Collective Imaginaries and Subversive Practices: Palestine in Egypt

Palestine serves as a catalyst for political mobilizations in Egypt. In the early 2000s, “popular committees” in support of Palestinian resistance emerged, which later inspired other protest movements such as Kifaya (Al-Ahnaf, 2003; El-Chazli and Hassabo, 2013). Later, it was through the fight for the Palestinian cause that part of the generation of activists from the January 25, 2011, revolution was formed (Abou-El-Fadl, 2012). Palestine was also central to the “exchanges of blows” characteristic of the revolutionary situation (Dobry, 2012; Ben Néfissa, 2015; Amr, 2014).

Palestine in Egypt thus belongs neither entirely to foreign policy nor entirely to domestic policy (Daoud, 2024). This ambivalence has resurfaced in the mobilization attempts that have emerged in Egypt since October 7, 2023. While fierce repression has crushed all social movements since late 2013, activists have managed to recreate spaces of protest. Although constrained—often within unions or on social media—and repressed, this dynamic is unprecedented in Egypt’s authoritarian context. While the Egyptian government is accused of turning a blind eye, civilians are publicly expressing their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Mobilizations have taken place in various universities, marking an unprecedented return to student activism, which had been stifled by the ban on political activities at universities in October 2014 (Ramzy, 2017). Support for Palestine serves as a powerful discursive tool of protest that uniquely challenges Egyptian authoritarianism and disrupts political allegiances.

How does Palestine feed into the collective imaginaries that are developing and unfolding within Egypt’s political spaces? This proposal aims to explore the subversive narratives and practices deployed by various Egyptian actors since October 7, which challenge the political codes of expression developed after the foreclosure of pluralistic effervescence (Allal and Vannetzel, 2017), while also being part of a long history of mobilization.