This is a part of the article series Decolonial Praxis: Going Beyond Empty Words, edited by Fernando David Márquez Duarte, Dulce Alarcón Payán and Javier Daniel Alarcón Mares. Editorial and Translation Assistant: Lorenia Gutiérrez Moreto Cruz.

A crucial component of Decolonial Praxis has always been solidarity with oppressed groups. In this piece we discuss the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine, where both of us (co-authors of this chapter) are part of the committee. We take the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine as a case study of Decolonial Praxis. We begin this article with a contextual discussion of the genocide against Palestinians, and the Palestinian struggle, since the nineteenth century, including the Nakba. We continue with the theoretical discussion, focusing on the discussion of colonial oppression, on apartheid and genocide (including definitions on both and international legal conventions that have addressed them), and on transnational solidarity, especially between oppressed groups. We also include a brief discussion of the life and family experiences of one of us co-authors, who is Palestinian-Mexican. Finally, we conduct a discussion of the case study of the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine, as the case of Decolonial Praxis, where both of us have been participating.

We use a qualitative research methodology with a participatory action research (PAR) method, using participant observation as a research instrument; along with an extensive documentary review of the acts of the committee meetings; and bibliographic research for the theoretical and contextual sections. The conclusions we arrived at are: (1) The Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine is a case of Decolonial Praxis, (2) Solidarity between oppressed groups grows even when there are no apparent common elements between them , such as the case of Palestinians and Mexicans, (3) The genocide and oppression imposed by Israel against the Palestinians are phenomenon of colonial oppression, internal colonialism and necropolitics, intertwined.

Context of Palestine and the Palestinian Struggle

The colonial oppression and genocide that the Palestinian people have been suffering did not begin in October 2023. It began in the nineteenth century and hit its worst point during the Nakba of 1948, or so it was thought. To begin, it is important to discuss the historical context briefly.

One of the most important written records of the Zionist planning was the Balfour Declaration: ‘On November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration was issued. It stated: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object ‘ ‘ (Schoenman, 1988, p. 20). Arthur Balfour, Former Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, author of the declaration, also wrote: ‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad is rooted in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires of the 700,000-plus Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land ‘ (p. 21). From the declarations of Balfour himself, it is clear that the British did not care about the Palestinian people, they wanted to impose a Zionist state for their own imperialist interests.

A few years later, in 1922, the League of Nations openly presented as one of its goals of ‘establishing a settler colony in Palestine for the Jewish people…in public international law. The Palestine Mandate juridically erased the national status of the Palestinian people by: (1) framing the Arabs as incapable of self-rule; (2) heightening the significance of establishing a Jewish national home ‘ (Erakat et al., 2023, p. 77). The imposing of Israel, dispossessing the Palestinians from their land is not something that was born in the United Nations (UN) Organization, it began to be pushed since before the UN existed, with its predecessor (League of Nations). This was even before the Holocaust.

By 1935, ‘Zionists controlled 872 of a total of 1,212 industrial firms in Palestine. Imports related to Zionist industries were exempted from taxes. Discriminatory work laws were passed against the Palestinians resulting in large scale unemployment and poor working conditions ‘ (p. 28). Not only were Palestinians forcefully dispossessed from their lands, but were also  imposed a clear economic injustice, giving clear privilege to Zionist companies, and enacting laws to discriminate Palestinians.

This process was obviously accompanied by violence. During the British colonial rule, Zionist forces became police enforcers in Palestine, protecting the British imperialist interests. Moreover, the British provided armed forces to protect the Zionists. There were 17,863 members of the armed forces of the Zionists in the decade of the 1930s. These armed forces were afterwards named ‘Colony Police ‘ (p. 29).

In 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181 that called for the Partition of Palestine:

The Resolution proposed that 55% of the land should go to the minority Jewish population while 45% should go to the majority Palestinian population. Arab leaders rejected the Resolution and less than a year later, as a result of war, the State of Israel was established. Many of the Palestinian refugees fled to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well into the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. (Erakat, 2009, p. 30)

Between November 29, 1947, when the UN partitioned Palestine, and May 15, 1948, when the State of Israel was proclaimed, the Zionists armed forces had seized 75% of Palestine, forcing 780,000 Palestinians out (Schoenman, 1988, p. 33).

In the territory of Palestine that was occupied by Israel after Partition there were around 950,000 Palestinians. ‘After less than six months only 130,000 to 165,000 people remained. After eliminating most of the Palestinians from their land, the Israeli government began the systematic destruction of their homes and possessions. Around 400 villages and towns were destroyed during 1948 and 1949 ‘ (p. 41). This destruction and dispossession allowed Israel to create their settlements and give the homes of the Palestinians to Jews that arrived mainly from Europe: ‘Between 1948 and 1953, 370 Jewish towns and settlements were established. 350 were on ‘absentee ‘ property. By 1954, some 35% of Israel’s Jews lived on property confiscated from absentees and some 250,000 new immigrants settled in urban areas from which Palestinians had been expelled ‘ (p. 43).

