“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a big demonstration,” exclaims Riadh, in his forties, with a Palestinian flag in one hand and a keffiyeh on his shoulders. He repeats the slogans launched by both sides: “resistance, resistance, neither reconciliation nor compromise”, “the people want the criminalization of normalization [with Israel]”. Under a still scorching October sun, more than 3,000 people marched in Tunis on Thursday October 12 in support of the Palestinians, at the call of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the powerful trade union center. Since the Hamas attack on Saturday and the start of Israel’s response, activists have mobilized to show their solidarity with Gaza, but this demonstration remains the most important. And it was a success: for years, none had brought together so many people.
On the signs, the traditional inscriptions calling for the “liberation of Palestine” or to put an “end to colonization” sit alongside the more specific ones of activists for homosexual or feminist rights: “queers with Palestine”. In its call to participate in the march, the Mawjoudin association, which defends the rights of LGBTQI people in Tunisia, proclaimed: “Palestine unites us. » From President Kaïs Saïed, who called on Monday to “support our brothers in this stage (…) of Palestinian liberation” and wishes to “criminalize” a possible normalization process with Israel – a commission must examine a bill along these lines – to opposition figures, seasoned trade unionists, and a wide spectrum of civil society organizations, human rights defenders, feminists or members of LGBT organizations, there is consensus on support for the Palestinians in Tunisia. To mark this union, on Thursday, the instructions were clear: no party logos in the demonstration, no flags other than those of Palestine and Tunisia. An instruction respected by a large majority of participants, with the exception of the UGTT.
For Lina Elleuch, queer feminist activist and member of the Mawjoudin association, unconditional support for the Palestinians is obvious. “I was educated with the idea that this cause has the same importance as Tunisian causes,” she assures, recalling her childhood memories of the second Intifada in the early 2000s. his association also, the question is settled. “Mawjoudin supports whatever methods of resistance the Palestinians choose. We believe in the liberation of a people and their land,” she assures.
“Principle of self-determination of peoples”
Tunisia has long maintained a close link with Palestine. Under Habib Bourguiba and Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, pro-Palestinian demonstrations were among the rare moments when expression was free. In 1982, the day after the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Lebanon, women dressed in black demonstrated in Tunis in support of Palestinian women. This was the first public appearance of “democratic women”, several years before the official creation of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD). The same year, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leader Yasser Arafat fled Lebanon to settle in Tunisia where they kept their headquarters until 1994.
October 1, 1985, remains in Tunisian memories, when the Israeli army bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunis, officially killing 50 Palestinians and 18 Tunisians, and sparking a diplomatic crisis. President Habib Bourguiba then convinced the Americans not to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli aggression. At the time, Tunisian feminist activists welcomed their Palestinian and Lebanese comrades, refugees or visitors, to Tunisia. “Some activists were even part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organization, considered terrorist by several Western countries, testifies Asma Fatma Moatemri, feminist activist and member of the ATFD.
“We are fundamentally opposed to Hamas as a political and societal project, but we will never oppose the principle of self-determination of peoples, including through armed resistance,” she adds. If the activist “condemns any act of barbarism on either side”, she considers that the Israeli far-right government is the main responsible. “We cannot continue to act with impunity, take advantage of the non-effectiveness of international law and be surprised by such escalations,” she said, referring to the blockade imposed on Gaza since 2006 and the establishment of new Israeli settlements.
More radical, Saif Ayadi, queer activist within the Damj association, calls for the total restitution of Palestinian lands and the creation of a single state, Palestine. “The people choose their means of resistance against the occupier and they assume responsibility for them. We must not forget that Zionists are settlers. They chose to be on a land that they colonized,” he asserts. Arriving in front of the French embassy on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the crowd changed their slogan. “France and the Americans are complicit with the aggressors,” chant the demonstrators who raise their hands in a sign of victory and combat.