I have watched the Oxford University encampment grow since it was established last Monday outside the Pitt Rivers Museum. I realized the protesters with their 50-something tents weren’t going anywhere — either by their own volition or the university’s coercion. In the pursuit of open discourse and with the selfish motivation of soaking up a rare sunny day, I decided to mingle.
The “liberated zone” has borders: An ornate fence wrapping around part of the perimeter is decorated with cardboard signs that say things like “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and “Jews for a free Palestine.” But the border was hardly enforced. I walked up to the welcome tent, where a tall British fellow welcomed me warmly and remarked, “You should totally join, the vibes are chill.” Previously, an online form released by the organizers had suggested that campers had to affirm “1) The right to self-determination, 2) Jersusalem [sic] as the captial [sic] of Palestine, 3) The right of colonised people to resist against occupation, and 4) The right of Palestinian refugees to return.” But I wasn’t asked to affirm anything or memorize the list of demands that includes Oxford boycotting Israeli institutions. In fact, I wasn’t even asked if I endorsed the demands.
A welcome-tent woman gave me a pin of the Palestinian flag in the shape of Israel’s borders and a flimsy blue face-mask. I asked if someone had contracted Covid-19. She responded, “No, I don’t think so, it’s just to conceal your identity from people who walk by and film.” I said I wasn’t ashamed to be in the pro-Palestine encampment and stuffed the mask in my tote bag, while she nodded without comment.
I was given a brief tour. The “welfare” tent is a “quiet space” with pillows and blankets, where a camper can hide to escape the media or simply enjoy a moment of privacy. The “Shireen Abu Akleh Media Tent” is where designated student representatives comment to the media when prompted. The “Dr. Refaat Alareer Memorial Library” has books that “center Palestinian narratives,” including children’s picture books. A large gazebo contained dry supplies like tarps and lawn chairs. For bathrooms, they use the museum or the library nearby; when those close in the evening, there’s a port-a-potty. A small but powerful speaker in the encampment center played Arabic-language music, mostly songs by the Lebanese artist Fairuz, although it was interspersed with rapper Macklemore’s new pro-Palestine song “Hind’s Hall” and, rather oddly, Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.”
The revolution starts at 10 a.m. with a packed schedule: a “community check-in,” a camp art-build, a “de-escalation debrief,” a “welfare event,” another “community check-in,” and finally, a film screening of Omar. The fight against oppression is family-friendly, so there was a scheduled “stay and play” session for local parents to bring their children.
A graduate student cut fabric for signs at the “camp art-build” held under a small open tent that had paint, brushes, and cardboard. She introduced herself. I commented that she had my middle name — “Yasmine.” We compared the spelling and discovered that we have different vowels in the last syllable. Yasmine-with-different-vowels handed a fabric rectangle to me and another girl, then instructed us to paint “The Amani Al Derbi Wellness Tent.”
“Who is Al Derbi?” I asked the girl who was apparently my painting partner for the next hour.
“I have no idea,” she said. “But I can pencil in the design.”
As she sketched letters on the fabric, she said that she’s a master’s candidate in “visual anthropology” and soon traveling home to New York for research on “lesbian weddings.” (I refrained from asking whether she would conduct such studies in Gaza.) She explained that an anthropologist either “makes the unfamiliar familiar” or “makes the familiar unfamiliar,” and she avoids the former because it is “colonization.” (I didn’t suggest that establishing an encampment might be colonization.) As she wrote sprawling letters, I nonchalantly commented, “nice cursive.” A girl working on a different sign remarked, “Do you guys know what the British call cursive? ‘Joined-up writing.’” She educated me by imparting her knowledge that “joined-up writing” is elitist, since it vaguely alludes to being “upright” and “educated.”
The two other girls painting were both English literature undergraduates in the famous college Christ Church, which they characterized as “racist,” “full of Tories,” and “super Christian.” (I’m skeptical, since I saw a transgender pride flag waving in a courtyard the last time I visited there.) Supposedly, they had been warned about the college’s right-leaning politics before attending, and they had hoped to “change it from the inside,” but eventually gave up because it was impossible to change to “structural problems.” As we added finishing touches to our signs, a car drove by and honked, prompting an encampment-wide cheer.
“But how do you know if they’re honking for or against you?” I questioned.