Another critical juncture in the colonial regime imposed in Palestine was in 1967. Before 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remained under Jordanian and Egyptian authority, respectively. Then in 1967 the 6-day war happened. As a result of Israel’s armed aggression, it expanded its colonial control and ‘occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt ‘ (Erakat, 2009, p. 30). From that moment, ‘Israel imposed martial law on the Arab-Palestinian inhabitants of the Occupied Territories by expanding its Emergency Regulations Laws, first enacted during the British Mandate in 1945 as a mechanism to suppress civilian uprising ‘ (p.31). It is worth noting that the UN enacted a resolution that same year calling on Israel to withdraw its armies from the territories invaded in 1967, with no effect.

Theoretical Discussion

To introduce the theoretical discussion of this article it is important to highlight the main points to be addressed in this part:

• The processes that the Palestinians are and have been suffering are colonial processes. Palestine was invaded by colonial powers (especially the British) and is currently occupied by a colonial power: Israel. These processes have been imposed against the Palestinians through pure violence.
• We argue that it is not coherent to articulate a decoloniality approach without praxis with the oppressed groups. This piece is not a historical discussion of the genocide against Palestinians; it is a discussion of Decolonial Praxis in solidarity with Palestine from a participatory action-research stance.

The structural violent processes that the Palestinians suffer are colonial processes. The colonial invasion by European empires around the globe established not only a global capitalist  system, but also a racial hierarchy of power, as Quijano discusses in his prominent piece on coloniality of power, where he argues that ‘All the forms of labor, production, and exploitation were in ensemble around the axis of capital and the world market: slavery, serfdom… ‘ and in the same page he writes ‘At the same time…the idea of  ‘race ‘, as biologically structural and hierarchical differences between the dominant and dominated ‘ (Quijano, 2000, p. 216), which after formal independence of most nation-states in this continent has been led by the US under a ‘capitalist imperialism ‘ (Quijano, 1993, p. 146). This can be seen in Palestine (both Gaza & the West Bank), where Palestinians are deemed as inferior by the Zionist regime of Israel, just because they are Palestinians, and they are not only being killed, but systematically exploited for profit, both their bodies and their lands.

After the colonized societies and countries obtained ‘formal independence ‘, colonial oppression was not eradicated, or even affected. The elites of colonized countries (heirs of the colonial capitalist families) that achieved independence have perpetuated colonial oppression through internal colonialism. The minorities (especially Indigenous groups) colonized by the nation-state suffer from similar oppression to colonialism and neo-colonialism: they are prohibited from conducting  self-government and are oppressed by the elites of the state. Internal colonialism is the extension of imperialist capitalism, which is also colonial and uses exploitation to perpetuate the system “both in the intensification of the domination of national and international capital, and in the occupation of territorial and social spaces from one country to another or within the same country” (González Casanova, 2006, p. 86). Palestinians suffer processes of internal colonialism in their own lands, by being systematically killed, and by being denied self-government, and self-determination.

González Casanova has directly argued that Palestine has been suffering from internal colonialism processes, fueled by western powers for profit and political interests linked with profit: ‘Neoliberal policies…They unleashed  ‘humanitarian and justice wars ‘ for the appropriation of military positions, vast territories, and valuable energy resources, such as those that have occurred since the invasions of Kosovo, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq ‘ (González Casanova 2006: p.99). As it can be appreciated, González Casanova argues that the US tried to justify its armed invasions with moral imperatives, when they conduct these attacks to control resources. Palestine is a land that has an important deposit of natural gas and that Israel gave concessions to companies from Israel, Azerbaijan, the UK, and the US in late October 2023, while conducting daily massacres against the Palestinians (Dutton, 2023). González also argues that ‘The U.S. government began a new era of the  ‘terrorist state ‘, and a new era of transnational, international, and internal conquests and colonization. In all of them, internal colonialism tends to be articulated with international and transnational colonialism, with its networks of powerful oligopolistic companies ‘ (González Casanova, 2006, p. 100). The genocide against Palestinians is a case of what González Casanova describes, where oligopolistic gas companies are articulated together with colonialism executed by Israel against Palestinians.

