Everyday resistance on the internet: the Palestinian context

A political assessment related to the internet portrays how Palestinian political agency transcends into virtual reality. This article offers an insight into the increasing role of the internet for Palestinians in the diaspora and studies the effects of these practices within the context of occupation and exile. Online political activism fills an important gap for what is absent offline. Through multi-sited fieldwork (Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan) this research demonstrates how the internet gave birth to a Palestine in cyberspace and has altered the traditional tactics of activists. Online communication has strengthened social and political agency. It clearly evoked a new type of media activism an giving the permission to narrate: an important development considering the stereotyped portrayals of Palestinians trapped in either terrorists or victims. Fieldwork research conducted between 2001 and 2005 uncovered the dialectic impact of internet access/usage on the politics of resistance, specifically related to local/global political mobilization. The contradiction between online and offline political participation is tackled in this article with regards to a new amalgam of media activism which I term cyber intifada. Much attention is paid on the everyday manifestations of this agency, whether organizing a street candle vigil or lighting a virtual candle online; with these recollections this article therefore illustrates a view from within.