Article - Organized Resistance: Labor Strikes in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle

Throughout history, labor strikes have been used as a potent tool in expressing dissent, voicing grievances, and demanding change. In Palestine, they have emerged as a powerful mode of resistance and a critical source of leverage for workers. These strikes have encompassed diverse sectors, including labor, education, healthcare, and more, showcasing the unity and determination of the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.

In our latest policy lab, Sumaya Awad and Jamal Juma join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to discuss how labor strikes and union organizing have mobilized Palestinians across the socio-political spectrum, both in Palestine and abroad.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa is Al-Shabaka’s Associate Fellow, based in New York, and co-host of Al-Shabaka’s Policy Lab series. He holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. Tariq’s research and writing have covered a range of topics, from the role of open-source intelligence in exposing Israel’s war crimes to analysis of Palestinian liberation tactics. His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among others. Tariq also serves as Associate Director of Editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Jamal Juma’ is the Coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall), a secretariat member of the BDS National Committee (BNC), and an executive committee member of the New Unions.

Latest Analysis

This Focus On engages with some of the most pressing aspects of this escalation in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. It features analyses by Al-Shabaka members and contributors that show how collective punishment of Palestinians has led to a collapse in access to food, healthcare, work, and education. The compilation also examines the Palestinian people’s resistance to the expansionist Israeli scorched-earth policy, and the political leadership’s complicity and failures.
 Civil Society
This policy brief argues that the health sciences—from public health to epidemiology, nursing, medicine, pharmacology, and nutrition, among others—have a distinct role to play in preventing and documenting the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and other settings, as well as in generating evidence to inform accountability processes.
 Politics
The Israeli genocide in Gaza has laid bare the extent to which the world remains structured by racial colonial hierarchies and exposed the limits of an international legal order that emerged alongside Western imperial expansion. In this roundtable, Palestinian legal scholar Noura Erakat and Jake Romm, legal advisor and US representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), reflect on what becomes of international law after Gaza.
Al-Shabaka Nour Joudah
Noura Erakat,Jake Romm· Aug 25, 2026