The role of the US in the Palestinian genocide is also stated by Noura Erakat:

The US unconditional support for Israel has made it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since 1976 and the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. The privileged relationship to Israel is also demonstrated by Israel’s special benefits and favorable treatment under U.S. assistance programs unavailable to other countries. In addition to economic aid, unique U.S. support for Israel is evidenced by diplomatic favor. Between 1972 and 2003, the U.S. has been the lone veto of UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel 38 times. (Erakat, 2009, p. 32)

González Casanova’s ideas are closely linked with Fanon’s arguments discussed in his book The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon explains how capitalism reconfigured into its neocolonial form: ‘Capitalism in its ascendence period saw colonies as a raw materials source, that transformed, could be sold in the European market ‘ (Fanon, 1963, p. 32). The situation in Palestine is characterized by brutal violence, but it also has been conducted alongside capital impositions since the early twentieth century, even before the Nakba, with the support of the British, as discussed earlier. The Zionists of Israel not only prohibited jobs for Palestinians, but also benefited companies from Israelis and from western powers. This was possible due to the dispossession of land from the Palestinians.

Another argument that is relevant to consider from Fanon’s thought is his ideas on anti-colonial movements and violence. Fanon discussed extensively about anti-colonial independence movements, arguing that armed violence is necessary for colonized people to achieve independence, mainly due to two reasons: because colonizers will never accept losing the invaded territories peacefully, and because he argues that the colonized people have been subjected to violence by the colonizers since their birth, for several generations, and thus, colonial oppression can only be purged by violence. But this time, exercised by the colonized against their oppressors:’ since their birth, it is clear for him that this narrow world, full of contradictions, cannot be purged but with absolute violence ‘ (Fanon 1963, p. 18). This is manifested in Palestine, with the rise of Hamas, and before, Fatah and other groups with armed sectors. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have suffered from violence all their lives in the hands of the Zionist state of Israel, and they have seen how diplomatic negotiations, begging to Arab states and supposed allies have been futile. Fanon adds that liberation is exercised through violence: ‘The colonized discovers what is real and transforms it into the movement of his praxis, in the exercise of violence, in his liberation project ‘ (Fanon 1963, p. 28).

Another theoretical approach that is relevant to discuss in this chapter, and that is related with the authors previously addressed is Achille Mbembe’s work on necropolitics and necropower. According to Mbembe, the necropolitical system refers to the system in which the life of people is assigned a value by the elites which assume power over life, and based on that value calculation they decide which life is worthy and which is not. Mbembe argues that power is exercised by the colonial regime through death: ‘To exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power ‘ (Mbembe 2003, p. 12).

Mbembe argues that Palestine is the clearest example of colonial oppression through necropower and necropolitics: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine. Here, the colonial state derives its fundamental claim of sovereignty and legitimacy from the authority of its own particular narrative of history and identity ‘ (Mbembe 2003, p. 27). Moreover, he explains how the territorial processes, including dispossession and segregation have been imposed by Israel as necropolitical policies: ‘…The dynamics of territorial fragmentation, the sealing off and expansion of settlements. The objective of this process is twofold: to render any movement impossible and to implement separation along the model of the apartheid state ‘ (p.28). Moreover, Mbembe’s discussion explains how the Zionist regime of Israel considers itself untouchable, above all laws and rules: ‘In the colonies, the sovereign might kill at any time or in any manner. Colonial warfare is not subject to legal and institutional rules. It is not a legally codified activity. Instead, colonial terror constantly intertwines with colonially generated fantasies of wilderness and death and fictions to create the effect of the real ‘ (Mbembe, 2003, p. 25).

The arguments presented by Mbembe are also discussed by another prominent scholar with expertise on Palestine, Jasbir Puar (2021). She argues that the violence exercised against Palestinians, especially maiming, is not collateral damage, but a central process of colonial occupation: ‘The production of variegated and uneven metrics of bodily capacity and debility in Palestine is neither incidental nor the unfortunate effect of collateral damage but is intrinsic to the functioning of settler-colonial occupation’ (p.394). Moreover, her discussion about maiming is closely linked with Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics, regarding how Israel, as the colonizer assigns a value over Palestinian lives, considering them disposable: ‘The right to maim, justified as moral because it doesn’t kill, is a mode of producing value from disposable bodies while all but ensuring a slow death’ (p.396).

The International Justice Court has ordered the immediate halt of Israel’s attacks to Palestine, finding Israel guilty of issues related to genocide, but Israel has just ignored the IJC’s resolution, as it has been doing with United Nations (UN) resolutions for decades.

