Pro-Palestinian groups in Tunisia have launched a campaign to criminalize normalization with Israel.
The “One Million Signatures to Criminalize Normalization” campaign was launched this past October 7 to mark the “second anniversary of the glorious ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation.”
Al-Aqsa Flood is the Hamas-coined name for the October 7 massacre.
“The demand for a law that criminalizes normalization with the Zionist entity is not merely a legal demand, but a struggle, one that forms part of the broader current of civil popular resistance confronting colonial ambitions and soft normalization,” the campaign said.
The campaign is being led by the Coordination Committee for Joint Action for Palestine in Tunisia (CJA), the Tunisian Boycott Campaign, and the Anti-Normalization Campaign, it said.
It comes amid what the groups call “accelerating Arab and international trend toward normalization” and the groups’ fears that “the American–Zionist axis, under misleading banners such as ‘regional peace’ and ‘the Abraham Accords,’ will push integration of the Zionist entity.”
The campaign said it takes issue not only with Western states, but also “official Arab regimes that legitimize the occupation.”
“The Tunisian people’s stance has always been, and will remain, firm in rejecting normalization, considering it a national, pan-Arab, and human betrayal,” it said.
The new initiative was also sparked by the alleged harassment of Tunisian participants in the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla after the Israel Navy intercepted their ships, the campaign said.
Despite launching just a few days before the Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal was brokered, the campaign said it remained undeterred. The groups did, however, release a statement on October 13 that said the process of collecting signatures “has not yet begun” in “adherence to the initiative’s activist road-map and to complete the necessary procedures related to the protection of personal data.”
Previous attempts to criminalize Israel's normalization
This is not the first time criminalizing normalization with Israel has been discussed in Tunisia; its parliament debated a bill on the matter in November 2023, but it was halted by President Kais Saied.
Forty-nine MPs have since signed a petition demanding the completion of a plenary session dedicated to discussing the draft bill. The organizers told Tunisian media outlets they hope the campaign will be the tipping point.
CJA and the Tunisian Boycott Campaign have both been at the forefront of pro-Palestine campaigning in Tunisia over the past two years, including organizing and participating in the first Sumud convoy to Gaza via Egypt, which was unsuccessful.