Anti-Pinkwashing as Emerging Hope: Queering the Palestinian Liberation Movement in the Context of Institutionalised Neoliberalism

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.3.2.0053
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Pages: 53-72
• Author: Sukrita Lahiri
• Subject Matter: neoliberalism,pinkwashing,homonationalism,anti-pinkwashing

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 3.2 December 2020

Anti-Pinkwashing as Emerging Hope

Queering the Palestinian Liberation Movement in the

Context of Institutionalised Neoliberalism

Sukrita Lahiri

Sukrita Lahiri is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for West Asian Studies, School of

International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research

interests concern the Palestine–Israel question, gender studies, neoliberalism.

ABSTRACT

Neoliberal processes take place in rapid compromises with political sovereignties

of nations. The only unsovereign political space where neoliberalism is practiced

today is Palestine, particularly in the West Bank, since the Oslo peace process. The

portrayal of Islam in a certain light is essential to the success of neoliberal practices

in the region. In line with this, Israel’s ofcial 2007 campaign, “Brand Israel,” saw

millions of dollars spent for this propaganda. One of the central points is “pink-

washing” where Israel portrays itself as a haven for homosexuals while deliberately

glossing over its occupation of Palestine. Israeli occupation does not distinguish

between queer and straight. This phenomenon of employing gay rights as political

strategy, and in this case anchored in Islamophobia, is termed by theorist Jasbir

Puar as “homonationalism.” Gender is clearly an organising principle of Israeli re-

pression and what needs to be looked at is whether gender is also an organising

principle of Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian queer movement is deeply em-

bedded in anti-pinkwashing activism and differentiates itself from Western notions

of queerness. This article applies these crucial understandings to the current context

of Palestine because it is a predominantly vibrant, contemporary site.

KEYWORDS

neoliberalism, pinkwashing, homonationalism, anti-pinkwashing

The Palestinian question is one of the most protracted ones in Middle Eastern studies and

over the years several new dimensions have been attached to it with a surge of contending

analyses. To create an exhaustive list of writers and intellectuals who have contributed to this

54 sukrIta laHIrI

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 3.2 December 2020

domain will always be a challenge; however, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Ilan Pappe,

Norman Finkelstein, Joseph A. Massad, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Sa’ed

Atshan, Sahar Khalifeh, Raja Shehadeh, Susan Abulhawa, Jasbir Puar, Maya Mikdashi,

Noura Erakat, Suad Amiry, Toufic Haddad, Adam Hanieh, Adel Samara, Dana El Kurd are

only a few of those whose works have also influenced the thought process behind this article.

A brief analysis of the history of the Palestine–Israel issue and the phenomenon of neo-

liberalism is imperative to understand its contemporariness in the context of this article’s

focus on queering the Palestinian question in the context of institutionalised neoliberalism.

This is an analytical study. The methodology used is of an interdisciplinary approach drawing

from works on neoliberalism, queer theory, feminism and Palestine studies. A qualitative-

analytical approach has been adopted based on primary and secondary sources of information.

Certain observations from the two field visits made to Palestine are also referred to.

Neoliberalism broadly represents a set of ideas and practices emerging after the decline

of Keynesian economics, the fall of the Eastern bloc, the appearance of a unipolar world

order which is dominated by the United States and its allies, and the affiliated international

financial institutions (IFIs). It began to materialise in policies of Western governments and

IFIs from the mid-1970s and continues until this day (Haddad, 2016). Unlike Palestine, in

places where neoliberal strategies have been executed, political sovereignty and independ-

ence have been the basic preconditions, although criticised, for voiding out sovereignty. The

logic of neoliberalism is based on the assumption that an autonomous, utilitarian and self-

maximising subject exists who plays the individual agent participating in markets and

warrants their auto-regulation. The central idea guiding neoliberal policies is that of mini-

mum government intervention (Chari, 2015) with the nation-state understood to be a

parasitic entity draining out resources meant for public welfare.

The consequences of neoliberalism for human rights are explained by Upendra Baxi

(2002) when he notes that the extreme ramification of these processes is the tendency to

present the suffering of people as unproblematic. This can be coupled with the wide-scale

phenomenon of human rights discourses being increasingly associated with civil society –

aspects of which can be seen in the growing NGO-isation of the discourse and the shift from

movement-oriented approach to an expanding insistence on a bureaucratic, organisational

one with shrinking space for political contestation.

The Palestinian encounter with neoliberalism is complex to decipher, but also necessary

because of the extreme and practically experienced manner in which it is formulated in the

Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and particularly the West Bank under the current

political dispensation (Clarno, 2017). Its concurrent overlapping with the agenda of national

liberation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is something which needs further

understanding. This article examines the penetrations of neoliberal concepts and ideas within

the current political regime in Palestine and the developmental plan as adopted by it. It prob-

lematises the consequences of these neoliberal ideas for the national liberation movement,

while further focusing the inquiry on the contemporary gendered struggles of Palestine.

This work attempts to situate the Palestinian queer movement through its anti-pinkwashing

activism in the larger context of the political-economic situation in the region. In order to do

so, the first section begins with a brief historical study of the Palestine–Israel question, and