Apartheid and Genocide

An important concept to discuss in the case of Palestine is apartheid regimes. As discussed by Mbembe, Israel’s Zionist regime is an apartheid regime. The first case to be regarded as apartheid was South Africa. During the first half of the twentieth century, segregation was enacted by law, such as the Native Land Act of 1913 which  established ‘reserves ‘; limited zones in which Black African people were available to live and own land only (Wolpe, 1972, p. 436). The apartheid regime began in 1948 when the Nationalist Party won the election, establishing a system of racism and repression against non-whites that not only entailed segregation but a whole apparatus of armed repression and institutionalized economic inequality in favor of whites and against non-whites (including African and descendants of Indian people) which established lower wages for non-whites for the same jobs, the prohibition of organizing for non-whites, the continuation and intensification of segregation policies (Wolpe 1972, pp. 446–447). The apartheid came to an end in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president; he was the first democratically elected president of South Africa, however, the consequences of the apartheid regime continue today. The elements of segregation and exploitation of non-white workers are clearly seen in Palestine, conducted by Israel.

Another element to consider regarding apartheid is that it was prohibited by an International Legal Convention:

Apartheid…was first prohibited in the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It was then labeled as a crime against humanity in the 1968 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, and more fully codified in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid…Apartheid was understood very much in the same bracket as colonial rule and foreign occupation, necessitating similar types of remedy: collective liberation and land back. (Erakat et al., 2023, p. 79)

Additionally, in 1975, the UN passed Resolution 3379 that declared Zionism as racism: ‘The resolution explicitly named Zionism alongside ‘colonialism and neo-colonialism, ‘ as well as apartheid, and also cited an Organization of African Unity resolution naming the ‘common imperialist origin ‘ of the ‘racist regime[s] ‘ in Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa ‘ (p.80).

These are other examples of how Israel has a complete disregard of international law and considers itself untouchable.

An important aspect to address in this discussion is the definition of genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 establishes that:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, art. II).

If we analyze the situation against the Palestinians all elements are present but the last one.

1. The Palestinians are being killed every day by Israeli forces.
2. There have been over a hundred thousand gravely injured Palestinians since October 7^th.
3. Besides the literal killing, Israel has destroyed all hospitals in Gaza, the power plants, the water plants, the roads and all schools, to make Gaza inhabitable.
4. There is a clear targeted killing of women, especially pregnant women. Moreover, there has been extremely high maternal mortality due to the lack of health services and the inhumane living conditions in Gaza.

Moreover, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has declared that Israel is inflicting  genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, and has emitted 7 SOS alerts about the genocide unfolding in Gaza since October 2023 (Lemkin Institute 2024).

The ongoing genocidal wave perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, beginning in October 8, 2023 after Hamas attack in October 7, 2023, is even worse than the 1948 Nakba, due to all the murdered and displaced Palestinians: the Permanent representant of Palestine to the United Nations presented the following numbers in a special session of the General Assembly on October 8, 2024: over 42,000 Palestinians murdered, over 97,000 Palestinians wounded, over 1.1 million Palestinian people displaced (Permanent Representant of Palestine to the United Nations 2024).

Solidarity

As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter discusses the case of the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine. Thus, it is imperative to discuss solidarity in social movements, oppressed peoples, and global solidarity.

It is important to first discuss what is understood as solidarity:

Solidarity cannot be assumed among identity groups but is, rather, always in negotiation. Those negotiations are shaped by what I describe as a structure of intimacy—a realm of feelings cultivated by, and nurtured in, social kinship. It is also reminiscent of what Sa ‘ed Atshan and Darnell Moore term ‘reciprocal solidarity, ‘ a unique ‘friendship, imagined as a noun and as a verb, ‘ that ‘functions as a space for learning/knowledge production and affective support ‘ as well as an act of ‘mutual recognition and radical love (Erakat 2020, p. 479).

As Erakat discusses, solidarity is about social kinship, support, mutual recognition and love. Solidarity exists regardless of a shared identity. It exists by understanding the situation and suffering of another individual and group. In order for solidarity to exist, it is necessary for empathy and recognition to exist. Regarding the situation suffered by the Palestinians, there has been indifference around the world for decades: ‘Indifference persists to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the destruction of infrastructure, agriculture, and homes, and the killing and maiming of Palestinians ‘ (Pateman 2007, p. 161). Moreover, Pateman argues that ‘It is easier to be indifferent to the misery of others if those involved…are perceived as very different, as alien, as worth less, as inferior…Their sufferings can then be seen as of little or no account ‘ (p. 162). This is sadly manifested in the case of the Palestinians. Their suffering has been largely ignored by most countries, including countries that consider themselves beacons of freedom and humanity,  including most Arab countries. This is why it is crucial that awareness of the genocide against Palestinians is raised, and that there are solidarity movements around the world.

