Interview | Palestinian Youth Movement

At The World Transformed (TWT), rs21 members interviewed a range of activist groups. In this article we speak to an activist from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) about building a strong left, the lessons from the Palestinian resistance and what a free Palestine means for struggles against imperialism and capitalism in Britain today. 

rs21: Could you start with telling us a bit about Palestinian Youth Movement and why it was founded?

PYM: The Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational movement of Palestinian and Arab Youth, organising in over 20 cities in 3 countries – the US, Canada and Britain. We believe that the diaspora has a really important role to play in the national liberation struggle. We don’t just see ourselves as being in solidarity with people back home, but rather fighting on another front against Zionism from within the heart of the empire. 

In Britain, we’ve been organising since the end of 2021. During the Unity Intifada in May 2021, there were a lot of student organisers involved in organising for Palestine who were leaving the student movement and didn’t have a political home and so formed the British chapter of PYM. The two years following this were spent on internal building, social investigation and member development. This meant in October 2023, we were able to meet the moment in an effective way.

We’re a base building organisation, where community is the backbone of everything we do. To give examples of recent projects, we host a monthly Palestinian community kitchen, where we share meals with new arrivals from Gaza. Recently, we also worked with the North African community in North Kensington to paint a mural under the West Way. Another aspect of our work is supporting the student movement and we’re organising a national student conference where we’re expecting over 200 students from across the country to convene. The final front of our work is the labour movement and trade unions and we were very involved in organising The World Transformed (TWT) and in its organising committee. 

Underpinning all of our work is the importance of confronting Zionism, which obviously entwines with everything else. Our biggest campaign is ‘Mask Off Maersk’, focused on the shipping and logistics company. In London, Ealing Council has the biggest investments out of any local council in Maersk, so we are campaigning for the council to divest. We organised a national day of action, ‘Siege on Labour,’ during which we shut down 17 Labour parliamentary offices in protest against the party’s complicity in the genocide, following the publication of our report on British arms exports.

rs21: The PYM has been quite involved with the organising of TWT, which might be surprising to some people. Could you explain why the organisation got involved, and what you’d like to see come out of TWT?

PYM: The reason we’ve been involved in organising TWT is that we understand a strong Palestine movement requires a strong left – and the British left has a lot to learn from the Palestine movement so there needs to be a symbiotic relationship. Many of the interventions by PYM in TWT have centred on organisation and organisational methods, employing a diversity of tactics, interventions around Palestine and imperialism, and understanding Palestine as an anti-imperialist struggle. We want to illuminate the idea that a free Palestine is not just about Palestine, but about socialism. In the wake of everything happening with Your Party, we want to ensure that, whatever happens, Palestine remains at the core of any project moving forward – not just from a position of solidarity, but from the understanding that the interests of the Palestinian struggle and the British working class are one and the same.

rs21: What traditions or historical struggles do you draw from, or feel a connection with?

PYM: We draw all of our methods, ideologies and practices and principles from the Palestinian struggle. We’re broadly left and the regional dimension of the Palestinian struggle is really important to our project. Understanding the Zionist project as a regional project is important to our understanding, which is why we have an Arab membership.

The importance of unity is one thing we’ve learnt from the Palestinian prisoner movement, and the resistance factions. Historically, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) served as an umbrella body, uniting diverse Palestinian factions and institutions. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, however, it shifted from a revolutionary project to a state-building one, leading to the dismantling of many of its institutions. The principle of unity embodied by the PLO, and the consequences of its absence, have been crucial lessons for us. It is incumbent upon us to reproduce that unity in our current context. Today, this spirit of unity is most expressed through the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as well as alliances like the Joint Operations Room. Both embody the ongoing commitment to collective struggle and coordination across factions. The history of PLO also teaches us the importance of organisation – understanding that the Palestinian struggle to be a protracted struggle and that as we fight this struggle we accumulate knowledge and experience, lessons and tactics. Organisation is the incubator for allowing that accumulation to happen.

rs21: What do you think the British left could learn from the Palestinian movement, whether that be the PLO or more recent groups?

PYM: The importance of unity is one of them. The principle around protracted struggle as well- the British left tends to give up quite easily. Revolutions are not won overnight, they require organisation, base building and cadre forming. These are all multi-year projects. The importance of organisation is important – there are a lot of loose coalitions and networks on the British left. PYM thinks formalising these collectives into structures is really important for building a left and above all a left that can support the Palestine movement.

rs21: In the crudest, most direct sense possible, what do you think PYM’s work means for people?

PYM: In terms of the PYM’s work, we understand our role as the extension of the struggle and confronting imperialism from the metropole. What this has meant is intervening in the supply chain of weapons, for example, the work with Maersk and the arms embargo. As for Palestine, what it means is strengthening our people’s steadfastness and connection to the land. We support new arrivals from Gaza, and when aid was being let in, we raised over one million pounds across all of our chapters to support rebuilding efforts. More broadly, we understand that creating a crisis within the political establishment here serves to weaken both imperialism and Zionism, advancing the wider struggle for liberation.

What a free Palestine means from the river to the sea is one democratic state. For those of us organising here, it means the right to return to our homeland. It means dismantling Zionism; if we returned to the land and Zionism still existed, our work would not be done. And if Western imperialism still existed, our work would also not be done.