedom of expression that are jeopardised by Israel’s delegitimisation campaign. 

Although those seeking to universalise the acceptance of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism have had significant successes in 2020 they are meeting increasing layers of resistance. 

Bodies like the Institute of Race Relations, leading academics and lawyers have all highlighted the threats to free expression caused by the definition’s conflation of anti-semitism with legitimate criticism of Israel’s laws and policies. 

Despite huge government pressure, including the threat to withhold funding, the vast majority of British universities have not adopted it because of clear concerns about academic freedom. 

As we approach the new year, a time of reflection and renewal of hope, we need to revisit what lies at the heart of solidarity. 

First, the belief in the interconnectivity of our mutual struggles against injustice that leads to the understanding that an injustice anywhere affects justice everywhere. 

Second, the enduring faith that the arc of history bends towards progress but also the wisdom that tells us it does not do so unless we all collectively lean upon it.

Here’s to a better and more just 2021 — onwards together to freedom, justice and equality. 

Ben Jamal is director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.