“Yeah, I wondered that,” the anthropology student admitted. “But I just cheer anyways.”
Just before noon, I asked Yasmine-with-different-vowels whether people take turns leaving to grab lunch. “Oh no, we don’t have to because people just keep donating stuff,” she said. One of the Christ Church undergraduates, who had slept overnight in the encampment, remarked that “we have more food than we know what to do with.” The large “community kitchen” in the encampment center serves fruit piles, boxes of brownies, a spread of egg tarts, and platters with onion bhajis. The students had effectively established a Coffee Grounds for Solidarity café, complete with herbal tea sachets, a pitcher of chilled pink lemonade, an ice box filled with juices, thermal jugs of coffee and hot water, and an array of dairy alternatives. A graduate student confirmed that, “there are at least three meals a day, but usually more like four or five.”
As students swarmed the “community kitchen” just past noon, I noticed a battered cardboard sign that said “Student Intifada.” I probed the guy next to me, “Doesn’t ‘intifada’ sort of contradict your calls for a cease-fire?” He chewed his vegan samosa and then enlightened me by saying, “I mean, I guess, yeah sort of, but not really.”
I had joined the “People’s University for Palestine” with the expectation of undergoing indoctrination; I had anticipated hearing revisionist historical accounts and recitations of the incredible (as in, not at all credible) statistics from the Gaza health ministry. But the protesters were more interested in talking about the encampment itself, not what it supposedly supported. They were inspired by the American campus demonstrations, and a few praised Columbia University and UCLA specifically. It is more accurate to say the Oxford encampment was imported from — not inspired by — the States: Roughly half the campers I met were Americans completing a one- or two-year degree here.
“It’s cool, we’re like the anti-war protests from the ’70s,” a Jewish American student told me. I asked whether his keffiyeh could be “cultural appropriation,” but he considered wearing it “an act of solidarity” that “celebrates Palestinian culture.” Still, progressive Western culture dominated the encampment: I spotted more LGBTQ+ flags on pins, laptop stickers, and phone cases than I did keffiyehs. There were Middle Eastern women in modest clothing and hijabs, but they were outnumbered by white women wearing skimpy tank tops that revealed tattoos. There were more smoke breaks than prayers on mats.
The activists were hardly politically active. I wondered if I had mistakenly attended Coachella: The people claiming to protest “genocide” seemed unbothered as they lounged in lawn chairs while typing on laptops or scrolling on smartphones. Maybe the student wearing several-hundred-dollar Celine sunglasses was tweeting about oppression? It isn’t obvious the campers are fighting against anything, given the lack of university opposition. Some undergraduates told me that their professors had enabled a Zoom option to allow class participation from the encampment, which isn’t surprising, given that over 400 Oxford faculty members signed a letter endorsing the demonstration. “The university hasn’t really responded, it has just kind of ignored us,” a graduate student told me.
Perhaps they do debate policy — the encampment’s policies. The revolutionaries struggle with government, both those they condemn and build. A graduate student said they had tried an equitable “direct democracy,” but that proved “difficult” because the community is “porous,” since protesters didn’t necessarily participate in consecutive days and might sleep in the dorms. So, they instead adopted a rotating body of four representatives who deliberate issues, then bring some matters to a vote. He confessed, “It’s been difficult, I won’t lie.”
Only once in my six hours there did someone mention the ongoing conflict in Israel — and it wasn’t a member of the encampment who did so. A Palestinian woman was in Oxford for her husband’s graduation that day, but she skipped some ceremonies to join the protest with her nearly four-month-old child. She explained that, pregnant and postpartum, she had compared her fortunate situation to those of Palestinian women who lacked adequate medical care as a result of the war, and she noted the significance of “bringing a Palestinian baby into the world during the genocide.” She recalled her time as pro-Palestinian advocate at Harvard and expressed support for the Oxford campers, emphasizing that she was overwhelmed with pride.
Eventually, I went home, largely because I was bored and wanted to be productive. I was a victim of false advertising, for the students had claimed that the encampment “will be one of the most ambitious actions the University has seen in recent years,” but it was underwhelming. Ultimately, the campers are wrong about many things, particularly themselves: They are neither revolutionaries nor protesting. Rather, they are merely doing schoolwork in a different setting with occasional lackluster chants of “Free Palestine.” The encampment is a perpetual picnic with Palestinian flags as decor.