alQaws: The View of a Queer Organisation in Palestine
The fight for a free Palestine and queer rights are one and the same, especially for those at the heart of both.
On the 9th of June 2023, Sarit Ahmed Shakur was murdered in the Druze village of Yarka, in Northern Israel. She was born in 2004, killed at the age of 18. Herself a lesbian, Sarit reportedly faced abuse and death threats from her family prior to her murder. Due to these threats, Sarit was placed into the care of Israeli welfare services and moved to a shelter, but she later chose to move in with her sister in another village as “she did not want to be in contact with the police”. She was found, with multiple gunshot wounds, lying in the street. Sarit Ahmed Shakur died in hospital a short time later.
A vigil remembering Sarit was organised by a group known by its shortened name of ‘alQaws’, (القوس للتعددية الجنسية والجندرية في المجتمع الفلسطيني, literally “The [Rainbow] of Sexual and Gender Pluralism in the Palestinian Society), “is at the forefront of vibrant Palestinian cultural and social change, building LGBTQ communities and promoting new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life.”
alQaws’ vigil for Sarit was attended by 150 people, with hundreds of virtual contributions.
Through social media, alQaws said that “This may not be the first murder based on sexual or gender identity in historical Palestine, but it is the first documented and announced case of the killing of someone who wanted to live [their] different sexual and gender identity freely.”
Support within Palestine includes a phone and messaging line, ‘alKhat’. This line, staffed with volunteers, provides “a space for you to talk to us [alKhat], and share with us your questions, thoughts or difficult feelings”. Zoom workshops providing support and advice have also been held, for example an April workshop allowed for the sharing of concerns about family in the run up to a holiday period.
alQaws, founded in 2007, has been fighting for the rights and inclusion of queer people within Palestine for approaching two decades, being briefly banned by the Palestinian Authority. alQaws’ outlook on queer rights within Palestine is deeply rooted in analysis and critique of the colonial system employed by the Israeli state. “Local/global, anti-colonial, queer feminist”. alQaws stated that Sarit’s death “is the result of the accumulated violence of patriarchal and colonial systems of oppression, and it cannot be separated from the state of violence in our society…”
This view on the violence that killed Sarit came just months prior to the new wave of colonial violence against the Gaza Strip, being inflicted by Israel after Hamas’ attacks on the 7th of October. Writing on the 29th of October, near the outset of Israel’s ‘expanded ground operations’ and after the night of unprecedented bombing on the 27th, the minimum death toll in the region stands at 1,400 Israelis and 8,000 Palestinians killed.
The terror that rains night after night into Gaza is the sharp edge of a long sword of colonial and imperial policies enacted by the state of Israel, and alQaws provides analysis and rejection of this system in its entirety. Talking specifically about Israel’s attempts to ‘pinkwash’ its violence, alQaws writes: “Israel exploits issues of sexual and gender pluralism in order to cover up its crimes against our Palestinian people… [isolating] us as Palestinians who live different sexual and gender experiences…”
With some bad-faith discourse and retorts against queer activism for Gaza and Palestine in the UK and other ‘western’ countries, it becomes more important to bring light to queer voices within occupied Palestine, and Palestinians living within Israel. alQaws’ clear view is that the same colonial structures that justify the injury and killing of Palestinians are also used to justify the injury and killing of queer people, and this voice from Palestine provides an important insight into the activism and solidarity that the queer community can provide Gaza and Palestine during the current wave of death and destruction being inflicted upon it by Israel.
alQaws’ English website can be found at: http://alqaws.org/siteEn/index
alQaws on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alqaws_org/?img_index=2
A donation to alQaws can be made at: http://alqaws.org/support-us