Tareq Baconi

Tareq Baconi is a policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Middle East and North Africa program and a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute. He is the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (2018). (May 2018)

NYR DAILY

What the Gaza Protests Portend

A Palestinian woman on the Gaza side of the fence on a day of bloody protests at the buffer zone with Israel, May 14, 2018

May 15, 2018

The dense smoke, burning tires, and the masses of people huddled under gunfire is what, at this moment, the recalibration of the Palestinian struggle looks like. The images coming out of Gaza are an indication of Palestinian disenchantment with the political process and with their leaders. In a deeper and more significant way, we are also witnessing a revival of the core principles that always animated the Palestinian cause but that were displaced in the tangled maze of political negotiations. Israel rightly fears the power of such popular mobilization.