It is a fact that most people in the Palestinian
territories are not happy with their current situation. They are tired of
Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The level of trust in
Palestinian politicians is at an all time low. Yet, there are exceptions
to the dissatisfaction and sorrow that pervade the occupied territories.
Militants, for example, feel gratified that they may have increased their
popularity with the Palestinian masses. They have challenged the authority
and popularity of the PNA and undermined decades of supremacy asserted by
the PLO.
As a general rule, Palestinians rally behind Arafat only
when he is under external threat. Today, as Sharon intensifies the Israeli
siege, Arafat’s role has been confirmed as the symbol of Palestinian
aspirations for independence. The majority of Palestinians do not
generally support Hamas or the Islamic Jihad as an alternative to Arafat
and the PNA. While some believe that they must fight fire with fire, the
Palestinian people know that the militant groups will lead them to further
disasters with no tangible results like others have done before them for
over half a century.
Unfortunately, while the Palestinian majority in the West
Bank and Gaza could be convinced to follow the route of non-violence and
civil disobedience, they remain largely unorganized and incapable of
spontaneously adopting such a response to the Israeli occupation. Should
such organization materialize, the apprehensive masses would still demand
proof that such a movement would have a chance of succeeding. These
everyday citizens are sitting on the sidelines and are reluctant to
participate in the violence. This group, and potentially others, could
eventually be convinced to follow non-violent methods because violence, or
the call for violence, has not produced any results during the 53 years of
dispossession or the last 35 years of occupation.
All we need is a small but strong non-violent group of
activists to start engaging in non-violent resistance and civil
disobedience. By their example, they would draw others to the movement. A
leader of such a group does not have to be, and should not be, a
politician; nor should he or she be an alternative to either Arafat or the
Islamic militants.
Civil disobedience and non-violent resistance are more
contagious than most people think; they are always justifiable by a larger
cross section of a nation, and to a much larger and more influential
international community. To most Palestinians, non-violent resistance and
civil disobedience are more justifiable than violence. Belief in these
principles can spread within a short period throughout the Palestinian
territories. Add to that movement the peace activists in Israel itself,
Arab and Jewish citizens alike, and you will have a viable movement on
both sides that can seek common ground peacefully and very effectively.
Add to that the international peace activists, especially those in Europe
and North American, who are willing to travel at their own expense to
participate in supporting such a peace movement, and you will have an
unstoppable force that the Israeli government would not dare to fight.
Israel and the IDF can only fight with weapons: guns, helicopters, tanks
and F-16s. Like most military occupiers throughout the history of the
world, they do not know how to handle peaceful demonstrations, nor would
they be capable of rationalizing any military action they take against
such peaceful protests.
Israel is not unique in its inability to fight peaceful
resistance and civil disobedience. We all can learn from the lesson of
India when Gandhi organized against the British occupation. We also know
how Martin Luther King fought the bigoted white supremacists in the
American South, with the help of peace activists of all races from
throughout the nation. We know that the entrenched regime of apartheid in
South Africa fell not because of the military might of the African
National Congress, but because of their peaceful, non-violent resistance
(although no one can deny that there were incidents of violence). The
white supremacists in America, the British colonialists in India and the
apartheid regime in South Africa were not able to respond, and each lost
in the face of the patience and perseverance of their opposition.
What can such a movement do in Palestine? The Palestinian
people with the encouragement and support of the Israeli and international
peace movements can march. They can demonstrate peacefully in the streets
of West Bank, Gaza and Israeli towns and cities. They can hold sit-ins and
teach-ins. They can send their activists to lie down on the roads and
highways that divide the West Bank into the isolated enclaves. They can
peacefully march on the illegal Jewish settlements and disrupt the
settlers’ lives. They can camp on the lawns of government buildings and
disrupt government activities. They can, everyday, target and peacefully
disrupt a different part of "normal" Israeli life by disrupting, again
peacefully, public utilities, communication, transportation and
entertainment. They can make non-violent, peaceful resistance part of
Israeli life. These methods will give credence to the demands of the
Palestinians. The means will be easily justifiable by all Palestinians, by
many Israelis and by most international communities. The movement will
eventually attract all of these groups to participate in or defend the
movement. After a short period of time, shorter than the life of the
(violent) intifada, the Israeli right and the Jewish supremacists will no
longer be able to justify their methods, and their arguments can no longer
hold water before the world community.
What will the IDF do? Will they sit idle? Of course they
will not. They will intimidate, arrest, beat and imprison the peace
activists and their leaders, whether they are Palestinian, Israeli or
citizens of other nations.
What will the cost be to the Palestinians and to the
Israeli public? The cost will definitely be less in terms of lives and
property when compared to the cost of the current mindless violent means
of the militants, who have played into the hands of Sharon by destroying
the intifada with misdirected violence. Even if the cost of the
non-violent resistance is the same in the number of lives lost or property
destroyed, the Palestinian peace movement will at least have produced some
tangible results which the militants so far can not claim to have
accomplished. The violence has given Sharon a justification to keep his
promise to restore Israeli security, and at the same time has made his
actions justifiable in the eyes of America and Jewish communities around
the world.
I am convinced, that peaceful, non-violent resistance and
civil disobedience will strike terror into the hearts of people like
Sharon and the generals of the IDF. Such a scenario would be their worst
nightmare. The whispers about such a movement are getting louder. All that
needs to happen now is for the whispers to become screams and for the
militancy to give way.
