This is what Intifada looks like

The steps being taken by the Met and Greater Manchester Police to criminalise the use of the word “intifada” at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK and potentially beyond, mark a dangerous escalation in the policing of political dissent.

This move represents one of the final frontiers in an ongoing effort to suppress advocacy for the Palestinian people’s internationally recognised right to resist occupation, apartheid, and genocide. It is not driven by public safety, but by political pressure to shield Israel - and those who defend its actions - from scrutiny and accountability.

“Intifada” is an Arabic word meaning “uprising” or “shaking off.” It describes resistance to oppression and occupation, not a prescribed set of tactics. Historically, Palestinian intifadas have taken many forms, ranging from mass strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience to armed resistance against military rule. Under international law, peoples living under colonial domination and foreign occupation have the right to resist, including through force.

What “intifada” does not mean is random or indiscriminate violence, still less violence against civilians abroad. To portray the word itself as an incitement to such acts is a dishonest and malicious distortion, designed to criminalise a people’s struggle by severing it from its legal, historical, and political context.

In Britain today, this is what intifada looks like: acts of civil disobedience and direct action, workers refusing complicity, students demanding divestment, and communities organising sustained boycotts. It looks like people withdrawing consent from injustice, disrupting business as usual, and insisting that Palestinian lives matter. It is collective conscience in action. Today, we also witness individuals willing to endure the harshest consequences of state punishment - including hunger strikers in prison prepared to pay the ultimate price - in solidarity with the Palestinian people. This is political resistance to injustice.

The current policing approach rests on a deeply politicised interpretation of speech - one that selectively frames Palestinian efforts to defend themselves as criminal if not terrorism, while ignoring or excusing explicit calls for mass violence when they emanate from state-aligned or pro-Israel figures. This double standard exposes the real function of these measures: not the protection of Jewish communities (which is in truth endangered by deliberate conflated narratives by proponents of Zionism), but the protection of a political narrative that defends genocide and silences opposition to it.

It is particularly alarming that this push to criminalise protest slogans is legally untested. Should such interpretations be upheld, the consequences would be severe. Calls for civil disobedience, boycott, or even armed resistance against genocide abroad could be deemed criminal, while those who justify or incite mass killing would remain coddled by those the powers at be. This would invert the most basic moral and legal principles underpinning freedom of expression in a democratic society, and the universally accepted right to self defence.

International law is clear: people living under occupation have the right to resist. This right is recognised not only in legal frameworks but in historical precedent, including struggles once supported by the British state itself. To criminalise language associated with resistance is to criminalise the very idea that oppressed people may challenge their oppression.

What we are witnessing is the selective deployment of police power to manage political dissent. Protesters opposing genocide are treated as a threat, while the architects, apologists, and beneficiaries of mass violence enjoy institutional protection.

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Photo courtesy of Alisdare Hickson on flickr