"It's been a long time since we've seen such a big demonstration," exclaimed Riadh, in his 40s, a Palestinian flag in one hand and a keffiyeh on his shoulders. He repeated the slogans shouted around him: "Resistance, resistance, no reconciliation, no compromise," "The people want the criminalization of normalization [with Israel]." Under the still-blazing October sun in Tunis, more than 3,000 people marched in support of the Palestinian people on Thursday, October 12, in response to a call from the powerful trade union center, the Union générale Tunisienne du Travail (Tunisian General Labour Union, UGTT). Since the Hamas attack on Saturday and the start of Israel's response, activists have been mobilizing to show their solidarity with Gaza, but this demonstration remains the most important. And it was a success: None had gathered so many people for years.
On the signs, long-used inscriptions calling for the "liberation of Palestine" or an "end to colonization" mingled with more specific ones from LGBTQ+ rights or feminist activists: "Queers with Palestine." In its call to take part in the march, the Mawjoudin association, which defends the rights of LGBTQAI + people in Tunisia, proclaimed: "Palestine unites us." In Tunisia, there was consensus on support for the Palestinian people. At the very top, this included President Kais Saied, who on Monday called for "support for [their] brothers in this stage (...) of Palestinian liberation" and has wished to "criminalize" any normalization process with Israel – a commission is due to examine a bill to this effect. Also in agreement were opposition figures, seasoned trade unionists and a broad spectrum of civil society organizations, human rights defenders, feminists and members of LGBTQ+ organizations. To mark this unity on Thursday, the order was clear: No party logos in the demonstration, and no flags other than those of Palestine and Tunisia. This was respected by the vast 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 Palestinian people is a given. "I was brought up with the idea that this cause has the same importance as Tunisian causes," Elleuch explained, recalling her childhood memories of the second Intifada in the early 2000s. Within her association, too, the question is clear-cut. "Mawjoudin supports whatever methods of resistance the Palestinians choose. We believe in the liberation of a people and its land," she added.
Tunisia has long had close ties with Palestine. Under Habib Bourguiba and Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, pro-Palestinian demonstrations were among the rare moments of freedom of expression. In 1982, on 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 Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, ATFD). That same year, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leader Yasser Arafat fled from Lebanon to Tunisia, where they kept their headquarters until 1994.
October 1, 1985, is still remembered in Tunisia, when the Israeli army bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunis, officially killing 50 Palestinians and 18 Tunisians, triggering a diplomatic crisis. Then president Bourguiba had persuaded the US not to veto a UN resolution condemning the Israeli aggression. At the time, Tunisian feminist activists would welcome their Palestinian and Lebanese comrades to Tunisia, either as refugees or visitors. "Some activists were even members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organization considered as terrorists by several Western countries, recalled Asma Fatma Moatemri, a feminist activist and member of 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 added. While the activist "condemns all acts of barbarity on both sides," she considers the far-right Israeli government to be primarily responsible. "One cannot continue to act with impunity, take advantage of the non-effectiveness of international law and be astonished at such escalations," she said, referring to the blockade imposed on Gaza since 2006 and the establishment of new Israeli settlements.
More radical, Saif Ayadi, an LGBTQ+ activist with the Damj association, called for the full restitution of Palestinian land and the creation of a single state, Palestine. "People choose their means of resistance against the occupier, and they take responsibility for it. We must not forget that the Zionists are settlers. They have chosen to live on a land they have colonized," he asserted. Arriving in front of the French embassy on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the crowd changed slogans. "France and the Americans are accomplices to the aggressors," the demonstrators chanted, raising their hands in a sign of victory and combat.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.