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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:20 pm Post subject: Why haven't the Palestinians established a peace movement? |
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This question never fails to get on my nerves. I've heard it asked often enough (the assumption being that Palestinians have simply resorted to nothing but terrorism). The answer is, yes they have, despite overwhelming suppression of their efforts by their occupiers.
Breaking Palestine's Peaceful Protests
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"Why," I have often been asked, "haven't the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?"
The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement.
In September 1967 � three months after the decisive war in which the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were occupied � Palestinian leaders decided to launch a campaign against the introduction of new Israeli textbooks in Palestinian schools. They did not initiate terrorist attacks, as the prevailing narratives about Palestinian opposition would have one believe, but rather the Palestinian dissidents adopted Mahatma Gandhi-style methods and declared a general school strike: teachers did not show up for work, children took to the streets to protest against the occupation and many shopkeepers closed shop.
Israel's response to that first strike was immediate and severe: it issued military orders categorising all forms of resistance as insurgency � including protests and political meetings, raising flags or other national symbols, publishing or distributing articles or pictures with political connotations, and even singing or listening to nationalist songs.
Moreover, it quickly deployed security forces to suppress opposition, launching a punitive campaign in Nablus, where the strike's leaders resided. As Major General Shlomo Gazit, the co-ordinator of activities in the occupied territories at the time, points out in his book The Carrot and the Stick, the message Israel wanted to convey was clear: any act of resistance would result in a disproportionate response, which would make the population suffer to such a degree that resistance would appear pointless.
After a few weeks of nightly curfews, cutting off telephone lines, detaining leaders, and increasing the level of harassment, Israel managed to break the strike.
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I recall that raising the Palestinian flag would land you in gaol for 5 years - much more than an Israeli settler would get for idly shooting an Arab.
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It is often forgotten that even the second intifada, which turned out to be extremely violent, began as a popular nonviolent uprising. Haaretz journalist Akiva Eldar revealed several years later that the top Israeli security echelons had decided to "fan the flames" during the uprising's first weeks. He cites Amos Malka, the military general in charge of intelligence at the time, saying that during the second intifada's first month, when it was still mostly characterised by nonviolent popular protests, the military fired 1.3m bullets in the West Bank and Gaza. The idea was to intensify the levels of violence, thinking that this would lead to a swift and decisive military victory and the successful suppression of the rebellion. And indeed the uprising and its suppression turned out to be extremely violent.
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Some of you may have heard of the recent arrest of peace activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah.
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But over the past five years, Palestinians from scores of villages and towns such as Bil'in and Jayyous have developed new forms of pro-peace resistance that have attracted the attention of the international community. Even Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad recently called on his constituents to adopt similar strategies. Israel, in turn, decided to find a way to end the protests once and for all and has begun a well-orchestrated campaign that targets the local leaders of such resistance.
One such leader is Abdallah Abu Rahmah
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The day before Abu Ramah was arrested, the Israeli military carried out a co-ordinated operation in the Nablus region, raiding houses of targeted grassroots activists who have been fighting against human rights abuses. Wa'el al-Faqeeh Abu as-Sabe, 45, is one of the nine people arrested. He was taken from his home at 1am and, like Abu Ramah, is being charged with incitement. Mayasar Itiany, who is known for her work with the Nablus Women's Union and is a campaigner for prisoners' rights was also taken into custody as was Mussa Salama, who is active in the Labour Committee of Medical Relief for Workers. Even Jamal Juma, the director of an NGO called Stop the Wall, is now behind bars.
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Clearly, the strategy is to arrest all of the leaders and charge them with incitement, thus setting an extremely high "price tag" for organising protests against the subjugation of the Palestinian people. The objective is to put an end to the pro-peace popular resistance in the villages and to crush, once and for all, the Palestinian peace movement.
Thus, my answer to those who ask about a Palestinian "Peace Now" is that a peaceful grassroots movement has always existed. At Abdallah Abu Rahmah's trial next Tuesday one will be able to witness some of the legal methods.
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A successful activist - whose peaceful methods gained the attention and admiration on an international stage (such as Abdallah Abu Rahmah) is far more dangerous to the Israeli expansion machine than a guy walking into a busy market place with a bomb strapped to him. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:42 pm Post subject: |
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I thought I'd start this thread, because as well as the other article, I'd recently read another along the same theme.
I won't have any time to debate anyone (so do be patient TUM) because I have 2 major exams and a 30% assignment looming in the next month - as well as finishing up the years accounts for my husband's business. [Which probably sounds easy for those of you who are not the primary carers of 2 very dependent pre-school age kids]. But next time someone makes this stupid point (that the Pallies only resort to violence) I'll point them this way.
Here are snippets of the other article:
the utility of non-violent resistance as it applies to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict
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| But before discussing Palestinian non-violence, several things must be clarified. One is that no one -- least of all me, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn -- has the slightest right to dictate to the Palestinians how to end the blockade or resist the occupation. Another is the need to avoid the nearly inevitable antiseptic air to talk by Westerners discussing Palestinian non-violence. Antiseptic, because it is cleansed of the complicating grit of the occupation within which non-violence must take place. There's also usually a tacit subtext, usually a four-word question: Where Is Their Gandhi? That question could not be more in error. I hope to show why. |
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It's not that violence never works. In fact, it works really well. Anthropologist David Graeber comments, "violence is veritably unique among forms of action because it is pretty much the only way one can have relatively predictable effects on others' actions without understanding anything about them." Want some land? Carry out a terror attack on its inhabitants. They're likely to flee. They try to reclaim it? Shoot the first one who tries in the head. After a while, they stop trying. Then, it's yours. Until someone with a bigger gun comes along. It's cyclical. Most Palestinians know very well why Israel is no longer occupying southern Lebanon. It's because of Hezbollah. And Palestinians and Israelis both know that Hezbollah repulsed the summer 2006 invasion through violence. It works. The question is if something else can work better.
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Palestinian civil society hasn't embraced non-violence out of some strange, inexplicable, dreamily Utopian impulse, either. It has embraced non-violence because it's well aware that non-violence often works, very well. A recent study, investigating the "strategic effectiveness" of violent and non-violent campaigns in struggles between "non-state and state actors," examined hundreds of conflicts from 1900 to 2006. The results showed that "that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns." There are good reasons for this, reasons directly related to the thinking underlying the Gaza Freedom March.
Non-violence contributes greatly to a movement's legitimacy both in the eyes of potential participants and in the judgment of the world. More legitimacy means more participants. More participants means more pressure on the target. Non-violence can impel greater recognition of grievances and, in turn, great and greater support from both inside and outside the conflict zone for the group engaging in non-violence. This can lead to the "alienation of the target regime." Furthermore, governments are able to easily justify "violent counterattacks against armed insurgents," whereas state repression against practitioners of non-violence can quickly backfire.
We know that this is true. A baton slammed down upon a non-violent resister evokes more sympathy than a guerrilla fighter shot down by a helicopter gunship. Why this is so isn't entirely clear. Nor is it entirely justified. When the issues are clear and the cause is pure in our collective imaginary, as with John Brown's heroism at Harper's Ferry, we stand by violent insurgents.
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Trevor
Joined: 16 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:03 am Post subject: |
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| It's all about hegemony. Truth, I have come to learn, has very little to do with what is commonly believed. What matters, in terms of public opinion, is who has the power to have their beliefs hold sway. Right now, it is Israel. It behooves those in power to view these people as cold blooded murderers and so that is what is successfully conveyed to most people. |
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