if you’re among those who have made the argument that Israelis would give Palestinians a state if only the Palestinians would learn to employ Ghandhian tactics of non-violent protest, it appears your moment of truth has arrived. As my colleague writes, what happened on Nakba Day was Israel’s “nightmare scenario: masses of Palestinians marching, unarmed, towards the borders of the Jewish state, demanding the redress of their decades-old national grievance.”
Many are skeptical of the viability of non-violent Palestinian resistance, because it is not only a threat to Israel, but also a threat to Hamas, Hezbollah and all armed resistances that grew up during the “What is taken by force can only be reclaimed by force” days.
This old conversion of interests has fueled a very old Middle Eastern conspiracy theory: That Israel and the armed resistances feed off each other’s violence so that they can preserve each other’s existence and relevance. This explains the Israeli policy of shooting unarmed demonstrators, and it also explains the launching of small missiles into Israeli civilian areas during calm periods..
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I would love to see a grass roots movement amongst Palestinian using peaceful methods of protest. They already exhibit this nature outside of Isreal in the
West where they are treated like any other citizen.
The principal cause of the breakdown of the Oslo process was the Palestinians’ failure to renounce violence against Israeli civilians. This destroyed the credibility of the PLO, the Israeli left and the peace process. Until the Palestinians adopt nonviolence and renounce their claims against Israel pre-1967, they will get no where. Although this latter approach has found quarter with some, mainstream Palestinian political culture has failed to accept this. So the outcome is entirely predictable.
non-violent Palestinian resistance?
I have never seen it.
What does it mean anyway?
I really would like an answer
Of course you’ve seen it, the 1987 Intifada was based on non-violence (except few incidents), and it’s what made the Oslo process possible in the first place.
However, for many geopolitical reasons after the fall of Berlin wall, the new right was winning in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel while Iran was finished with the gulf war and more willing to peddle in Lebanese and Palestinian affairs.
Actually there has always been advocates for non-violent struggle in Palestine as in Lebanon, but they were either killed or marginalized. Juliano Khamis was one of them.
1987 Intifada was not violent?!!!!
Rocks and molotov bottles are not violent?
You have got to be kidding me.
Can I have a reall answer?
What is a non violent resistance?
Yes it was non-violent for the most part, rocks (and sometimes molotovs) are considered legitimate tools by most non-violent schools around the world because they simply are not intended to cause direct harm (who wants to harm people will use guns).
Non-violent struggle means adopting a strategy that doesn’t include the use arms or physical violence against the opponent, but it does not mean singing “imagine” while throwing flowers on the state police. It involves a lot of “violent” tactics like occupying state buildings, closing roads and yes, throwing rocks on security forces.
Note that 1987′s uprising didn’t adopt the non-violent method in a conscious way, it was more like a casual adoption.
I don’t understand why everyone seems to assume that the use violence when resisting a situation that has effectively blocked all other means of peaceful resistance such as seeking statehood recognition in the United Nations is automatically illegitimate? I think what everybody who has commented needs a crash-course in the political science of resistance. When you tell Palestinians that you can’t use jurisprudence to achieve your goal of statehood, which incidentally is inscribed in the UN Charter, i.e. the right to self-determination of all peoples on Earth; when you lead a campaign of psychological warfare against innocent civilian populations; when you massacre an unarmed, immobilized civilian population in what you purport to call a ‘war’, i.e. the 2008 massacre of Gaza; when you implement an economic blockade on an already destitute population as a collective punishment (which incidentally is illegal under the UN Charter) for having voted the ‘wrong guys’ in elections, i.e. 2006 Gaza elections, then what the hell else do you want Palestinians to do? Would you like them to hold picket signs and walk near the Israeli-Gaza border chanting through megaphones and have the Israeli Security Forces’ canines attack and injure them as they have done to countless Palestinian labourers in the past few weeks? Finally, when you cite Gandhi, please make sure you are familiar with his writings, and not simply in caricatured diaper-wearing ascetic pacifist persona everybody is comfortable with. Gandhi wrote that in times when there is no other measure through which one can obtain one’s goals, when all other means of peaceful protest and measures have been blocked and have yielded absolutely no result, it is then perfectly LEGITIMATE to resort to violent means of resistance in order to achieve one’s noble goals. Do you think the Apartheid regime in South Africa would have collapsed had cute little Nelson Mandella peacefully protested against it? Violence is all we leave Palestinians with, and it is a deeply moral violence in this case. Anyone who says otherwise needs to get their head checked.
Diane — I have no interest in a debate, but given the way you use the UN in your argument, it sounds like you’re unfamiliar with the facts regarding UN Resolution 181. As accurately summarized in Wikipedia:
“The proposed plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, through the Jewish Agency. However, the plan was rejected by leaders of the Arab community (the Palestine Arab Higher Committee etc.), who were supported in their rejection by the states of the Arab League. In a communication to the United Nations Palestine Commission dated 19 January 1948, the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine stated that it was “determined [to] persist in rejection [to the] partition and in refusal [to] recognize UNO resolution [with] this respect and anything deriving therefrom”. [...] on the 15th, five Arab armies crossed the borders of what had formerly been Mandate Palestine. This event marked the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.”
Putting the political discourse aside, you obviously don’t know what non-violence is about. It’s not about whether violent is legitimate or not, it’s about whether it accomplishes the intended goal or not, and violence do not achieve anything.
Please tell me what did violent resistance inside Palestine accomplish for the Palsetinian cause in the last 50 years? Nothing. Zip.
Two years of non-violent intifada in 1987 made more accomplishments than 50 years of fighting. One photo in 2001, that of the 12 year old Mohamed Dorra being killed in his dad’s lap, made an impact more powerful than all the ridiculous rockets of Hamas.
No one wins a cause by killing people.
Diane,
Too much flowery language in your post to go through all of the points. The only thing I would say is that violent resistance begets violent resistance. If that is the order of battle, then expect your opponent to turn up for the same fight. The moment you do so, then all of the indignation that you express about violence borne by Palestinians loses any hope of attaining any moral standing. At that point we start discussing who inflicted more harm to whom – a silly debate.
What about the French resistance? did that achieve nothing too? Hezbollah’s violence did achieve the 2000 liberation of south Lebanon. Vietnamese resistance did kick out the Americans. American resistance kicked out the British. Uh…it does work
The french resistance was backed by the allies, and it actually wouldn’t have achieved anything without them. Remember, France was freed after the Normandy landing. Furthermore, it was from within the country, not trying to invade a country from outside.
The Vietnamese resistance was backed by the entire Soviet Union. It was not a resistance, it was an american soviet war
The american resistance against the british was actually also a revolution from within the country.
Now use rational thinking, and imagine the kind of violence the palestininans are using, and imagine how it will result in anything but death among palestinians. And remember that these are people and we are not playing command and conquer here. When these people die, you cannot click on load game