Transnational solidarity movements have been studied by other authors such as Sarkar and Kuruvilla (2020) and Keck & Sikkink (1998). A way that transnational solidarity is exercised is by transnational advocacy networks. These networks can push for changes in the international scenario and can be understood as ‘political spaces, in which differently situated actors negotiate-formally or informally- the social, cultural, and political meanings of their joint enterprise ‘ (Keck & Sikkink 1998, p. 3). Moreover, they argue that the most impactful work of these networks is persuasion and socialization of the issues, which involve ‘bringing pressure, arm-twisting, encouraging sanctions, and shaming ‘ (p.16). As will be discussed in the next pages, the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine has focused precisely on persuasion and socialization.

An important transnational solidarity network with Palestinians is Black-Palestinian solidarity. This network has been very prominent between black people’s social movements in the US with Palestinians:

These solidarity practices culminated in the summer of 2016, when the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement endorsed Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as part of its policy Platform for Black Lives. When several establishment Zionist institutions denounced the platform and rescinded their support for BLM, accusing its authors of antisemitism, the movement reaffirmed its solidarity with Palestinians (Erakat 2020, p. 473).

However, this solidarity network is not new. Since the 1960s, Black movements such as the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) have supported the Palestinian struggle (Erakat, 2020, p. 476). Moreover, very prominent Black thinkers and activists have practiced solidarity with Palestine, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal: ‘From its birth to its present state as U.S. proxy, Israel has not known peace in its 58 years of existence. It is a military state, defined…by its persecution of the Indigenous people of the land ‘ (Abu-Jamal 2015, p. 258).

Life Experiences

One of the co-authors of this article (A. Mohammed) is a Palestinian-Mexican activist, whose experiences are important to address for the case of this research.

His father was born in 1940, when any Palestinian was free to move from north to south, there was no restriction. When my father was 5 years old, Jews were fleeing the holocaust, and many arrived in boats to Palestine and had signs that said: “The Nazis took our families, please don ‘t take away our hope.” The Palestinians received them and over the course of several years, the Zionists carried out a plan, called the Dalet plan, which laid out perfectly how they were going to take over Palestine. This plan began in 1948. My father was 8 years old at the time. The Dalet plan was to invade major villages and make the Palestinians flee. But how do you get a population to flee? You have to impose terror, so they annihilated more than 500 villages, massacred 15,000 civilians, and more than 800,000 people were expelled from their homes, many of them went to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There are people who have had their homes destroyed two or three times because of the Israeli occupation.

Since his father was 8 years old, he lived under the occupation and restrictions that Israel had imposed. He got married and had children, but the economic situation was harsh. At that time, it was normal for Palestinians to go out to work in other regions to support their family. My father traveled to Kuwait to work, he worked a couple of years there, and then he had the opportunity to go to the U.S. to work. That was in 1970. Then when his father wanted to return to Palestine, without him knowing, the Israelis imposed a rule in which any Palestinian who had more than 3 years without returning to Palestine lost all their rights. When he arrived at the airport the Israelis registered him and took away his passport and from one day to the next, he lost his citizenship. There are over six million Palestinians like my father who cannot return home. The co-author of this article is one of them, even though his father is Palestinian, his wife is Palestinian, and his mother is Mexican. He can ‘t go to Palestine to live, the only times he has been to Palestine have  been as a tourist, they give him a month’s permit and then he has to leave. And because he is Palestinian they subject him to a heavier inspection. Every time he goes to Palestine, they make him wait more than 5 hours, they check everything about him, they physically inspect him, and they check his social media. His family and his wife’s family live in the West Bank, and he has been in the West Bank several times.

Israel is committing the genocide in Gaza under the guise of attacking Hamas, but Israel is also attacking the West Bank, where Hamas is not present. Since October 7, Israel has killed nearly 500 Palestinians in the West Bank and imprisoned thousands without due process (Pérez Gallardo, 2024). The co-author of this piece has personally witnessed how neighbors in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israeli forces, just for posting on  social media about the genocide that Israel is committing against Palestinians. We also have to consider that in the West Bank there is a wall of 700 km and 9 meters high that divides the Palestinian population. That means that if a Palestinian in the West Bank wants to visit their neighbor, it is very complicated, a trip that would last 15 minutes takes 2 or 3 hours, and it also depends on the will of the Israeli army in their different checkpoints, many times they deny you permission. During 2023, before October 7, Israel evicted more than 1000 Palestinians from their homes, taking away approximately 500 homes, and before that, in 2022, it had evicted more Palestinians and seized 800 homes, and even before that, in 2021, there had been approximately 700 Palestinian homes taken, and so it has been like that since 1948, even before Hamas existed. Hamas has only existed since 1987.

