What’s in a Link?: Transnational Solidarities across Palestine and their Intersectional Possibilities

This essay analyzes some key moments of transnational Palestinian solidarity politics as a basis for considering the possibilities for challenging the status quo ignited by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Throughout modern Palestinian history, political efforts have been built on nationalist identifications and the nation-state as a goal. Alongside the nation as reference point, transnational and intersectional movements and objectives have also animated Palestinian politics, including pan-Arabism, pan- Islamism, and the human rights movement. The BDS movement has reignited transnational Palestinian solidarity and drawn into the struggle for Palestinian liberation black activists in the United States, including members of the prison abolition movement. The Black-Palestinian Solidarity movement is still in a nascent stage, and the constituent struggles remain based in nation-state imaginaries. The links that participants in the BDS and Black-Palestinian Solidarity movements are fostering are not based on shared identities, however. Instead, they have developed out of shared recognition of the transnational dimensions of the experiential, rights-based, and systemic contiguities among their conditions.