1/ Love under Israeli apartheid.

Israel segregates Palestinians across different legal statuses to divide & rule:

- Citz. of Israel
- Res. of Jerusalem
- West Bank / Gaza
- Refugee/diaspora (+ foreign passports)

The category you belong to impacts who you can be with.

2/ Israel does this to geographically separate Palestinians from one another, break social, cultural & political cohesion & undermine a collective Palestinian identity.

Localizing each community or "status" is meant to undermine a connected NATIONAL movement for liberation.
3/ The other reason is to limit the number of Palestinians in Palestine.

Israel doesn't allow Palestinian refugees/diaspora to visit their homeland, let alone live in Palestine with a partner.

But any Jewish person anywhere in the world can return and live as they please.
4/ Regulating who you love, have as a partner and whether you can be together is the crux of this tiered system of fragmentation.

Israel has made it almost impossible to change your legal status in order to be with someone if they are from another legal category.
5/ For each combination of categories, Israel has placed draconian measures to prevent people from sharing a life together.

Suffocation through bureaucracy, revoking residency, outlawing places to live, refusal to grant visas or just physical separation are some of those ways.
6/ This system doesn't apply to Jewish Israelis who have full freedom and rights under this regime. There are no restrictions on whether someone from Tel Aviv can marry someone from the illegal settlement of Maale Adumim in the WB & have limitations on where they live together.
7/ Conversely a Palestinian from Jericho can't marry someone from Jaffa because Israel doesn't allow its citizens to live in the PA controlled parts of the West Bank and they would almost never give Israeli citizenship to a Palestinian from the West Bank so they can live in Jaffa
8/ Another entire category is that of foreign spouses. Non-Palestinians with different citizenships married to someone from the West Bank or Gaza are often denied residency to stay with their families in Palestine by Israel.

Families are forced to separate or move abroad.
9/ Tell me more about Palestinian sovereignty if we can't decide who enters and leaves, but also who is allowed to stay with their family or not.

Ultimately, Israel decides. Why would it allow Palestinians to end that fragmentation, if it imposed it on them?
10/ Israeli apartheid penetrates every part of our lives, including who we love and whether we can be with them. A system running across ethnonational lines regulates love to maintain the supremacy and domination of one people over another.

More from World

Watch the entire discussion if you have the time to do so. But if not, please make sure to watch Edhem Eldem summarizing ~150 years of democracy in Turkey in 6 minutes (starting on 57'). And if you can't watch it, fear not; I've transcribed it for you (as public service). Thread:


"Let me start by saying that I am a historian, I see dead people. But more seriously, I am constantly torn between the temptation to see patterns developing over time, and the fear of hasty generalizations and anachronistic comparisons. 1/n

"Nevertheless, the present situation forces me to explore the possible historical dimensions of the problem we're facing today. 2/n

"(...)I intend to go further back in time and widen the angle in order to focus on the confusion I  believe exists between the notions of 'state', 'government', and 'public institutions' in Turkey. 3/n

"In the summer of 1876, that's a historical quote, as Midhat Pasa was trying to draft a constitution, Edhem Pasa wrote to Saffet Pasa, and I quote in Turkish, 'Bize Konstitusyon degil enstitusyon lazim' ('It is not a constitution we need but institutions'). 4/n

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