Activating Hope in Dark Times

Over my twenty years of activism resisting the Israeli occupation, the question of how one does not lose hope surfaced many times. In a way, it is to be expected in such a long struggle, when the mechanisms of oppression against which we fight only became more entrenched, sophisticated, and normalized. One answer is that we have a moral obligation to continue to resist as long as injustice exists. This is an argument based on faith that there is right and wrong—and that at some point things will be different. Faith that no occupation lasts forever, oppressed people eventually reach independence, and justice will prevail. Faith is hard to hold. Over years of activism, I have found that focusing on what we are able to achieve in our work has helped me hold on to hope.

In the past, in the popular struggles of villages like Bili'in, in the steadfastness of Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta, in the powerful protest movement in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, I saw firsthand how Palestinian communities resisting and activists joining them have agency. I saw how resistance makes a difference. For me, this was the material from which hope was made.

In 2023, Wadi a-Siq, a small shepherding community east of Ramallah, had 180 residents. Settlers from nearby outposts threatened the community regularly. They would scare their sheep so they scattered, attack residents, come at night to vandalize homes, and create roadblocks at the entrance of the village to scare the children who came from other towns to attend the Wadi a-Siq elementary school. The community resisted, they refused to leave, and invited Palestinian, international, and Israeli activists to stay in the village. While settler attacks continued, people in the community felt less threatened knowing they were not alone in this.

But then came October 7. As happened in so many other villages, settlers, some in military uniforms, came fully armed to the village of Wadi a-Siq and wreaked havoc. Residents were to