In his piece for Mondoweiss Common Notions editor Nicki Kattoura writes, “When we demand freedom for Palestine we are not just demanding an end to military assaults on Gaza, we are demanding Palestinians to have a right to life, dignity, and freedom.”

By Nicki Kattoura (Originally published on June 25, 2021)

As Palestine slowly recedes into the background again, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about slow, obscured, daily violence and the ways that Israel’s military assaults on Gaza breed more death and injury long after the bombs stop falling.  

Slow violence is the defining condition of living as Palestinians: in between the sharp escalations of protracted conflict, the ongoing trauma of an existence under apartheid is typically not viewed as violence at all.

There are moments that Israel commits extraordinary, exceptional violence against the Palestinian people like the assault on Gaza in 2008 that killed almost 1,400 Palestinians, or the assault on Gaza in 2014 that killed 2,252 Palestinians, or this last assault on Gaza that killed more than 250 Palestinians. These are the moments during which the international community is loud and unapologetic about demanding Palestinian freedom. In April and May this year, as in 2014 and 2008, people around the world flooded the streets demanding justice and an end to the more than half-century long military occupation. It is in such moments of global outrage that the anti-Zionist movement goes on the offensive and discusses Palestine on their terms rather than constantly regurgitating the same, tired talking points that assert that our politics are not antisemitic. It is also in these moments that Israel’s carefully crafted narrative of the question of Palestine being “complicated” is undermined by the immense violence they unleash against people under their occupying rule. 

Yet sooner or later when the ceasefire is announced and mainstream media moves onto the next story, attention, protests, and discourse fizzle out and dissipate. While anti-Zionist movements are constantly working to bring the attention of the world to demand justice for Palestine, the silent majority of people who believe in liberation tend to be more vocal during Israel’s many massacres. But for those in Palestine, the material conditions on the ground in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and elsewhere deteriorate in a compounding fashion—the bombs that Israel dropped on the Gaza Strip do not just maim, kill, and destroy the moment they explode. They do so for long after as well.

Speaking in the context of ecological catastrophe, Rob Nixon introduces the phrase “slow violence” to refer to “the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many…crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today.” In Nixon’s words, slow violence occurs “gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.” Slow violence is the defining condition of living as Palestinians: in between the sharp escalations of protracted conflict, the ongoing trauma of an existence under apartheid is typically not viewed as violence at all. In 2012, the UN released a report which claimed that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. Indeed, today 97% of water in the Strip is undrinkable; Israel puts Gazans on a predetermined caloric diet; people only have four hours of electricity; and the infrastructure needed to ensure life has been eroded or bombed in the many Israeli-led assaults and invasions. This is slow violence—a violence that does not kill by bomb, rocket, or drone strike but through a depletion that does not seem to require urgent attention. However, it physically wears out and deteriorates a population, making occupation and trauma a defining condition of Palestinian existence.

Slow violence is even more pronounced in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. During last May’s assault, Israel wiped out Gaza’s only COVID testing facility. In doing so, the Israeli military ensured that treatment for COVID patients would be much harder than it already was—if not impossible… Finish reading