This essay examines the overlooked 1979 strike by Palestinian workers at the Jerusalem District Electricity Company (JEDC) as a pivotal moment of anti-colonial resistance. It argues that the strike, which fused demands for better wages with a political struggle against Israel’s erosion of the company’s concession and autonomy, demonstrates the inextricable link between class and national liberation. By mobilizing broad popular solidarity to defend a critical national infrastructure, the JEDC workers’ union articulated a mode of resistance in which labor solidarity became a primary vehicle for asserting sovereignty and contesting the political economy of settler colonial occupation. Their actions foreground the central role of an organized urban working class in the broader Palestinian struggle for development and liberation.
