Palestinian community-centered: The Palestinian community that alQaws belongs to defines our work and shapes our priorities and politics. Our work strategies and programs emerge directly from our field experience and careful analysis of the concrete local reality that shapes current social and cultural attitudes around sexual and gender diversity. For Palestinian society, all grassroots work is affected by Israeli colonialism and occupation. And, alQaws has been demonstrating for over a decade that all political work intersects with issues that are sometimes dismissed as too personal, apolitical, or irrelevant to anti-occupation and de-colonial organizing, such as homosexuality and queer identity, non-normative gender, and so on. In all of our work, we aim to expand our impact on our society through an ever-increasing circle of partners and supporters who adopt our vision, while standing firm in our beliefs and values. Our commitment to supporting and strengthening Palestinian queer/LGBT communities cannot be separated from our vision for a self-determined Palestinian society free from all forms of oppression.
Local/global, anti-colonial, queer feminist: Drawing from 10 years of grassroots and institutional local activism, as well as our deep connection to other global liberation movements, alQaws’ radical social change vision is firmly built on anti-colonial and queer-feminist values. We seek to overturn the existing oppressive and exclusive social and political structures that not only harm marginalized groups, such as gender and sexual minorities, but also prevent broad social justice.
Border-defying: Our mission is holistic, rather than single-issue, and as such brings an innovative approach to global and regional gender and sexual advocacy work. Crossing socio-economic, ethnic, religious, ability, and education lines, we work with Palestinian LGBTQ individuals, with a special focus on youth, women, and transgender individuals, as well as with civil society institutions/organizations and society at large. Defiantly challenging imposed colonial borders and decades of Israeli fragmentation policies and apartheid, we work in various locations across Palestine, modifying our strategies and programs as needed. Our hub locations include Yaffa, East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Haifa, and these home bases and their local communities motivate and inspire us to continue growing our network throughout Palestine. We supplement our physical presence with a virtual presence accessible anywhere, anytime: on our main website, social media, our National listening and information line (alkhat.org) website, and more.