Jasbir Puar explains the process explained in the previous paragraph as a central element of disaster capitalism and carceral capitalism not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank: ‘What the disaster-carceral relation means for Palestine is that Gaza is the humanitarian rescue object…Conditions continue to deteriorate in parts of the West Bank also, particularly in relatively spatially remote and confined refugee camps…’ (Puar, 2021, p.398). Puar also specifically addresses the limitations to mobility, such as checkpoints as part of this process: ‘In the context of Palestine, the external constraints that engender mobility disabilities include varied obstacles to and modulations of movement of all kinds: checkpoints; administrative bureaucratic apparatuses that stall and foreclose travel, mobility for work…and the capacity to move and change residences…’ (Puar, 2021, pp.402-403).

What Israel does is to destroy Palestinian homes and then build settlements for Israelis. More than half a million Israelis are living illegally in Palestinian territories. A. Mohammed has seen their new homes in giant settlements, it is estimated that the comparison of water use is 1 to 8: Israelis use 8 times more water than Palestinians, since Israel controls the supply of water, electricity, imports, and exports. Many of us have the privilege of taking a shower regularly, to go to the bathroom. In Gaza, since October 7 they have no water, electricity, gas or fuel.

CASE: Comité Mexicali en Solidaridad con Palestina

The Comité Mexicali en Solidaridad con Palestina or Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine, was formed in October 2023, having its first meeting in November 2023. The Committee was formed in response to the genocide that the Palestinian people are suffering at the hands of Israel. However, this is not the first time that people in Mexicali stand in solidarity with Palestine. As precedent, one of the co-authors of this article has participated in protests in solidarity with Palestine, such as the protests organized in 2021, which denounced  the genocide and dispossession that Palestinians have been suffering for decades (García 2021).

As of April 2024, the committee has organized 8 protests/rallies in Mexicali, and has participated in 5 lectures/panels in different universities and spaces (including Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) in Mexicali, as well as the University of California Riverside). It has created and put big signs on canvas in bridges and public spaces and has painted two murals. All the events organized by the committee have been public and open to everyone wanting to participate. The committee’s activities have been shared by groups in solidarity with Palestine in Mexico City, such as the Coordinadora de Solidaridad con Palestina (CORSOPAL) Coordination of Solidarity with Palestine, as well as organized activities in collaboration with organizations in California, USA, such as Imperial Valley for Palestine (IVforPalestine) and the Decolonial Praxis Collective. On 9 January, we created a Facebook page for the committee called ‘Apoyo Palestina. Comité Mexicali’ because Facebook did not allow the name Comité Mexicali en Solidaridad con Palestina or others alike.

The messages shared in signs during the protest/rallies have been in Spanish, their translation in English is the following:

• ‘Stop the genocide in Gaza ‘ ‘México with Palestine ‘ ‘Oppressed peoples united ‘
• ‘Palestinian children are not a threat ‘
• ‘Lift the siege on Gaza ‘
• ‘Israel is genocidal +22000 Palestinians killed in Gaza ‘
• ‘Palestine resist! Long live Gaza! ‘
• ‘End the genocide, end the occupation, end the Apartheid ‘
• ‘For a Palestinian, democratic, secular State with equal rights for everyone ‘
• ‘Palestine strong! Stop the genocide! US and the EU are accomplices ‘
• ‘Israel kills, the US sponsors ‘

Campaigns of the committee

The co-authors of this article are part of the committee and have participated in the meetings. One of the main campaigns of the committee has been to gather signatures to demand the Mexican government to sever relations with Israel, so they could be delivered in the office of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE) of México in Mexicali. In less than a month 200 signatures were gathered and on 28 November the letter with signatures was delivered in the SRE office. Since SRE did not give the committee an appointment, members of the committee showed up outside of the office and invited the media. The letter mentioned the following points:

Lic. Andrés Manuel López Obrador

The offensive launched by the State of Israel against the civilian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip has so far led to the expulsion of more than one and a half million Palestinians.

The attacks by Israel in one month have claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children, injuring more than 25,000 civilians. In recent weeks we have witnessed the terrifying attack on al-Ahli hospital and other hospitals in Gaza, where an as-yet-unknown number of people died.

This offensive is real ethnic cleansing, part of a policy of genocide against the Palestinians, planned for years by the State of Israel, which has blocked humanitarian aid, access to drinking water and electricity to Palestinians.

That is why we are writing to you to request the severance of diplomatic and trade relations with the State of Israel.

The Mexican state, especially this government, cannot be associated with a genocidal government, with a state that promotes discrimination, oppression and the death of innocents, nor legitimize its actions by continuing to have diplomatic relations.

