The movement spans sectors and continents: dockworkers refusing to load ships without assurance that they carry no weapons bound for Gaza; computer scientists protesting their companies’ contracts with Israel; students transforming campuses into centres of resistance; and ordinary citizens waving Palestinian flags in public squares.
Two years into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, what began as scattered protests has solidified into a worldwide movement that has pushed governments to sharpen their rhetoric against Israel and, in some cases, take concrete steps to end the war and the deliberate starvation of Palestinians.
"Palestine has taken hold of the imagination of the young, and that imagination, once it slips from the grasp of the established elite, will not be reined back in. The extent to which Israel's staunch allies have gone to try to quash this imagination is testimony to that fact," Assistant Professor Manuel Schwab from the Department of Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology at the American University in Cairo told Ahram Online.
Unstoppable tide from streets
From London to New York, Istanbul to Sydney, the first cries to stop the Israeli carnage in Gaza began in the war’s early weeks.
Despite arrests, deportation threats, and bans on demonstrations in many European capitals, protesters persisted, raising Palestinian flags in city squares, staging sit-ins, and besieging parliaments and corporate offices.
What began as spontaneous acts of defiance soon became routine mass mobilizations. Global marches reached new momentum in January 2024, coinciding with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
That legal demand for accountability was echoed by people on the streets, underscoring that the fight for justice was being waged both in courtrooms and public squares.
"One of the few moments of optimism I have found over the last two years has been the spread of this conscience, the momentum it takes, among older generations who were unprepared for this moment until it came, but came to join their grandchildren and their nephews and their students, among Holocaust survivors, among a generation of Germans who must break ranks with one of the most painful taboos of their time to join the public majority (62% by a recent YouGov poll) who believe this is a genocide to be stopped," Professor Schwab said.
He said this is no longer a generational divide, regardless of how it began. The momentum of the moment has become so overwhelming that many historically obedient segments of the public have found their way to expressing solidarity.
"Some say this is too little, and of course, nothing so far has brought much respite to Palestinians under attack. In that respect, I share the frustration. But these mobilizations that break the bounds of generation, class, and nation are leading the way in showing the world that the rhetorical strategies of silencing Palestine as a contentious issue felt only by a radical fringe have always been bankrupt," he added.
Campus uprising: A generation stands for Gaza
The spirit of this new solidarity movement found its most vibrant expression on university campuses worldwide.
Starting in November 2023, students at US universities staged sit-ins demanding that their institutions disclose and divest from companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
The spark became a wildfire on 17 April 2024, with the establishment of the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Columbia University.
This single act became a model, rapidly inspiring encampments and occupations across more than 130 US campuses and spreading worldwide to the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and beyond.
The backlash, however, has been brutal and distinctly political.
Students faced police crackdowns, mass arrests, suspensions, and even revoked degrees.
In March 2025, the Trump administration threatened more than 60 universities with losing federal funding under the pretext of combating “antisemitism.” Columbia expelled several students and rescinded degrees, while Harvard saw $2.2 billion in federal grants frozen after reviewing a pro-Palestine student group.
Perhaps the most alarming case was the deportation order issued against Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful US resident and student leader, to Algeria or Syria. This was a stark example of how dissent was met with political retribution.
Confronting Giants: Corporate complicity and worker resistance
The movement has taken the battle to the heart of the global economy. Since October 2023, employees at tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have mobilized in an unprecedented push for corporate accountability.
Their demand was simple and unyielding: cancel lucrative cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli military.
This wave of employee activism was met with harsh reprisals. Dozens of workers were fired or disciplined, including over 50 Google employees in 2024 alone, for participating in sit-in protests.
However, their protests drew global attention, inspiring the rise of “Tech for Palestine” initiatives and “anti-apartheid tech tools.”
Even more materially challenging to the war machine has been the direct action of workers' strikes. A powerful, self-organized labour movement has refused to allow its hands to be used in complicity with mass murder in Gaza.
This culminated in a general strike in Italy on 22 September 2025 and a gathering in Genoa of dockworker unions from Spain, France, Greece, and Morocco to coordinate a regional blockade of weapons transfers to Israel.
This unprecedented labour solidarity has seen dockers successfully block weapons shipments at key ports, a direct challenge to the governments and corporations aiding Israel’s relentless assault.
"I see a tragic disconnect between the moral conscience expressed by the various strands of this global movement and the governments of the countries from which they hail. Universities have often been held up as a moral compass of their societies, but this movement has been most impactful when it involves simple and direct acts of conscience by people in their own immediate contexts," Schwab said.
The moment of truth
After two years of relentless mobilization, the voice of the street has achieved what diplomacy could not: a shift in global politics and discourse.
A growing number of countries have formally recognized the State of Palestine, a symbolic yet significant repudiation of the idea that Palestinian statehood can be indefinitely vetoed.
The political pressure has been so immense that several European nations, including Britain, have suspended licenses for arms exports to Israel.
Most strikingly, Germany, Israel's second-largest military supplier and decades-long unconditional ally, was forced to impose a partial suspension of arms exports that could be used in Gaza.
This shift has coincided with a palpable hardening of Berlin’s political rhetoric toward Israel's military operations and deliberate starvation tactics in Gaza.
Even the European Union has advanced a proposal to suspend parts of its trade agreement with Israel.
While critics rightly demand a full rupture of military and economic ties, these shifts reflect the undeniable power of the global pro-Palestine movement in isolating Israel and making the continuation of the genocide politically, economically, and diplomatically costly.
The struggle is far from over, but the message is clear: the people have spoken, and the age of unquestioned complicity is nearing its end.
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