Students for Palestine in Britain must rebuild, not retreat after the ceasefire

While a ceasefire has been announced, we approach this with cautious relief, as we know Israel will likely act in flagrant violation of the agreement, like they have done many times before. We therefore cannot pause in these moments, especially as the Palestinian people remain steadfast on the land despite 732 days of Israel’s merciless genocide.

Taking the time to reflect on the past two years is important for the process of regrouping and strategising in the months ahead. This is, after all, how movements repair themselves, rediscover their collective direction, and transform disjointed energy into coherent power. Convening is, at its core, a call for unity in confronting Zionism.

This is exactly why the National Student Conference for Palestine 2025 is taking place this weekend in London. Now more than ever, we must be asking ourselves what it means to gather at a time when Zionist genocide in Gaza persisted unabated for two years. Our movement’s fragmentation is acutely felt, and defeatism pervades our communities who are disillusioned after months of protest that many feel had little impact.

Indeed, the past months have also stretched the student movement thin; many of those who poured their energy into encampments and teach-ins now find themselves facing fatigue, repression, or disillusionment. Others have graduated, often without passing down their knowledge to the next generation of students.

Coming together in such a moment, therefore, is resisting the imposed idea that we must face these challenges in isolation. It is refusing the inertia that sets in when organising becomes reactive, when solidarity risks being reduced to slogans rather than strategy.

Building on knowledge

In the UK, the student movement for Palestine has historically seen waves of uprising followed by moments of retreat. Today, we are once again at a crossroads. The intensity of mobilisation in response to the genocide in Gaza, state repression and censorship on campuses has created an atmosphere of perpetual urgency. Meetings blur into vigils, statements into petitions, and demands into moments of disorientation.

In this landscape, defeatism has quietly crept in, not as surrender, but as fragmentation. Students work tirelessly yet separately. Groups that once coordinated across institutions now operate in silos. These local and isolated campaigns will only be rejuvenated and reanimated when they unite and commit to building a mass movement for Palestine. But how do we get there? 

What is needed now is a call for reflection. We must collectively consider our current conjuncture, assess our tactical effectiveness and begin strategising for the years ahead.

After all, the Palestinian struggle teaches us that movements must build upon accumulated knowledge – a principle and practice known in Arabic as tarakum. And students amassed years’ worth of organising experience, and faced intense challenges which has deepened their understanding of the contradictions present within the wider Palestine movement and what is required to overcome them.

This must be passed down to a new generation of students so that they can be better equipped to build a mass movement.

Unity

Convening at this time, is not only a practice through which a movement reorients itself, builds camaraderie, and articulates shared principles, it also means confronting contradictions that paralyse us.

Spaces like the student conference allow us to identify, as well as prioritise, shared points of unity needed to hold the movement together. It reinforces anti-Zionism as the fundamental principle of our struggle that cannot be negotiated as it is the boundary that keeps our movement from being diluted or co-opted.

Furthermore, as we’ve seen over the past two years, states and institutions rely on fragmentation and thrive on keeping us disconnected, surveilled, and reactive. By gathering intentionally, we categorically reject their attempted divisions and repression.

Learning from the past

From the earliest Palestine National Congresses in the 1920s and 1930s—where educators, workers, and students met to debate forms of resistance—to the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) established in 1959, gatherings have served as milestones in the articulation of collective struggle. They were moments to set vision and direction, spaces where political positions were developed, new strategies were formed, and where political coordination was actively forged.

Through GUPS,  Palestinian students played a crucial role in developing a national body and movement for the Palestinian struggle. The organisation’s broader national goals were first articulated in GUPS’s founding conference, while subsequent Union conferences afforded Palestinian students with a continual democratic mechanism through which to discuss, contest and shape PLO strategy. Later, as the national movement was consolidated, GUPS fully integrated within the PLO’s structures.

The first Palestinian student congress was held in Jaffa in 1936—the year the Great Arab Revolt began. It was a national student conference, with students from across the country attending to develop a strategy to address the political conditions in Palestine at the time. At this conference, students decided to collectively refuse to pay taxes and to continue the strike, in protest of increasing Jewish settlement in Palestine and the presence of the British mandate.

They also protested against the land sales and the imprisonment of people resisting. These are the political possibilities students are capable of when they come together on a national scale with a shared political goal. They assessed their political context (increasing Jewish immigration and British counterinsurgency), discussed how they can collectively intervene, and made a decision on the strategy and tactics (mass opposition through protest strikes).

Why students need to mobilise

The National Student Conference for Palestine is not simply another event on the activist calendar. It represents a collective effort to rebuild the connective tissue of the movement—to link scattered local initiatives into a shared national project.

Applying this principle within the university space is essential. Campuses are sites in which many students first become politicised and organised. The existence of student organisations for Palestine is crucial because their mission is to heighten political consciousness among students and expose the role of the university in supporting Zionism and imperialism both ideologically (research, curriculum, public fora, inviting government/military officials to speak at events etc.) and materially (through investments, institutional partnerships and other forms of funding).

This widespread understanding provides students with the impetus to mobilise and get organised. Students have a responsibility to assess where their university holds links with the Zionist project, build targeted campaigns against the links and activate the masses on campus through such campaigns.

It is an expression of powerful local struggle for the liberation of Palestine from where we are situated, which for students in Britain, is on UK campuses.

The conference was organised to convene student organisers after two years of genocide to reflect on their experiences, build on the gains students have made and clarify what our task is going forward. This conference offers a space to establish contact with student groups across the country, coordinate nationwide work, plant the seeds for future campaigns, and identify the most effective ways to intervene in the Zionist-imperialist genocidal project in Palestine from our campuses in Britain.  

If despair is a symptom of fragmentation, convening is the condition for recovery. It transforms demoralisation into renewed commitment, isolation into coordination, and aimlessness into clear political direction to carry the struggle forward.

This article was written alongside student organisers across Britain.

The Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational, independent grassroots movement of young Palestinians and Arabs in exile as a result of the ongoing colonisation of our homeland.

Follow them on Twitter: @palyouthmvmt

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.