To this we must add that the government of Israel has covered up wanted criminals by the Mexican State, such as Tomas Zerón, who was in charge of Public Security during the governments of Calderón and Peña Nieto, accused of human rights violations, forced disappearance and torture, and the main orchestrator of the cover-up of the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Extradition has been repeatedly denied. Likewise, the government of Israel has protected Andrés Roemer, a Mexican public figure convicted of multiple cases of sexual harassment and abuse against different women in Mexico.

A reporter from the local newspaper La Voz de la Frontera covered the protest and published a note about it (Tapia 2023a) highlighting the following:

The Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine demonstrated at the offices of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs located in Mexicali by delivering a document with which they demanded  that the Mexican government stop having a diplomatic relationship with Israel, a country that is causing genocide against the Palestinian community. The committee collected 200 signatures from people who reject the Mexican government’s dismissal of Israel’s violence against Palestine.

Another important element to consider is that the committee has collaborated in protests in the US, like in the protest held in Calexico, California on 10 December 2023, where one member of the committee participated. On that date, people of Imperial Valley for Palestine organized a protest against the genocide in Palestine. This protest was covered by the local newspaper La Voz de la Frontera (Tapia 2023b). This protest was carried out peacefully during the Christmas parade that took place in Calexico. One of the protestors mentioned that:  “A lot of people don ‘t know it, but the US is financing Israel, so Israel couldn ‘t exist without our money, the money that goes to Israel should be used for the people here who pay taxes, and in fact, on the contrary, it is going to support wars”.

The news report also mentioned that Biden’s government recently authorized the sale of 14,000 tank shells to Israel, without being passed by Congress. The immediate delivery of tank shells worth $106.5 million was approved, according to a Pentagon statement. Additionally, according to international agencies, $3.8 billion in military aid has been delivered to Israel by the US since 2016 (Tapia 2023b).

After that action, two binational protests were organized by the committee on the border between México and the US, where the wall separates Mexicali and Calexico: on 13 and 20 January 2024. The protest of 13 January was covered by a local newspaper mentioning the following points (Jiménez 2024):

The committee is calling for an end to the attacks. The demonstration joins an international call that is being made around the world, in the face of the lack of action on part of the governments of different countries in the face of the situation in the Gaza Strip. During the demonstration, messages such as “Free Palestine” and “Stop the Genocide” could be seen, as well as images of the effects that the conflict has had, especially on children.

It is important to highlight that both of these protests were organized in the frame of the Global Days of Action for Palestine, called on by Palestinian activists around the world. Millions of people mobilized in different countries around the world on those weekends.

Another action of the committee has been organizing a Press Conference on February 8^th, 2024, where the following points were highlighted:

Context: Since the beginning of October, the genocidal state of Israel has murdered more than 27,000 Palestinians (according to official figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health), most of them children; more than 63,000 injured; 9,000 disappeared and has forced the displacement of more than one and a half million people.

1. Committee Members to travel to Palestine in February
2. Demand for México’s government to sever diplomatic and trade relations with Israel
3. Demand for México’s government to join the countries that have filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court against Israel for genocide and that war tribunals be set up to punish those guilty of genocide.
4. Demand for Palestine to have the right to a democratic and sovereign state, i.e., to self-determination, beyond just a ceasefire.

This Press Conference was covered by different local media outlets that published notes about it. In the newspaper El Imparcial (Reyna 2024) the following points were mentioned:

• Mexican-Palestinians in Mexicali are asking the Mexican government to break off relations with Israel. They approached the Secretary of Foreign Affairs but there was no response.
• They demand that Mexico joins the lawsuit against Israel for genocide in the International Criminal Court. So far, the country has only requested information about the conflict.

Moreover, quotes were taken from the Press Conference: “We want to denounce the situation of genocide that is happening in Palestine, perpetuated by Israel and financed by the United States, mainly in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank”. Another quote taken was: “If a nation starts attacking children and women it is not looking for peace, it is seeking to exterminate an entire nation, that is the sad reality that the Palestinians are going through, Israel has cut off the supply of electricity, food, water, humanitarian aid”.

On the other hand, the local news correspondent of N+ (Mena, 2024) mentioned the following points:

• Scholars and activists in Mexicali gathered signatures and delivered them to SRE for México to sever diplomatic and trade relations with Israel.
• What is happening in Palestine is a genocide by Israel and financed by the US.
• In February one of the committee members will travel to Palestine to see how they can help.

Methodology

The methodology of this research is qualitative, carried out with a method of Participatory Action Research as part of the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine, using the instrument of participant observation as fieldwork. In addition, an extensive archival research of the notes of the meetings of the Committee was carried out, as well as bibliographic review for the section on the theoretical framework, in order to have a basis for the analysis of the fieldwork. It is important to clarify that the participatory observation was carried out in a hybrid way: in some of the meetings we participated in person and in some others virtually. Additionally, the participatory observation of the Committee’s actions was carried out in person, since the committee’s actions have been in-person. 

