The ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 2023 has placed everything we do in the face of an existential question: How can we pursue with our mission towards justice and freedom when scenes of grave oppression and aggression unfold before us in their harshest forms?

How can Ahel play an active role, as an organization supporting and enhancing collective leadership for change? And how can it make a real contribution, not only now but also in the future? We continue to evolve the answers to these questions hoping for a positive impact and a real contribution to enhancing our mission of returning the power to the people .

Since the start of this most recent and ongoing aggression, we have chosen to invest our expertise in community organizing and collective action by providing coaching interventions for individuals or groups who committed to tangible action. And we have received requests for coaching from 14 different groups in several Arab countries. We are proud of these groups and their actions despite the leaders’ profound feelings of futility given that their actions have not stopped  the loss of lives.

Below I shed some light on these amazing efforts that we at Ahel got to coach and support in the last third of the year. 

Activists invested their efforts in mobilizing popular rejection of normalization and peace treaties between and their countries. They led tactics demanding that  their governments  cancel normalization treaties and agreements.Some activists focused on boycott tactics, which included not goods and services from Israel  as well as from complicit countries.

A group of activists from around the world set out to pressure Egypt to open the Rafah crossing for aid around the clock and without the involvement and conditions from Israel. The group released a global statement signed by numerous prominent and influential figures from various sectors worldwide, delivering a signed petition to Egyptian embassies in several countries.

One group set out to pressure non-profit international human rights organizations demanding that they declare what is happening in Gaza as a genocide.hey applied various tactics, including visits to the organizations’ offices and handing them a petition by hand. They followed these visits with a digital storm on social media five days later to increase the pressure and expose these institutions. They later followed with further tactics until they were successful.Some groups invested their efforts in holding donor organizations accountable since they arms to governments supporting Israel, such as France, the United States, Sweden, and Germany. They mobilized several Arab civil society organizations in Palestine and Jordan to send messages to these donor institutions. Several national associations and non-profit organizations terminated their contracts with complicit donors in protest.

Some individuals formed digital action units, where they monitored Israeli propaganda and cyber attacks, and trolling of social media posts supporting the Palestinian cause Some worked on delivering real news ignored by official western news platforms to foreign audiences, attempting to echo Gaza’s voice without distortion.

Graduates of American academic programs mobilized their fellow alumni to hold their program patrons accountable for their stances on what is happening in Gaza. They delivered the message that neutrality and silence equal complicity in the genocide.

It is significant because the journey of liberation and justice is a long one. The Palestinian resistance and resilience in Gaza and around the world that liberation requires deliberate constant collective action that accumulates impact. The importance of such action also stems from its role in building social movement organizations that are necessary for pursuing capacities for larger-scale movements that accumulate significant wins in the fight for freedom.

All current actions and fights are necessary, each in its own way. At the same time, the immediate and long-term impact could vary from one to another. They all contribute to our collective freedom from the clasps of complacency in the face of injustice, and they create an internal force that propels us towards agency and action.

Reem Manaa

Director of Campaign Coaching