The specific method used in the research is Participatory Action Research (PAR), which is composed of three basic elements: ‘shared ownership of research projects, community-based analysis of social problems, and an orientation towards community action’ (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 11). Moreover, PAR not only wants to learn from participants, but seeks to have a central praxis element with the goal of inducing change for the group or community where the project is conducted: ‘Critical participatory action research therefore rejects the notion of the ‘objectivity ‘ of the researcher in favor of a very active and proactive notion of critical self-reflection ‘ (Kemmis et al. 2014, p. 6). It is worth highlighting that both of the co-authors of this piece are part of the committee, so there is a shared ownership of the research project. Moreover, this research is clearly oriented towards community action, because it is about the actions conducted in the committee.

In PAR, one of the most relevant research instruments is participant observation. This instrument refers to the following: ‘Participant observation is the process enabling researchers to learn about the activities of the people under study in the natural setting through observing and participating in those activities ‘ (Kawulich 2005, p. 2). By participating in the actions and meetings of the committee, both of us co-authors conducted participant observation.

Finally, the literature review conducted was used for the theoretical discussion as well as for the context of Palestine. In addition, the fieldwork was carried out through participatory observation in the meetings of the Committee, with the aim of gathering as much information as possible about the case, while participating in the meetings as a participant of the Committee.

Conclusions

Throughout this chapter, we have discussed the case of the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine, in which we have been participating since October 2023. We argue that this is a case of Decolonial Praxis, based on the Riverside Declaration on Decolonial Praxis presented earlier in this dossier. The first element from Decolonial Praxis that this case shows is collective resistance. The Declaration states the following about this issue: ‘Decolonial Praxis is constant resistance, but it is collective resistance; it is joining forces with oppressed groups; it is finding the common cause to fight together against the oppressor; it is acting in solidarity with other people, with other groups, understanding that although a form of oppression does not directly affect oneself, solidary resistance is necessary’. The Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine is the clear realization of this ideal: it is collective resistance based on solidarity, where all participants and co-founders are not directly affected by the Palestinian genocide, they are not Palestinian, neither Muslims. Only the co-author of this piece is Palestinian-Mexican, but he hasn’t directly suffered the violence most of the time (he has only witnessed and suffered aspects of it when he visits the West Bank). This Committee is composed of solidarity with the oppressed group, in this case, the Palestinians. 

The case presented in this piece is also a realization of another element of Decolonial Praxis specified in the Riverside Declaration: ‘…community love, love through social struggles hand in hand with people, communities, that although they do not share the same identity, unite in solidarity for struggles against all oppressions caused by colonial oppressions at the same time’. The uniting thread of the Committee is community love through solidarity, where participants don’t share the Palestinian or Muslim identity, but unite in solidarity against the colonial oppression that Palestinians currently suffer through the genocide perpetuated by Israel.

Moreover, we argue that the Mexicali Committee in Solidarity with Palestine is also a space for popular and collective education, which is one of the urgent tasks for Decolonial Praxis based on the Riverside Declaration: ‘Organization of popular and collective education spaces inside and outside the university…with horizontality and reciprocity, cognitive justice, and harmonious relations with all lifeforms and the land. Likewise, with an anticapitalist, antipatriarchal, antiableist and antiracist approach’. We argue that the Committee has functioned as a popular and collective education space since we have learned and share our knowledge of the genocide that Palestinians suffer, we have had guest scholars that have shared with the Committee in public events about the situation in Palestine, and we have learned directly from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza about their struggle and the suffering that they are going through. Moreover, one of the co-authors of this piece has shared his and his family’s experience in the West Bank; we have learned from him too.

As members of the committee, we have conducted PAR as the research method, and participant observation as the instrument to gather data in the field. This piece is not only academically relevant, but also relevant in the praxis and in our current reality, because the Palestinian people have been suffering from genocide at the hands of Israel, with US, UK, and German funds and military support, as well as from other western countries, with over 42,000 Palestinian civilians killed. Solidarity movements between oppressed groups such as the case discussed in this article, and other movements around the world, are crucial to put pressure on our own governments to demand actions to stop the Palestinian genocide immediately and to demand the right to justice and self-determination of the Palestinians. Moreover, conducting PAR is crucial in studies about Decolonial Praxis. It is the voices of participants in praxis projects that are important to listen to. Finally, as we have discussed, the genocide and violence exercised by Israel against the Palestinians, are forms of colonial oppression, internal colonialism and necropolitics, intertwined, and Decolonial Praxis is a way to resist and confront these processes.

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